Unemployed, and Likely to Stay That Way

The longer people stay out of work, the more trouble they have finding new work.

That is a fact of life that much of Europe, with its underclass of permanently idle workers, knows all too well. But it is a lesson that the United States seems to be just learning.

This country has some of the highest levels of long-term unemployment  out of work longer than six months  it has ever recorded. Meanwhile, job growth has been, and looks to remain, disappointingly slow, indicating that those out of work for a while are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Even if the government report on Friday shows the expected improvement in hiring by business, it will not be enough to make a real dent in those totals.

So the legions of long-term unemployed will probably be idle for significantly longer than their counterparts in past recessions, reducing their chances of eventually finding a job even when the economy becomes more robust.

New data from the Labor Department, provided to The New York Times, shows that people out of work fewer than five weeks are more than three times as likely to find a job in the coming month than people who have been out of work for over a year, with a re-employment rate of 30.7 percent versus 8.7 percent, respectively.

Likewise, previous economic studies, many based on Europe’s job market struggles, have shown that people who become disconnected from the work force have more trouble getting hired, probably because of some combination of stigma, discouragement and deterioration of their skills. This is one of the biggest challenges facing policy makers in the United States as they seek to address unemployment.

The New York Times, February 2^nd, 2010

Useful terms and expressions

• to make a dent in smth  значительно сократить

• the Labour Department – Министерство Tруда США

• re-employment – восстановление на работе

TEXT 4

Translate the article into Russian orally.

European joblessness: Armies of the unemployed

Labour markets in the euro zone suffered about as badly during the Great Contraction as did the labour market in America. The unemployment rate in both economies surged and both economies then experienced a slow but steady decline in the rate of joblessness. But where unemployment in America seems to have temporarily leveled off at around 9%, the rate of joblessness in the euro zone is once again rising.

There are several striking facts about recent movements in euro-zone labour markets. The first is the remarkable extent to which increased joblessness is due to deteriorating conditions around the periphery. Since the beginning of the year, Greek unemployment is up nearly 4 percentage points. The jobless rate in Germany, by contrast, has fallen a full percentage point over that period.

Much of the decline in German unemployment occurred early in the year, when the economy's export machine was running hot. It is interesting to see the extent to which this trend has continued, however. In September, new industrial orders in Germany fell 4.4%, yet from September to October Germany's unemployment rate dropped, from 5.7% to 5.5%. It's no wonder that there is less of a sense of urgency to the crisis in Germany.

The Economist, November 30^th, 2011