| 作者 |
 究竟出了什么问题，下岗美国人一片惨淡 ？【FT】 |
 |
| 所跟贴 |
究竟出了什么问题，下岗美国人一片惨淡 ？【FT】 -- The Fifth Season - (3987 Byte) 2009-7-23 周四, 14:13 (1833 reads) |
The Fifth Season
[博客]
头衔: 海归中将
声望: 博导
加入时间: 2008/09/12
文章: 4241
海归分: 567427
|
|
|
作者：The Fifth Season 在 海归茶馆 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
End of the line By Sarah O'Connor 2009-07-21
Brian Gutrick travelled 1,200 miles and paid $12,000 for a fresh start.
The newly married construction worker wanted a job with better prospects and more stability, so he took out a student loan and headed from Virginia to a trade school in Alabama to study heating, ventilation and air conditioning.
Brian finished the “H-vac” programme in 2007 at the top of his class, but he landed in an economy already beginning to teeter. Before he could find a foothold, the country had slid into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
“I've been beating doors down, I've sent out at least five hundred résumés and just no answer,” says the 32-year-old, who has still not found an H-vac job. “I have three kids and a wife, I have to do something.”
He is persistent. He wears a suit and tie to interviews – “just for an H-vac job, some people go in dirty boots and everything!” – and takes proof of his grades and accreditation. But he is getting nowhere and he is not alone. Since he left trade school, 7.2m Americans have lost their jobs, bringing the total number of unemployed to 14.7m. The unemployment rate now stands at 9.5 per cent and will almost certainly hit double digits before the year is out.
This blow to the labour market in the world's biggest economy caught many unawares. In 2007 the US had one of the lower unemployment rates in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, but now it has one of the highest, beaten only by Spain, Ireland, Hungary and Slovakia.
That has thrown into stark relief the fragility of the country's social safety net, as the economic disaster threatens to unleash a social crisis too. People who have lost their jobs are losing their health insurance and their homes. The number relying on government food stamps has risen by 6.2m since the recession started, and they now feed a near-record one in nine Americans.
Where did it all go wrong?
In 2007 the US was feeling pretty smug about its easy-to-hire, easy-to-fire labour force. It was adapting more quickly than its peers as manufacturing moved to Asia, and people like Brian were merrily shuttling from job to job in search of a better life. While continental Europe has managed to create lots of jobs this decade, its labour markets are still characterised by intransigent workers and structurally high unemployment.
“[We] may be best poised to take advantage of the coming changes on a global scale precisely because we are so good at adjusting,” wrote Austan Goolsbee in The New York Times in 2007, then an economist and now a member of President Barack Obama's council of economic advisers. “The world economy may be tough on your industry but look on the bright side: you could be French.”
Today, that might not be such a bad prospect. France's (albeit already high) unemployment rate has crept up just one percentage point to 9.3 per cent since 2007, according to the OECD. Germany's has actually fallen from 8.4 per cent to 7.7.
“The US labour market is extraordinarily flexible, [which] in normal times is a great asset,” says Robert Reich, who was President Bill Clinton's labour secretary. “When you have an economic downdraft like this, that same flexibility can be a severe detriment.” Firms on both sides of the Atlantic rushed to cut costs as demand dropped, but in the US employers have a so-called “at will” right to sack staff at any time for any reason.
When panic ripped through the country last year, firms used that right to slash payrolls, which constitute around 70 per cent of most companies' costs. Economists watched in horror as the job losses mounted: 380,000 in October, 597,000 in November, 681,000 in December.
Unlike their European peers, many Americans losing their jobs discovered they had no way to replace their lost incomes. State unemployment benefits, which pay around a third of your salary, generally require you to have worked full-time in your last job for at least a year. More than half the unemployed have turned out to be ineligible for them, Mr Gutrick included.
“The safety net . . . has become obsolete,” says Prof Reich. “That has proved to be not only a surprise to people, but a painful one.” Unemployment insurance was instituted in 1935 at a point when most people who lost their jobs had been in full-time work for a number of years. “Now many job losers have been in their jobs for only six months to a year, or they are working part-time, or they are independent contractors or free agents of some sort.”
Sterling Taylor is a “free agent” – doing construction jobs as and when they come up, a few days here, a few weeks there. Back in the housing boom, it was a full-time job. “I remember times about two years ago you could go and apply for an ad, you get the job just like that, no questions or nothing asked, you're in,” he says wistfully. “Now? Shoot, it's ridiculous. It just ain't happening.”
These days the 42-year-old only scrapes together around two days of work a week. He is part of a vast group of people who are not captured by the unemployment rate. In statistician-speak, he works “part-time for economic reasons” – he works fewer than 34 hours a week because he cannot find anyone to pay him for more.
In the past year the number of people in Mr Taylor's position has more than doubled from 4.4m to 9m, or 5.8 per cent of the labour market – the highest since records began. These are not just casual workers and freelancers; many big companies have also cut hours to reduce costs. As a result, the nation famed for its long-hours culture now works an average 33 hours a week, the lowest on record.
For labour market debutants just leaving school and college, the situation is challenging. Melissa McCrumb, 23, graduated from the University of Virginia this summer and now works as a waitress, earning $2 (£1.20, €1.40) an hour plus tips. The restaurant's owners now cook four or five nights a week themselves to save paying a chef.
Ms McCrumb does not mind waitressing for a bit as she decides what to do with her life, but the clock is ticking. In December she has to start paying back her $40,000 student loan.
“I am really worried: come December, am I going to be able to find a job? A lot of my friends are not finding anything,” she says. Some of them have re-enrolled in master's courses “just to bide some time” while others have moved back in with their parents. All are rethinking what jobs they are willing to do, given that they too are ineligible for unemployment benefits because they have never worked full-time.
“I have a ton of friends that are just applying for everything right now. I think maybe five years down the road everyone will re-evaluate, but for now it seems like we're not in a position to be too choosy.”
The army of Ms McCrumbs charging into the labour force has helped push the unemployment rate for 20- to 24 year-olds past 15 per cent. Their influx also makes life much tougher for the generations above them.
Sabrina Johnson used to be assistant manager at a discount retail store before leaving to take care of her mother. Now the 53-year-old spends her days traipsing from mall to mall looking for another job, but she finds herself competing with youngsters.
“It's cheaper to hire two of them than me, cause they're going to work for that $6, $7 an hour,” she says. She does not receive unemployment benefits either, nor does she have health insurance. “You just kind of go through your savings little by little to make it through.”
The knock-on effects for communities are considerable as people cut back on spending, further contributing to economic slowdown.
Brian, Sterling, Melissa and Sabrina all live in Charlottesville, a Virginia town of 40,000 encircled by tree-lined mountains. On paper, the town looks like it is having a pretty good recession. Insulated by the economic engine of the University of Virginia, the unemployment rate might have doubled but it is still at only 6 per cent.
But the numbers do not tell the whole story. Sitting beneath a parasol by an outdoor public pool, Dave Norris, the mayor, tells a darker tale.
There has always been a big disparity between housing costs and wages in Charlottesville, because the presence of so many students and faculty drives up rents and house prices. On average Americans spend around a third of their income on housing costs; in Charlottesville it is more like 40 to 50 per cent.
So when people started losing their jobs, many quickly found they could no longer meet rent or mortgage payments. “We have a large number of families and individuals that are going homeless,” says Mr Norris. “We've seen many people who never expected . . . to find themselves homeless . . . but when they lose a job it's a downward spiral and before they know it they're living in their cars. And then their car gets repossessed.”
The city tries to ensure that homeless children can stay in their own schools, by paying to transport them there. “We'll even send a taxi out to the homeless shelter,” says Mr Norris.
Charities and churches are also trying to catch people that fall through the flimsy government safety net. The local food bank is facing unprecedented demand, and churches have been inundated with requests for help to pay utility bills.
“Even though we do have a very strong civic sector here and the churches are also very involved, it's not enough,” says Mr Norris.
For all that, Americans have so far proved stoic in the face of hardship: Ms Johnson is going to keep demanding application forms; Ms McCrumb is just glad she has a job; Mr Taylor believes things will get better.
Brian Gutrick, meanwhile, has a plan to get onto an apprenticeship so that one day his credentials are simply too good to turn down.
“We're a very resilient people,” says Mr Norris, as children splash and squeal in the pool behind him. “We haven't succumbed to despair. Yet.”
https://www.ftchinese.com/story.php?lang=en&storyid=001027678
作者：The Fifth Season 在 海归茶馆 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
|
|
|
| 返回顶端 |
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
您不能在本论坛发表新主题, 不能回复主题, 不能编辑自己的文章, 不能删除自己的文章, 不能发表投票, 您 不可以 发表活动帖子在本论坛, 不能添加附件不能下载文件, |
|
|
