By Michelle Jamrisko August 15, 2013
Wide income disparities in Connecticut, among the wealthiest states in the nation, help make it one of the toughest environments for the unemployed, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Bloomberg rankings show a relatively low rate of benefits as a percentage of income, high competition among the jobless and the third-highest ratio in the country of annual household incomes above $200,000 compared with those below $10,000.
Heavy Competition
There were more than 2,000 applicants for the July P2E class of 22 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Including the Connecticut classes and groups in the cities planned for expansion, P2E has raised about $2.47 million.
Each class of about 20 students typically requires about $120,000, or $6,000 per participant, of private funding, said Tom Long, P2E’s vice president of marketing and communications. Donors for the Connecticut classes have included corporate sponsors and individual givers, while three names have dominated fundraising for the national expansion.
AARP has pledged $1 million, or $100,000 for programs to support participants aged 50 and older in each of the 10 cities set for expansion, and has delivered about $400,000 of that pledge, said Long. Citi Community Development, part of CitiGroup, has said it will donate $300,000 for financial literary classes and counseling in each of the cities. Wal-Mart has started investing toward its pledge of $250,000 to support unemployed veterans under age 30.
Information Technology
Among the applicants to P2E’s next Connecticut class is Richard Freitas, 53, who worked for 17 years as an aircraft mechanic at Stratford, Connecticut-based Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. He then held a series of information technology jobs before he was let go from a post at Duracell Inc. in July 2010.
“The longer you’re out of work, the less chance you have of getting a job,” Freitas said. “I was told by a recruiter that ‘since you’ve been out of work for three years, in the information technology field that you’re in, we feel that you’ve lost touch with the operating systems and the hardware and software.’” He said he’s kept his IT skills up-to-date through online measures such as Dell Inc. certifications.
Yellen Paper
Fed policy makers have long warned of the effects of extended joblessness. Vice Chairman Janet Yellen, whom President Barack Obama has mentioned as a candidate for the chairmanship when Bernanke’s term expires in January, wrote about the problem in 2004, when she was president of the San Francisco Fed.
“Policy makers should be compelled to take action given the serious costs of long-term unemployment when overall unemployment is already high,” she wrote in a paper with her Nobel Prize-winning husband, George Akerlof, in a year when unemployment averaged 5.5 percent. “A week of unemployment is worse when it is experienced as part of a longer spell.”
Kaminski, the former human resources manager, said he’s optimistic about landing a job after having an interview earlier this week and several telephone interviews last week.
“I’m hoping something’s going to break in the next couple weeks,” he said.
Article Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-08-15/free-work-entices-businesses-to-hire-long-term-unemployed-jobs