Federal Taxpayer Monies Go To Study The Unemployed

As one who has been seeking employment in several fields for many months as are literally thousands of other Americans, especially the empty nesters now in the boomer generation, last week while visiting the local job force center I was amazed to see just where some of those stimulus monies are now going.

Posted throughout the center were advertisements from a local college requesting the jobless to be interviewed or videotaped in order to "tell their story" about their quests to seek work in this depressive U.S. economy by both the unemployed and underemployed.

The work force center, of course, was packed and every single computer was taken, even those in the overflow rooms.

Seminars on resume writing, computer skills and training, and even mock interviewing are also provided by the local communities through federal grants aimed at "getting Americans back to work." Putting many people to work or providing jobs aimed at both studying and assisting the jobless. Of course, many are jobless due to the fact that most of those jobs are taken by former state workers and teachers who are already collecting pensions or retirement from their former governmental positions, or students who go unpaid but are getting their credit hours at the unemployed's expense.

Connections with also local social services agencies or taxpayer funded special interest groups receiving federal grants aimed at assisting the jobless are also provided, along with classroom space and time.

Most of these centers also contain individuals who "market" to the unemployed, as if they had the monies to even pay for their services, rather than their rent or utilities with what little savings they have left, or their unemployment.

A changed job market (with online applications which take over an hour each to complete using "keywords" that will set your resume apart from the pack) and fewer and fewer jobs due to the tech focuses of many industries which have outsourced or computerized all those former jobs resulting in fewer middle income positions is this boomer's opinion.

With the majority of those jobs paying less than $11.00 per hour, especially those call center jobs which are nothing more than mills due to the focus on gaining those training dollars and meeting conflicting performance matrixes, rather than employee development and retention just might also be at work here. I mean most of those large cell phone companies and insurers and financial concerns which have seen better days did grab at those billions in stimulus monies, and of course big brother never gives without having at least some strings attached. Most are "temp" jobs actually due to the actual working conditions and performance standards which must be met in order for those employees to "earn back" some of their taxpayer dollars since, of course, most of those businesses would like to keep as much of those stimulus monies for corporate profits rather than providing new jobs as they can.

Recently, I saw a job posted by a local real estate company asking for an administrative assistant (with graphic design skills). The individual would be responsible for handling creating all the flyers and brochures on a weekly and monthly basis for all the agents in several publications which were used by the company each week/month to stimulate their sales, tracking the agents sales and listings, handling any and all secretarial/administrative tasks assigned and creating and maintaining spreadsheets and reports for the company.

It was represented as a part-time position of 30 hours per week paying $11.00 per hour, which "might" go to full time in a few months as "anticipated" sales increased.

A local bank just announced that it will now be charging its customers for using their ATM cards to check their balances, rather than using the internet and raising its minimum balances for free checking and upping its monthly fees for accounts under those minimums by about 40%. About the same amount Americans now face in raising gas prices throughout the nation, post Deepwater and the greed of the global oil industry during both this war, and after that disaster.

Bet those observations don't make the final cut.