To understand the potential consequences of long-term unemployment, consider the job prospects of Sheldon Fisher and Douglas Lawson. In January, Fisher, 53, was dismissed from a software company in Washington State. Lawson, 34, lost his job in October with a builder in South Carolina. Now the technology industry is bouncing back while construction remains in the dumps, and Washington’s jobless rate is 8.9 percent, vs. South Carolina’s 10.7 percent. Still, Lawson’s prospects may be better than Fisher’s.
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That’s because being jobless for a long time hurts workers in some industries far more than in others. The technology sector is known for such rapid change that those out of work for even a few months can find themselves with out-of-date skills. Construction skills are far less likely to grow stale. I never forget what I know. I’m not worried about doing the work once I get it, says Lawson, who has applied for about 30 jobs so far. Fisher, by contrast, is considering leaving information technology altogether, though he says he’s not sure what else he’s qualified to do. After applying for about 100 jobs in his first half-year out of work, Fisher began to worry that employers might think he was getting rusty. Then everything after six months just makes it worse, he says.
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The average duration of unemployment in the U.S. jumped to a record 35.2 weeks in June, up from 16.5 weeks when the recession began in December 2007, according to the Labor Dept. Today, almost half of unemployed Americans have been out of work for 27 weeks or more (the official definition of long-term unemployment), vs. 30 percent in June 2009.
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Perishable Skills
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Industries with highly perishable skill sets include health-care technology, telecommunications, and finance, where regulations have changed dramatically in the past year. The toughest, though, may be information technology….