The new minority: Millions of long-term unemployed looking for hope

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Joe Carbone can’t sleep — and the odd thing is, he deals in hope. Carbone is the President and CEO of The WorkPlace, Inc., a non-profit workforce and economic development organization in Bridgeport, Conn. He developed an experimental program to help the long-term unemployed that was recently featured on “60 Minutes.”

But the problem of the long-term unemployed in America is so large it weighs on him. “I can’t tell you what this issue of long-term unemployment has done to me,” Carbone said.

In the economic downturn, the Federal government and some state governments have extended unemployment benefits beyond the standard 26 weeks — covering some people up to 99 weeks. But the way things currently stand, all extended benefits are set to expire at the end of 2012, putting everything back to a 26 week measure. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ June numbers has 5,370,000 people who have been unemployed 27 weeks or longer. The official unemployment rate is 8.2 percent, but if you add “discouraged workers” who have given up looking for a job, it jumps to 8.7 percent. “We are not talking about a small group of people,” Carbone said. “I called it carnage on (’60 Minutes’). That’s what it is.”

And so Carbone set out to do something about it — developing a unique way to put the long-term unemployed at the top of the hiring pool by making the employers an offer they couldn’t refuse.

Continue reading here: The new minority: Millions of long-term unemployed looking for hope