Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Jobs remain elusive for unemployed

In April, Washington State had 47,026 unemployed workers who had exhausted their unemployment benefits.

Unemployment benefits normally last 26 weeks. When the regular benefits are exhausted, extensions have been available. Some unemployed people have drilled through extended benies and emergency compensation that carried them up to 99 weeks.

To discover what happened on week 100, the state conducted a survey. The goal was to understand barriers job-seekers encountered, review programs and services the unemployed used to look for work, and find out where they landed in the spectrum of the pursuit of a job.

The survey used a point-in-time sample representing all recent exhaustees and was conducted in support of the “Retooling Washington” initiative. This initiative is an effort of the workforce-development system to identify ways to make a difference, and do that quickly.

Basically, Retooling Washington asks two questions:
1) How do we work together to help the unemployed who need to have their skills retooled for jobs now and in the future?

2) How do we work together to respond to needs of employers when they come to us to help them have the workforce they need now and in the future?

Acording to the report, “Only about 25 percent of those who responded to the survey had found work. Most of these said they used online resources and networking to find their jobs.”



A quarter of the job seekers looked online. Most of the online seekers found a job.

How did you get your last job?