LA Times: Businesses are refusing to hire the unemployed, commission told

By EmmaZahn on Wed, 02/16/2011 - 11:50pm |

From the article:

there's a growing trend of employers refusing to consider the unemployed for job openings, according to a number of people who testified before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Wednesday. They say that employers are barring the unemployed from job openings, which is particularly unfair to older workers and African Americans because more of them are unemployed.

If this isn't structural unemployment, what is?

Even ten years ago, a help-wanted ad resulted in 100s and at times 1000s of applications. It is overwhelming to sort through so many. Once those meeting basic job requirements are separated, the culling quickly becomes even more arbitrary than excluding the currently unemployed. Paper, fonts.... Without a personal recommendation, landing the job advertised is almost pure chance.

URL:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/02/unemployment-discrimination.html