Читать книгу How to Find Work in the 21st Century - Ron McGowan - Страница 5

The unemployment benefits systems in western countries were designed for a time when even moderately skilled people who lost their jobs would find another job fairly quickly; college/university students literally fell into decent paying jobs when they graduated; and professional, well-educated people were rarely unemployed. While all of those conditions have changed, the unemployment benefits systems have not. And in some countries it’s getting harder to qualify for these benefits. According to a report in the March 13, 2009 issue of The Globe and Mail, only 44 percent of the Canadians who were unemployed were drawing unemployment benefits. That figure in 1989 was 83 percent.

The number of weeks that people can collect benefits has become a political issue in several countries with European countries offering longer periods of eligibility than in the United States and Canada. US President Obama has faced major opposition in Congress getting approval to extend the number of weeks that the unemployed can collect unemployment benefits and that opposition continues into 2011.

Traditionally, unemployed people could expect their government to provide some training to upgrade their skills and get them back to work, but this area needs an overhaul too. If you look at the training courses offered by western countries, you’ll find lots of these for unskilled and low-skilled people but few, if any, for people at the other end of the spectrum. Well-educated and unemployed professional people and unemployed college/university graduates are not being well served by the current system, which isn’t designed to accommodate them. And the government workers who deal with unemployed people are ill suited to deal with workers of this caliber.