Jobless Discrimination and Why the Rich Love High Unemployment

Jobless Discrimination

 

An employer can’t discriminate hiring an employee on the basis of race, religion, gender, age, or disability – but what about joblessness? Can a company refuse to hire you simply by the fact that you don’t have a job?

Adam Cohen of TIME Magazine explores the phenomenon of jobless discrimination:

Job seekers have long known, of course, that it’s easier to land a job when you are still working. There are no hard data on discrimination against the unemployed. But there have been reports from across the country of companies’ making clear in job listings that they are not interested in people who are out of work. Employment experts say other companies have policies of hiring only people with jobs — but do not publicly acknowledge their bias. [...]
Some employers argue that they have a perfectly reasonable right to weed out the unemployed and that it is just good business. People who have lost jobs or have never been hired are less qualified as a group than those who are currently working, they say. People who are out of the workforce for a significant period of time may also have fallen behind in skills.

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Why the Rich Love High Unemployment

In the boardrooms of corporate America, profits aren't everything - they are the only thing.

A JPMorgan research report concludes that the current corporate profit recovery is more dependent on falling unit-labor costs than during any previous expansion.
At some level, corporate executives are aware that they are lowering workers' living standards, but their decisions are neither coordinated nor intentionally harmful.
Call it the "paradox of profitability."
Executives are acting in their own and their shareholders' best interest: maximizing profit margins in the face of weak demand by extensive layoffs and pay cuts.
But what has been good for every company's income statement has been a disaster for working families and their communities.

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