The subtitle of this article could be:  Men--and Women--Behaving Badly or Walk Several Miles in My Shoes.

Ben Stein and some members of the US Congress amaze me.  As a person who has spent a lot of time counseling people, not much that clients say shocks me.  I have no such sangfroid with the idiot pronouncements from people like Ben Stein and some of the men and women who represent us in Congress.

Lately, there has been a flood of criticism about the supposed laziness and bad attitudes of the unemployed.  If one of your state's representatives or senators has made remarks disparaging job hunters, get rid of them in November!  Not much we can do about the likes of Mr. Stein, except push back hard.

In summary: Until every citizen of the United States has access to programs that teach effective job search skills, absolutely no one should criticize the unemployed.  Until everyone age 14 years and older has the opportunity to learn the best job hunting techniques, no one should presume to know the personality, attitudes or level of employable skills of anyone who is unemployed.  If those who do so are legislators, they must be removed.  Anyone so uninformed and out of touch should not be making laws that affect the rest of us.

First point: Members of the House of Representatives have one advantage most people don't.  Representatives have to job hunt every two years.  If they are not good at their job hunt, they become unemployed.  We can assume that those who are re-elected for at least one term are decent job hunters.  Those who have served for 3+ terms are probably exceptional job hunters. 

And, let's not forget two other pertinent fact about Senators and Representatives.  They get to finance their job hunt with huge amounts of other people's money and they have staff to help them. 

Since both state and national representatives are such effective job hunters, why aren't they working with their unemployed constituents?  At least then these supposed lawmakers would be doing something worthwhile to earn their pay.

Vote out of office those who have accused the unemployed of being lazy or having bad attitudes. These boneheads need to have to look for a real job in the current US economy.  It's obvious that anyone who would say such things about job seekers in this Great Recession has too much contempt for their unemployed constituents to make a good legislator.

However, with such mouthing off, they commit an even greater crime.  It's even more obvious that these law makers have taken no time to learn about the labor market and the causes of unemployment during this long, slow summer of a flat-lined economy.  Such lack of research means they shouldn't be opening their mouths expressing a completely uneducated opinion, much less voting on anything employment related.

I've run very successful group job search programs in an area where the unemployment was over 12%.  Here's what I've learned that others should know...job seeking or not:

1.   Statistically, there are nearly enough job openings to re-absorb a majority of the unemployed.  How can that be?  Simple.  Please follow carefully:

• It's widely advertised and accepted that 75 to 80 percent of all job openings in the US (this statistic likely applies to other industrialize countries as well) are never advertised.
• Last Fall, US News announced that there were 3 million vacancies for which employers were not finding qualified candidates.  These vacancies were mostly in technical, scientific and medical fields.  Let's take that 3 million times 4 (letting the 3 million known vacancies represent one quarter of all jobs that need filling).  That's 12 million vacancies.  At the time of the US News article, there were 15 million known unemployed.
• Yes, but, you say, that still leaves 3 million with out jobs.  Not really. 
• About 13 to 15 percent of the unemployed don't want a job.  The staff of my Job Club came to me slack-jawed one afternoon saying that someone had quit the program because they realized that if they stayed they would get a job. 
• Unemployed adults will always say, when asked, that they want to work and are actively looking.  Again, not really.  Some have no intention of working because they already have cash jobs.  Some because their families have overloaded them with responsibilities that prevent the unemployed from working.  Some are simply not employable because they refuse to learn new and needed skills.
• 13% of 15 million translates into 1,950,000--or nearly 2 million people--who  would not be rejoining the workforce anytime soon.
• So last Fall, at least statistically, there were one million people for whom there are no jobs. If the US were generating 200,000 jobs a month, as it does in boom times, these one million people would be in new jobs already.  Alas, these are not boom times.

2.  Of course, statistics don't tell the whole story.  There are closer to 30 million people either unemployed, under-employed or too discouraged about their prospects to even look for work.  10% or three million of them are classified as hardcore unemployed, meaning that they have been out of work 27 weeks or longer.  Someone thinks 30 million people are all lazy and have bad attitudes?  That description fits those in Congress far more than it does job hunters.

3.  So what's the take away: from all of the above?  There are three to four times as many job vacancies as there are advertised job openings.  Getting people connected with those job openings is the hard part.  Finding vacancies takes people to people research, reading the want ads is optional.

4.  There is a huge miss-match between the skills needed for vacant jobs and the skills job hunters have.  Thank your state and local secondary and tertiary (higher education) schools for that.  Schools simply refuse to change their curricula past the 19th century model.  Heaven help those who expect their teens to leave high school, or their young adult offspring to leave college, with employable skills. Schools have failed to educate citizens in the one skill they need above all others:  The ability to get a good job in any economy.

5.  In the late 1970s and early 80s this country still acted as if it cared about its workforce.  The Department of Labor, with CETA ,and later PIC, taught effective job search techniques through group job search programs around the country.  An entire generation, many of whom are now old enough to have retired from the workforce, learned how to job hunt right.  If you are one of these fortunate people, I hope you will find a way to work with unemployed job hunters in your community.

I read daily about people's job searches.  Some are successful. Some are successful even though they didn't use very good techniques.  Most make me want to bang my head on the nearest padded wall.  Too many of the unemployed are using job search techniques that are known, at least to workforce and career professionals, to be ineffective. 

In summary: Until every citizen of the United States has access to programs that teach effective job search skills absolutely no one should criticize the unemployed.  Until everyone age 14 years and older has the opportunity to learn the best job hunting techniques, no one should presume to know the personality, attitudes or level of employable skills of anyone who is unemployed.  If those who do so are legislators, they must be removed.  Anyone so uninformed and out of touch should not be making laws that affect the rest of us.