It’s tough writing resumes for long term unemployed people. I emphasise potential and motivation. The longer one is unemployed the harder it is to get a job – but not impossible. This is a statistics story, which means its not ‘the truth’ for everyone. This story is from the ABC Fact Check (8 May 2020).
ACOSS CEO Cassandra Goldie says being unemployed for a year reduces your chances of ever working again by 40 per cent.
With recent economic modelling suggesting more than a quarter of Australians could be out of work due to COVID-19, the Federal Government is being urged to provide better support for those who find themselves unemployed.
Recent analysis suggests people unemployed for one to two years have a 44 per cent smaller chance of finding work within the next year than people unemployed for less than three months. For those unemployed longer, the likelihood is even slimmer.
Since March 2009, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows, long-term unemployment — that is, people unemployed more than 12 months — has been rising as a share of total unemployment.
Asked for the basis of the claim, a spokeswoman for ACOSS told Fact Check via email: “The evidence we have for this statement is both more recent (2016) and from the last recession (early 90s) as distinct from the GFC [global financial crisis]. Evidence from the two periods, either side of the GFC, is consistent.”
The department of human services found that of the people who had been on benefits for up to three months, nearly 55 per cent had “exited payment” within the year.
By contrast, of those who had been on benefits for one to two years, only 31 per cent were off benefits by the end of the study.
That makes their chances 44 per cent lower than people unemployed for up to three months — chances that continued to fall the longer they were on benefits.
Only 23 per cent of those who had been on benefits for two to five years were off benefits by the end of the year, along with just 13 per cent of those who had been on benefits for over five years. Experts said most of the research on long-term unemployment was done following recessions in the 1980s and 1990s when unemployment had been high.
The full story is here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-08/fact-check-being-unemployed-for-a-year-reduces-chances-of-work/12211296