●アメリカの雇用問題の現状

VOAの音声はこちらからどうぞ。
人はパンのみにて生きるにあらず、しかし食べるものが無ければ生きてはいけません。
そのためにはどうすればいいか？働くこと、つまり職がなければなりません。
アメリカの不景気の元凶は失業問題にあると言ってもいいでしょう。
VOAのニュース記事の要約です。
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先月のアメリカの失業率は9.1%で、前月と全く同じ数字で、改善が見られませんでした。
この9.1%という数字は、失業中だが求職していない人や、常勤の仕事が見つからずにパートタイムの職についている人は含んでいません。（つまり実際の失業率はもっと高いということです）
アメリカがどのような経済問題に直面しているかについてワシントン・ポスト紙が1000名に尋ねました。
43%は雇用問題と答え、政府の財政赤字と答えた人はその約半数です。その他の声としては物価高、資金繰り、不動産の問題などがありました。
４人のうち３人が、道路や橋の建設その他の公共投資の追加によって少しは雇用問題が改善されると考えています。また多くの人が法人税、所得税、政府予算の削減をあげています。
しかし、これらの対策のうちのどれが効果が大きいのかについては衆目一致するところがありません。
先週の木曜日にオバマ大統領は雇用対策についての提案を議会で演説しました。その案に含まれているのは失業手当の受給期間の延長、雇用増した企業の減税、道路・学校の補修工事などの事業などがあります。
労働局によれば約1400万人が失業状態にあり、それに加えて約1000万人が常勤の仕事が見つからずにパートタイムの仕事についているということです。
いわゆる経済恐慌は2007年12月から2009年の6月まで続きました。失業率は当初の5%から2009年後半には10.1%にまで達しました。今年2011年は9%前後で推移しています。
今やアメリカと世界において景気の「２番底」が生じるという懸念が広がっており、それは中流家庭に対して最初の経済恐慌よりも更に大きい影響を与えると予測されます。
作家のDon PeckはPinch!という本を書きました。彼はアメリカの経済状況は様々な機会を制限する上京にあり、それは特に若い世代への影響が大きいと言います。
景気後退の初期において若い世代は雇用市場の厳しさは短期間のことと予測し、funemployment（失業しながら、それを楽しむこと）という造語さえ生まれたほどです。
不景気のときに数ヶ月ほど失業しても、それはすぐに回復するという考えで、若い世代は大きな負債もなく、失業手当をもらって雇用訓練を受けたり、休暇を楽しむことさえ考えていました。
しかし今では若い世代の考え方も変わってきました。一つの職場での就業期間が長くなってきました。転職の機会を求めるよりも、一つの職場にしがみつくことを好むようになりました。
今日の経済においては「どんな仕事でも仕事が無いよりもまし」になったのです。
22才のJessie Wayはバージニア州の大学を卒業後、５ヶ月の就職運動をして幸運なことに法律事務所に採用されました。彼女はこう言います。
「自分だけでなく皆が不平を漏らしていますが、問題はこういうことです。経験を優遇する求人が多いが、しかし経験を与えようという職場が無い、ということです」
「10年前であれば、経験はないけど安い給与ですよと主張することで、企業もその差額を考慮して若い人に経験を与える雇用をしました。しかし今日では、例えば5年の経験がある人を同じ給与で雇えてしまうのです」
Don Peckは、若い世代が職を得る可能性を広げる一つの方法は引越しも考慮することです。実際Jessie Wayは住んでいるところから1時間以上も離れた場所に職を得ました。今は友人宅に居候をして住むところを探しています。
今回の経済不況は1930年代の大恐慌以来の最悪の経済低迷です。Don Peckは長期の失業は多くの人の生活に一時的ではなく永続的な悪影響を与えると言います。
「男性が長期的に経済的な苦境にあると、単純にいえば女性は結婚をしません。しかし多くのカップルには子どもがいて、その不安定な家庭環境が子どもに間接的な影響を及ぼします」
ではアメリカの雇用問題についてどうすればいいのでしょうか。Don Peckはこう言います。
「短期的には政府は製造業・建設業の公共投資を増やすべきです。長期的には大学に行かない高卒の若者に新たな技能を身につけさせ、職に就く道を開くことが必要です。過去20~30年間において大学進学をしない若者がどうキャリア開発するのか、その道が失われてきていました」
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私はDon Peck氏の最後の提案に全面的には賛成できません。
アメリカの産業構造を改革し「全体のパイ」の大きさを拡大しなければ、限られたパイを食い合っている状態は変化しないからです。
端的にいえば「製造業の復活」を目指すことです。目先の利益やマネーゲームにとらわれて、海外に製造を委託ばかりしていけば、パイの大きさが小さくなるばかりなのは自明の理です。
これはアメリカだけでなく、むしろ日本における大命題であると思います。
This week on our program, we look at the job situation in the United States. There was zero job growth last month. The national unemployment rate was the same as in July, 9.1 percent. That does not even include people who have stopped looking for work or part-time workers unable to get full-time jobs.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Coming up, we talk to Don Peck, author of a new book called “Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It.” And we hear from two people about what they had to do to find a job.
(MUSIC)
FAITH LAPIDUS: Americans face different economic issues. Which one worries them most? A Pew Research Center-Washington Post opinion poll asked a thousand people earlier this month. Forty-three percent said the job situation. About half as many said the federal budget deficit.
Smaller numbers said rising prices and the financial and housing markets were their biggest economic worries.
Three out of four people said additional spending on roads, bridges and other public works would improve the job situation at least a little. Many said the same about cutting business taxes, the federal budget and personal income taxes. But there was no clear agreement about which ideas would do a lot to help.
DOUG JOHNSON: Last Thursday night, President Obama spoke to Congress to present his plan for job growth. His proposals include an extension of jobless benefits for workers who have been unemployed for extended periods. The plan also includes tax breaks for companies to hire more workers and money for projects to fix roads and schools.
The Labor Department counts about fourteen million workers as unemployed. Millions more are working part time as they try to find full-time employment.
The so-called Great Recession officially lasted from December of two thousand seven to June of two thousand nine. Unemployment was five percent at the start. It reached 10.1 percent in late two thousand nine. This year the jobless rate has been stuck around nine percent.
There are concerns that the United States — and the world — could face another recession. Some economists say a “double-dip” could be more painful for average Americans because the economy is weaker than it was before the first recession.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Don Peck is a writer and editor at the Atlantic magazine. In his new book, “Pinched,” he says economic conditions are limiting opportunities for millions of Americans. He says the generation of young Americans known as millennials — those now graduating from high school and college — are especially affected.
DON PECK: “The first few years on the job market are extremely important to setting the career track and life path of young people. When young people struggle — when whole generations struggle in their first few years in the job market — academic research shows that not only do they start out behind, they never catch up to where they otherwise would’ve been.”
FAITH LAPIDUS: Mr. Peck says early in the recession, millennials thought any period of unemployment would be short. There was even a name for this kind of thinking: “funemployment.”
DON PECK: “The idea that a few months perhaps of unemployment during the recession, could not only be easily overcome but could be kind of fun. You know, people were getting unemployment checks, they didn’t have many financial commitments.
“Many of them took that opportunity to reassess career, to take vacations, and I think in part millennials were just trying to make the best of a bad situation.”
DOUG JOHNSON: But now, he says, young people are thinking differently.
DON PECK: “That idea that this period is something that can be easily enjoyed and that will not materially affect millennials in the rest of their careers is clearly waning within that generation. I think today you see among millennials much higher job tenure — they’re clinging to their jobs more tightly, they’ve expressed a desire for a single job, a single employer throughout their career rather than the ability to switch careers. So that notion of funemployment which many millennials began the recession with, I think, is long gone today.”
In today’s economy, says Mr. Peck, any work is better than no work.
DON PECK: “This is a time where young people need to be extremely aggressive and entrepreneurial and have humility. You know, say yes to whatever job offers one gets because it’s certainly better to be working than have the stigma of unemployment all together.”
(MUSIC)
FAITH LAPIDUS: Twenty-two year old Jessie Way finished college in less than four years and with honors. She graduated from George Mason University in Virginia with a degree in technical writing in January. After that, she spent three months helping her mother who got sick. Then she spent five months searching for a job.
Jessie was lucky. She recently landed a position as a legal assistant with a law firm.
JESSIE WAY: “The problem I found myself having was, it’s what everyone complains about — there’s jobs that want experience, but nobody wants to give you experience.”
A demand for experience is not a new problem for young people, of course. But Jessie Way thinks the situation today is more difficult than it was for graduates ten years ago.
JESSIE WAY: “Back then you could say, oh well, I’m just out of college, so I’m a lot cheaper than these people with experience. So companies could say, OK, we’ll hire some college graduates and we’ll have to train them a little but the price cut is worth it to them.
“Nowadays so many people are out of work and have been let go and all that stuff that they can offer that same salary to somebody who does have five years experience that they used to offer to somebody like me. And it’s gotten to the point now where college kids either can’t get a job or can’t get a job that’s actually going to pay the bills.”
DOUG JOHNSON: Author Don Peck says one way for young job seekers to improve their chances is by moving.
DON PECK: “I would really encourage people, particularly if they’re living in highly depressed places, to consider taking a leap and moving to a more dynamic region. I think that will help them in the long run.”
A willingness to move helped Jessie Way find a job. Her new job is more than an hour from where she was living. But she did not have time to find an apartment, so she is sleeping on a friend’s couch until she can find a place of her own.
(MUSIC)
FAITH LAPIDUS: Thirty-nine-year-old Norm Elrod of Queens, New York, has been laid off from jobs four times in the past ten years. The last job he lost was with an online marketing agency. He left in two thousand eight. After that, he says, he set out to find a way to make himself a better job candidate. He used online resources to create a website and teach himself new skills in the process.
NORM ELROD: “That’s how my website came about. I built that and ran it and essentially trained myself, or re-trained myself, taught myself new skills that allowed me to get the job I have now.”
DOUG JOHNSON: Norm Elrod created a blog called Jobless and Less: The Blog for the Employmentally Challenged.
NORM ELROD: “I wrote about the one thing I seemed to know, which was at that point being unemployed. [Laughs]”
FAITH LAPIDUS: Jessie found her job by answering an online job posting. But Norm says he had no success applying for jobs on the Internet.
NORM ELROD: “You send your resume out and it goes into a void and one person will get in touch with you for every one hundred to two hundred resumes you send out. And it’s not because you’re not qualified. It’s because they get so many, and oftentimes they’re looking for just a certain thing and there’s no way to know what that is.”
His advice to people looking for a job is to learn new skills and meet new people.
NORM ELROD: “It’s very easy to sit at home and send out your resume by clicking buttons on your computer at your dining room table and feel like maybe you’re being productive. But it’s much harder to actually get out there and meet the people who may know things or can point you towards things or make that face to face contact. I feel like that is where any job seeker is going to get more traction.”
His wife’s full-time job helped the couple pay their bills. They also used savings, payments from state unemployment insurance and money from projects he worked on while job hunting.
It was nearly three years until a contact he met through one of those projects led him to his current job. Norm Elrod works full time creating content for the website of a major media company.
(MUSIC)
DOUG JOHNSON: The Great Recession was the worst downturn since the Great Depression in the nineteen thirties. Don Peck says the long-term unemployment that many workers have experienced can have lasting effects, and not just on them.
DON PECK: “When you have these long periods of unemployment, they can really leave pretty big scars on people, families and communities that are not lost even once the recession is over. When men, in particular, struggle economically, or when they don’t have jobs, women simply don’t marry them, but they do have children with them. And that creates often the sort of unstable family environment in which children really struggle.”
FAITH LAPIDUS: What would he do about the employment problems in the United States?
DON PECK: “One of the main messages of my book ‘Pinched’ is we can recover from this period faster with concerted public action.”
In the short term, he thinks the government should invest more in public works to create jobs in manufacturing and construction.
DON PECK: “But I think in the longer term we also need to really work to build new skills and create more pathways into the middle class for high school students who might not be going to college.
“That sense of possibility and that concrete sense of how one can move forward in life if one isn’t going to a four year college to some extent has been lost in the U.S. over the past twenty or thirty years. One of the things we need to do is rebuild that and give young people an understanding of the ways in which they can build skills and build real careers.”
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