Vice President Joe Biden To Jobless: Hang In There WASHINGTON -- Vice President Joe Biden has three words of advice for Americas 14.5 million unemployed: hang in there. Anna Robertson of Yahoo! News asked Biden in an interview posted Thursday what he has to say to those who are currently out of work. Biden said that while the unemployment rate is only dropping minimally, the economy is slowly improving, and all people can really do right now is to wait it out. A significant portion of the companies out there ... are saying now that theyre gonna begin to hire this year, he said. The message is hang in there, things are coming back. When asked what non-political things people could do to help turn around the economy, Biden suggested a healthy diet. Dont smoke, eat healthy, do not consume junk foods, he said. I know that sounds silly, but its very practical in terms of your own health and well-being, and also on the impact of the cost of maintaining the health care system in the United States. The unemployment rate is widely expected to remain above 9 percent this year and above 8 percent next year. Thats bad news for many of the nations jobless -- particularly the 6.4 million people who have been unemployed for six months or longer -- who have few options to improve their chances of getting hired. Thats because employers just dont want people whove been out of work for a long time. HuffPost has been tracking the phenomenon of employers refusing to hire the unemployed, both explicitly, through job ads with stipulations such as Must be currently employed, and more subtly by filtering out jobless applicants through credit checks and staffing agencies. The longer youre out of work, the less likely you are to find a new job. Thats bad news for the 1.4 million people whove been out of work for 99 weeks or longer. They can take cold comfort in the fact that the vice president feels their pain. I can remember vividly that long walk my father had to take up a short flight of stairs to tell us he was leaving to find a job, Biden said in the Yahoo! interview. When youre out of work, its not a slowdown -- its a depression.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 01:32:29 +0000
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