Who is affected and how?
It occurred to me that I haven’t gone over this much. The numbers vary from country to country, but it seems that young workers, minorities and immigrants are often the ones who loose their jobs first when the economy goes south.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest economic report, the groups with the highest unemployment rates in our country are teenagers, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans, in that order. Youth unemployment is at almost 30% in the U.S. and over 40% in countries like Spain which are experiencing even harder downturns in the recession. While that figure seems incredibly high, the difference a job makes to students versus full-time workers must be taken into account.
Here and abroad, one of the professions that has been hit the hardest is construction. Since the real estate industry has fallen off dramatically, decreased demand has meant sudden joblessness for many workers, builders and contractors who have no choice but to leave cancelled projects unfinished – and unpaid for. This could be the cause of Spain’s high unemployment rate – arguably the highest in the industrialized world – because of the country’s over-reliance on its construction boom for jobs. Connecticut blogger Marco Villa has a great explanation of this here.
Demonstrators in Seville, Spain, demand more jobs in a protest against the economic crisis on October 4. Jobless claims have skyrocketed to 3.7 million as the construction and service industries, which the country has relied heavily upon for jobs, have been the most affected with job destruction. This year there were over 80,000 new unemployment claims in the month of September. Reuters photo.
On a related note, a frequent concern for workers everywhere is competition with immigrants for jobs. This fear is largely unfounded, as studies in the U.S. and the U.K. have concluded that even great influxes of immigrants in the 70s and up through the past decade have not affected unemployment rates at all. Yet even as native citizens continue to blame immigrants for stealing their jobs, unemployment and underemployment remain some of the most pressing problems for those immigrants. The riots by Muslim immigrants in Parisian suburbs last fall were due partly to the fact that many of them, due to barriers formed by social and cultural stigmas, were denied access to fulfilling jobs with average wages. In the U.S., most Latin American immigrants have come exactly to find better-paying, more humane work than can be found in their own countries, and there has been a history of hiring them for cheap manual labor that it seems U.S. citizens do not want. Now they are also victims of unemployment. A prime example is the Los Angeles factory forced to fire a quarter of its workers last month as the government switched raids for firings in an attempt to drive out illegals.
A worker at the American Apparel factory in Los Angeles interviews candidates to fill his position. He was one of about 1,800 immigrant employees fired after a federal investigation found irregularities in the identity documents presented when they were hired. Instead of continuing with workplace raids, the Obama administration is forcing employers to dismiss unauthorized workers to reduce illegal immigration. The mayor of Los Angeles has called the firings "devastating" and insists that the government should target companies that exploit their workers. American Apparel has been praised for providing its workers with health benefits, giving them stock, and paying them well above the garment industry standard. Yet critics maintain that it is one of many companies that have become "addicted to illegal labor."
For an in-depth look at other immigration issues, check out Andy’s blog. If you want to see my comments, go to the breaking news page.
