Rural Counties Have Lost More Jobs Than Urban Counties

An article in the rural America newspaper the Daily Yonder says that four years after the beginning of the recession, job losses in rural counties are higher than those in urban or exurban counties. (Exurban counties are those beyond the suburbs of a city. They are in metropolitan regions, but about half of the people who live there are in rural settings.)

Rural counties had nearly 850,000 fewer jobs this December than in December of 2007. That’s 3.7% fewer jobs in rural America four years after the recession began.

Urban counties had lost 3.3% of their jobs four years after the recession. Exurban counties lost 2.9% of their jobs.

The county with the largest job loss was Yavapai County in Arizona. That exurban county lost around 8,800 jobs.

Petition Targets Monster.com

The online job placement company Monster.com is the target of a petition drive. Organizers of the drive are hoping to get the web site and others like it to stop accepting job advertisements that prohibit unemployed people from applying. They say that’s discrimination.

The petition’s author Kelly Wiedemer says this practice negates everything a worker has accomplished over a lifetime, saying that their education and experience has no value.

Public News Service reports that the petition has nearly 90,000 signatures and organizers hope to get 200,000.

New Jersey already has a law banning ads that prohibit jobless workers from applying, and Michigan and New York are considering it. A bill to outlaw the practice has been introduced in Congress.

The petition is here.

Study Shows Unemployment Better for Mental Health Than Bad Job

Slate Magazine reports that researchers at Australian National University followed 7,000 people over a period of seven years. Not surprisingly, those who went from no employment to high quality jobs showed improved mental health. But those who went from jobless to thankless, unstable positions became more depressed and anxious than those who were never hired at all.

Not only that but the mental health of workers in what they called “low psychosocial quality jobs” declined over time. And the worse the job, the more it damaged workers’ sense of well-being.

The researchers concluded that employement strategies for unemployed people need to take into account job design and workplace policy.