Between a Rock...And Another Rock

As President Obama hits the road on his jobs agenda bus tour, millions of individuals trying to re-enter the job market, seeking to eke out a modest living so that they too can live the American Dream – or what’s left of it anyway – are stuck in a rut. They write hundreds of cover letters, perfect their interview techniques and network like crazy, but sometimes the barriers are too high.

What some may not know is that a number of employers, including household-name companies, have taken the position that the unemployed should forget about obtaining a job altogether.

Log on to any jobs site, do a quick search and the results may surprise you: slews of job ads are essentially warning the out-of-work that they worthless and disposable.

Welcome to 21st Century, post-Recession hiring discrimination: where you must be an “employed or recently employed” person to get a job.

Yes, for those individuals who make up the 9.1 percent unemployed in the United States, many laid off through no fault of their own, misfortune is a disqualifier. Numerous employers, staffing agencies and online job posting firms have adopted policies that explicitly deny employment to the unemployed. And they don’t even try to cover up their intent.
~ from So-Called "Job Creators" Who Won't Hire The Unemployed by Nathan Birnbaum ~

Okay, I'm not suggesting that the following represents the sole driver behind this ugly phenomena, but a good deal of the corporations utilizing this strategy are conservative AND many conservatives are evangelical Christians. From the fundamentalist Christian perspective, the poor generally are those folks who have not been blessed by the loving God and so there is something very wrong with them!

It easily follows that those who have been unemployed for a long stretch also must have something wrong with them or they wouldn't have been unemployed for so long.

Of course, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact there are too few jobs!