alan beggerow

In recent months, there has been some sporadic coverage in our news about how despite the economy picking up, some people don't want to go back to work. These people refuse to heed the governments call to retrain themselves, and having been laid off from rather senior positions they find it very difficult to start from the bottom again.

Well, here's an interesting article that shows this problem is definitely not uniquely Singaporean.

Men Not Working, and Not Wanting Just Any Job
By LOUIS UCHITELLE and DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: NYTimes July 31, 2006

ROCK FALLS, Ill. — Alan Beggerow has stopped looking for work. Laid off as a steelworker at 48, he taught math for a while at a community college. But when that ended, he could not find a job that, in his view, was neither demeaning nor underpaid.

Millions of men like Mr. Beggerow — men in the prime of their lives, between 30 and 55 — have dropped out of regular work. They are turning down jobs they think beneath them or are unable to find work for which they are qualified, even as an expanding economy offers opportunities to work.

We can learn a few interesting things from this. The first is that we are not alone. And we are not the worst either, because this problem is exarcerbated by social security, something we do not have. And lastly, it reminds us that dropping unemployment figures just means that less people are looking for work. But many may just have given up.