BETTER OFF IN JAIL

Several million Americans have lost their jobs since the beginning of the recession. Many of those jobs are gone forever because the skills formerly required for these positions can be done more efficiently at less cost by computers and robots. The disappearance of these jobs especially hurts older workers because they are harder to retrain and even if they were to be retrained, most employers would not hire anyone without experience in their mid-forties and beyond.

Cynthia Norton, 52, is an unemployed administrative assistant in Jacksonville whose skills are no longer needed. She has been looking for a job for two years without any luck. Norton even took out a $17,000 student loan with which she trained to be a medical assistant. But the school conveniently failed to inform her that no one would hire her without at least one year’s experience. The best she has been able to come up with is a part-time job as a Walmart cashier, a job that pays her only a third of what she used to make.

Because of her part-time job, Norton is ineligible for unemployment compensation and she does not qualify for Medicaid or food stamps. “Sometimes I think I’d be better of in jail,” she says, only half joking. “I’d have three meals a day and structure in my life. I’d be able to go to school. I’d have more opportunities if I were an inmate than I do here trying to be a contributing member of society.”

It is a sad state of affairs when many out-of-work people, like Cynthia Norton, are reaching the point where they would find themselves better off in jail.