This is not only a major hit to the people working there, but this is just another after effect of Hurricane Ike. This is not good, because local unemployment rate for October is 5.4 percent, up from 5.1 percent in September, just below the national average, 6.5 percent.

It would be easy to blame Hurricane Ike, however, this is not the case. Last week, the Labor Department announced that new claims for unemployment benefits jumped last week to a 16-year high. If that is not bad enough, the Federal Reserve on Wednesday released projections that the jobless rate will climb to between 7.1 percent and 7.6 percent next year.

It is not easy to lose a job, sometimes it can be made worse when friends and family accidentally say something callous and ill-considered words trying to find some way to console you. Being let go from your job can be difficult, stressful and surprising all at once. Without a job to go to, you suddenly feel you have been stripped of one’s personal worth and identity; leaving a gap that needs to be filled. Days you look for that small glimmer of hope that somebody actually thinks you are good enough to work for them.

Since we do go through life labeling ourselves in terms of the work we do, the type of response we give – “what we do” – becomes the heart of numerous subtle judgments, ranging from a person’s worth, financial status, intelligence, education level, ambition, and social position.

So just imagine, if you no longer have that defining “label,” we are not only admitting to ourselves but to the world, “I don’t do anything,” which may seem equivalent of saying “I am nothing.” Depending on how long a person is unemployed, less value is put on you. Many presume if you are unemployed the person must be “lazy” or “a bum” because we are conditioned to think if a person who has been unemployed for a long period of time must seriously not be looking for a job.

Three years ago I was laid off and since then, I am still unemployed. Throughout these three years I have applied for literally every job I felt I qualified for, and nineteen times out of twenty, I didn’t hear back. We are talking about jobs for which I knew I was the ideal candidate. During the year, I have been a finalist for several, but never to get the position.

This year was a little better, unlike the last two years, I worked on a couple of contracts that paid me pretty well. Since Thanksgiving is suppose to be thankful, I will use this opportunity to do so. While being unemployed has its downside, I can’t not help but reflect on the opportunities that came my way this year.

Since 2006, the Latino/a blogosphere in the US has grown by leaps and bounds. I am thankful I had the opportunity to be part of it. As editor/publisher of this blog and co-founder of the Sanctuary, I and my fellow bloggers had the opportunity to collaborate with nation organizations such as, National Council of La Raza, America’s Voice, National Immigration Forum, Fair Immigration Reform Movement, and Voto Latino, this is just to name a few.

In response to the immigration raid at Action Rags USA in Houston, I am also involved with the Houston Raid Rapid Response Team. I have also been awarded the Texas Progressive Alliance’s Silver Star by the Texas Progressive Alliance and the 40 under 40 Award by New Leaders Council; invited to appear on a public access cable TV talk show, GreenWatch TV, to talk about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and to appear on HITN TV’s Destination Casa Blanca 2008: The Latino Voice in the Presidential Election, with fellow blogamigios to discuss the impact Latino bloggers have on this year’s election; and I also invited to part of panel discussion at Netroots Nation to discuss online strategies for Latino bloggers. Finally, I was fortunate enough to go to Denver, with my fellow co-bloggers at Scholars and Rouges to cover the DNC. There are probably a lot more that occurred I did have forgotten to mention.

I don’t know if all this would have occurred if I was employed. Even though blogging has help keep my sanity, but being jobless still weighs on my mind. Because the holidays are coming around again, an emptiness is slowly creeping in again. It is a reminder something is missing in my life.

All I can do is hope this Christmas I am able to find a job offer in my stocking instead of a lump of coal I have found in the past three years.

The latest trends in the labor market represent a dramatic reversal for Latino workers. Prior to the recent report, the unemployment rate have been relatively low compared to non-Latino unemployment rates. Over the past year, the biggest hit in the job market have been in construction sector – 250,000 jobs – because of the recent housing slump.

Mexican immigrants have suffered the effects of the construction downturn most keenly. Latino workers who exited construction in 2007 included about 221,000 immigrants. Some 152,000 of those workers had migrated from Mexico. Latino immigrants who entered the U.S. in 2000 or later (from any country) lost 69,000 jobs in construction. For each of these groups of immigrants the jobs lost in construction accounted for the majority of losses from the first quarters of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008.

Labor market outcomes for Hispanic women appear to be worse than for men during 2007. They left the labor force in greater proportion and experienced greater increases in unemployment than did Hispanic men. Some 130,000 more Latino women became unemployed in 2007, and their unemployment rate increased from 5.6% to 7.0%.

The full report: Latino Labor Report, 2008: Construction Reverses Job Growth for Latinos

Last week, the Labor Department reported that employment rose by 166,000 in October, yet, unemployment remained unchanged at 4.7 percent. Strong gains in both services and government jobs offset declines in both manufacturing and construction. According to the Labor Department, Professional and Business Services created 65,000 jobs (mostly temporary help), 45,000 jobs were added in the Leisure and Hospitality category (mostly food service), Education and Health Services added 43,000 spots (mostly ambulatory and health care), and Government payrolls increased by 36,000 (mostly at the local level). Manufacturing lost 21,000 jobs and construction payrolls declined by 5,000, led by a loss of 21,000 jobs in residential construction that were only partially offset by an increase of 15,000 in non-residential construction.

The flexibility of the labor market is generally considered a source of strength for the US economy. However, some people remain jobless for a long time. A recent report from Congressional Budget Office (CBO) illustrate the dynamics of unemployment. In 2006, an average of 2.6 million people became unemployed each month. On average, about 1 in 6 unemployed people in 2006 (1.2 million) were unemployed for more than half a year, even though the overall unemployment rate was low. As a result, unemployment may have lasting effects, such as losing the opportunity to earn income, gain work experience, and, in some cases, receive health insurance and other non-wage benefits provided by employers. CBO also found that African Americans and Latinos/as were much more likely to have been unemployed than whites. Moreover, higher percentages of them had at least one long-term spell of unemployment.

Not all unemployment begin with a worker leaving a job, nor do spell nor do always end because the person were looking for another job. According to CBO found that long-term unemployment appear to have resulted from job loss, rather than from the workers quitting their jobs. Psychologist Edward Diener found that there are two life events powerful enough to derail a person’s normal sense of well-being: loss of a spouse and loss of a job. Diener noted:

It takes five to eight years for a widow to regain her previous sense of well-being. Similarly, the effects of a job loss linger long after the individual has returned to the work force.

One could argue that equating job loss with the loss of a spouse is like comparing apples with oranges. However, the emotional impact of losing a job has a powerful symbolic meaning. A threat on this type of symbolic value can produce devastating and lasting emotional consequences.

According to psychologist Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness, there are three components one needs to find happiness – pleasure, engagement, and meaning, with the last two explaining why losing a job can be so devastating to a person. Seligman defines engagement as “the depth of involvement with one’s family, work, romance, and hobbies,” while meaning refers to “using personal strengths to serve some larger end.” Having a job brings “meaning” in the sense of one’s personal worth and identity. As a person loses a job, they suddenly feel they have been stripped of both; leaving them a gap that needs to be filled. This explains why the initial response is profound shock, following with depression, and in some cases, anger directed towards their former bosses.

Since we do go through life labeling every facet of our lives, the type of response we give – “what we do” – becomes the heart of numerous subtle judgments, ranging from a person’s worth, financial status, intelligence, education level, ambition, and social position. Nevertheless, if one no longer has that “label,” we have no status.

Language can be a bane of human existence. So just imagine, if you no longer have that magical “label” is looking for, we are not only admitting to ourselves but to the world, “I don’t do anything,” which many see it as an equivalent of saying “I am nothing.” Depending on how long a person is unemployed, less value is put on you.

Do we automatically imprison ourselves, as soon as we turn to classifications? Many presume that, if you are unemployed, you must be either “lazy” or “defective” because we have been taught that if a person who does not a job, they lack meaning. When we persist in these identifications, we thrust ourselves into those labels so eagerly that we make them come true, which can lead to feeling vulnerable and eventually hopelessness. The hardest part about being unemployed is not letting the games your mind will play on you.

In these circumstances, there is a tendency to withdraw, feelings of shame and lack of self-esteem. This extends to a decline in the libido, insomnia, a loss of sexual desire and an inability to respond to or give affection. In contrast, where the victimized worker socializes their private discontent and converts it into a public problem, they are more likely to join social movements, which channel aggression outward towards the status quo.

Two years ago, I was laid off and since then, I am still unemployed. I guess it is really all a question of will power, to remain upbeat. Thanks to being unemployed, I have become the master of will power. I have become very good at maintaining self-control of my feelings, smiling and avoiding the question or making up ways to fit neatly into the social mainstream when people ask me. I guess I do this not only to avoid my own embarrassment but also the person who is asking.

Being unemployed and in my 30s, I am seen as social pariah. Telling people, many of them back away quickly with looks of fear in their eyes, and terrified that I will some how infect them with the job-loss virus.

Because the December holidays have come around one more time, the emptiness has slowly begun to take over. It has become a painful reminder what has been missing in my life. There is so much that one can do in a day pore over job sites looking for that small glimmer of hope that somebody actually thinks you are good enough to work for them. I have applied for literally every job I felt I qualified for, and nineteen times out of twenty, I didn’t hear back. We are talking about jobs for which I knew I was the ideal candidate. During the year, I have been a finalist for several, but never got the position, because either, I was told, “how intelligent I am, but …” or the job went to another person who knew somebody in the inside. Even in jobs where I knew somebody in the inside, I was passed over because the person who was hired knew somebody higher. Each time I am told, it has reinforced my own internalized inferiority complex that has overwhelmed my heart with feelings that I am under-educated, unqualified, skill-less, useless, and worthless.

Maybe it is the holidays that are making me so melancholy, because the rest of the time, I have found it easier than to live without caring what people thing. Or maybe I beginning to feel that that I am not contributing to society by blogging. So I have come up with an idea that is a social media experiment. I got this idea from Evelyn Rodriguez at Crossroads Dispatches.

About a year ago, she asked bloggers to help a person get home by using online tools.

Part of my idea involves getting bloggers and the like to videoblog him each day as he wends his way back to Nola in a “connective” manner.

And maybe we’d help him get to the next leg on his journey using online tools (whether Craigslist to score a ride to Austin, or MySpace to post his music and get a small audience following him on the road, or CouchSurfing.com for a place to crash, etc etc).

The fact is the web has changed how we define the meaning of friendship. It is clear that our entire concept of friendships has evolved due to the web, which has led to a change how we experience friendship. With all the different online resources, people whom I would have considered to be an acquaintance, I now consider them as a friend.

I believe that everyone brings something to the table. So why does it have to be a physical preference? If Web 2.0 is about connecting people, ideas and resources, then I would like to utilize it. Most of us have embraced online applications to do the bulk of our work, while at the same time we rely on the power of social media sites to stay in touch with our peers and build our extended networks.

My little experiment is to see if people actually are willing to walk their talk. Let’s face it we talk about being activists, helping people in need. Well, I am in need. I have never really asked people for help, but at this time, I am looking to this venue for help. I am not talking about getting a foot in the door, that has been done, I am talking about being employed.

When I was in college, I often heard heard the benefits of joining a fraternity or sorority. One of their selling points was that not only are members informed about a wide array of opportunities, but the purpose of the organization is to get members into positions of power and have those members hire other members. What I am hoping in conducting this little experiment is to see if this is true or not.

The way I see this, we must be willing to tosses each other a bone. Web 2.0 is about utilizing all the online tools at our disposals to get the word out. It is easy for people to rally around an issue, but when it comes to individuals, rarely, are we willing to take a chance. We have been conditioned to believe that we should kick the little people to the curb. And for good reason, this has occurred very often.

But the question I think we really should ask ourselves is why do it? Why do we continue to prove this idea correct? Have we really lost faith in each other? Better yet, have we lowered the level of expectation we have on each other?

Here are the basic facts about myself.

EDUCATION: MSW with a concentration in Macro Social Work and Community Development

WORK EXPERIENCE SKILLS:

• program evaluation;
• assisted in a variety of reports through writing, editing and formatting as needed;
• researching social service trends;
• data analysis for agency reports;
• advising program coordinators on identification of appropriate performance indicators;
• assisted in the research of potential funding opportunities;
• assisted in the grant writing process through writing, editing and formatting as needed;
• managing the organization’s information systems, including computer operations, systems programming, applications programming and networks;
• analyze the needs of the organization;
• identified Federal, State, and local funding sources;
• assisted in variety of written community development and neighborhood plans, reports and working papers through writing, editing and formatting as needed;
• developed project proposals in the areas of housing and community development;
• advised agency planners and administrators on relevant government regulations and industry trends;
• provided assistance to the department’s annual request for applications for funding process

Managed Projects:
Project Administrator of HUD’s Continuum of Care Planning Process at the local level. Fiscal Year 1998, 1999 and 2000)

• organized applicants’ orientation and training conference;
• provided applicants with technical assistance on application process;
• provided applicants with technical assistance on outcome measures and program evaluation;
• developed training materials for proposal reviewers;
• trained proposal reviewers;
• compiled summative project report
• responded to general and specific technical information requests generated through mail, email, and telephone contact

If you know of something or somebody, please contact me.

Lucky for me, I am not close to go homeless or have my phone cut off because I have opted to become a socialite. No, I am kidding. I have wonderful parents who are not going to allow their son go homeless. It is difficult living at home, considering that today’s society believes that a male around my age should already be living on their own. Let me tell you, it wasn’t an easy decision either. Especially, when you have to suck up your pride and leave your independence. Since they are picking up my bills, the good thing is, I only have three, which are my college loans. Everything was already paid off before I was laid off. Nevertheless, here is what I have learned being a minority in search of a job. The [tag]job market[/tag] is brutal and the concern every minority has about discrimination is all true. The unemployment rate that is quoted is a lie.

Last month, the [tag]Labor Department[/tag] announced that the unemployment rate fell to a five-year low of 4.4% in October. However, the reality is, the job market is really stalling. Right before December, another report was published by the Labor Department that stated that there was an increase of newly laid-off workers – “new applications filed for the workweek ending Nov. 18 soared by a seasonally adjusted 12,000, to 321,000″ and for the week ending Nov. 25, 357,000 cases claimed an increase of 34,000 from the previous week’s figure of 323,000. So it seems that for every new job that is being created, 2 to 3 or maybe 4 job positions are being eliminated. So once again, competition for a job remains high and the more time I am out of a job, the less attractive I become compared to a person who recently was laid off. There is a good post on a sound economic policy regarding unemployment, but this is not what my post is about is about hiring practices and how being an educated minority means shit right now.

While it is true that the overall US [tag]unemployment rate[/tag] dropped, the Latino unemployment rate really has not changed that much. From June to August, the unemployment rate has not budged from 5.3% and increase to 5.4% in September, until October, which went down 4.7% from the recession that ended in November 2001, according to data published by the US Department of Labor. The data is questionable because the unemployed rate excludes discouraged and other workers who are no longer looking for work. They are considered “discouraged workers” because these are the people who have given up searching for work due to lack of success. The more discouraged workers there are, the less accurate statistics like the unemployment rate are in representing true labor market conditions.

One would assume me having a graduate degree and being a minority would have it easy landing a job. If one were to look at the unemployment rates among those a college degree, well it would look as if there are essentially no problems finding employment. The unemployment rate for people with a college degree is currently at 1.9%. One would assume that the only ones who are out of work are those who have decided changed jobs or those who lost their jobs but the data would indicate they are rapidly being picked up..

There is a dirty little secret that is really not being told when it comes to minority college graduates and employment and that has to do with the fact many people are buying into the view there is a demand to end [tag]affirmative action[/tag] hiring practices. Many have hoped that the sustained economic boom in the 1990s would have made a significant dent in the nation’s persistent racial inequality. In fact, the growth did improve the absolute and relative economic positions of many minorities, however, not as much as some minority activists would have desired. In fact, a record has been for the “longest ‘jobless recovery’ on record” has already been spawned by the lack of job creation that followed the 2001 recession, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Even though it is being reported that the unemployment rates are low, it really is being masked, and continues to hide the weakness in the labor market. Another fact, ever since Bush has been in office, long-term unemployment has also gone beyond blue-collar workers and those with higher levels of education can no longer continue their degree to protect them from an unstable job market.

EPI has also found that the current “[tag]jobless recovery[/tag]” has also taken a toll among African-Americans and Latinos, but more so among African-Americans. Although no comparison can be made between the current “jobless recovery” to the 1990s “jobless recovery” to give some type of indication for the future; it does, however, provide insight as to how the Bush Administration has screwed minorities left and right, especially [tag]African-Americans[/tag].

The study found African-Americans’ share of persistent unemployment expanded from 23.0% in the 1990s to 25.9% in the more recent slump and for [tag]Latinos[/tag] it went from 11.1% to 13.3 percent. Amazingly, when it came to whites, it was the opposite. While the average for long-term unemployment increased by 2 percentage points for minorities, whites have fair well during the latest recession. The average share of long-term unemployment during the 1990s for whites was at 62.2% compared to the more recent slump of 53.7 percent. Moreover, EPI also found that long-term unemployment has become more of a problem among the more-educated population.

To make matters worse, effect of the latest recession on Latinos hardly have been examined closely and if any were done, it is hard to they don’t provide an accurate picture because the not all Latinos have been similarly affected by the recession because of the make-up of the group in terms of in terms of time in the US – ranging from newly arrived immigrants to US-born Latinos. This makes a big difference because generational status is closely tied to education, linguistic, and social assimilation. US-born Latinos face different challenges and experiences in the labor market than newly arrived Latinos. One of these differences may result in different job-search strategies due to education, English ability, and availability of social networks. In 2002, soon after the recession ended, a study was conducted for the Pew Hispanic Center by Arturo Gonzalez, an economist at the University of Arizona, the study found that unemployment among second-generation Latinos in more skilled occupations (professionals, managers, technicians and administrators) is higher than for non-Hispanics holding similar jobs.

Two years later, an analysis of the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau done by the Pew Hispanic Center showed that during the “jobless recovery” of 2004, gains for Latinos were not widespread. The group that captured the most jobs during that time were immigrant Latinos. However, median wages for Latinos not only slipped backwards but were considerably lower in comparison to the national median wage. And even two years later, the unemployment rate for US-born Hispanics, still remained high and showed no indication of dropping.

Labor market trends for the third generation – the U.S.-born children of U.S.-born parents – were mostly negative in this time period. For this group, employment fell in all quarters except the fourth quarter of 2003. By the first quarter of 2004, third-generation employment was down by 158,110 workers and unemployment was up by 41,805 in comparison to the first quarter of 2003. Over this period, the proportion of third-generation Latinos who were employed fell from 66.9 percent to 64.1 percent and the unemployment rate increased from 7.5 percent to 8.6 percent.

In terms employment gains and losses for Hispanics from the first quarter of 2003 to the first quarter of 2004, construction (380,492) was a major source of employment gains for Hispanics, following business services (167,499), transportation and warehousing (105,732) and personal, laundry, and private household services (71,157). Meanwhile, Latino workers suffered job losses in manufacturing of durable goods of 128,064. Other industries in which the number of employed Latinos dropped significantly include manufacturing of nondurable goods (-50,813), educational services (-33,579), and Communication, Information, Publishing & Broadcasting (-28,878). Interestingly, the principal sources of employment gains for non-Hispanic workers, were wholesale and retail trade (704,356), construction (392,404), finance, insurance, and real estate (313,566), and public administration (198,080).

There is also a big push to end affirmative action. This could be seen in the recent decision by the Supreme Court to hear a couple affirmative action cases regarding school desegregation, the future of affirmative action is now at stake. Legal experts say the cases being heard, are just as important as the University Michigan decisions, rulings in which the justices upheld the university’s law school affirmative program, but struck down a more numbers-oriented undergraduate admissions process.

During the job boom in the 1990s, evidence showed there was a decline in discriminatory behavior against minorities by employers, according to a recent study by the Urban Institute. They also found that demands for Latinos, African-Americans, welfare recipients and the short-term employed, as well as those without recent work experience have declined with rising unemployment rates and that many of those hiring patterns that occurred during the boom have now weakened following the 2001 recession period. If that is so, one does have to wonder what is to be expected to head into recession next year.

This find would indicate that history has this nasty tendency of repeating itself. Workers who were laid off in the 1960s and 70s were disproportionately minority, mostly African-American. The US Commission on Civil Rights found that during the recession of 1973 to 1974, 60% to 70% of laid-off workers were minority in areas where they were only 10% to 12% of the workforce. The reason affirmative action was put into place to right past wrongs where feasible. Now, affirmative action has become a joke. On May 1, 2006, the United States Court of Appeals ruled against for promoting several minority firefighters who were ranked lower on eligibility lists over their white counterpart. The court ruled that the city could no longer base their decision to promote minorities to remedy the effects of past discrimination against minorities. In fact, the new rules regarding affirmative action hiring and promotion practices are based on the idea that minorities could no longer rely on a history of racial discrimination to justify the enactment of affirmative action programs. In fact, the viewed being held, especially the Supreme Court, is that affirmative action is no longer necessary because the impacts of past discrimination has been remedied.

The setting of a placement goal in an affirmative action plan means that recruiters have an added burden to try to ensure that applicant pools contain sufficient percentages of qualified women and minorities; it does not give a manager justification to hire someone because he or she is a minority, even if there is a goal in the job group. At all times, the most qualified person must be selected for the position, without regard to race, gender or any other protected category.

In other words, what just to be as long as the application pool contains my resume or anybody with a Spanish surname they will be ok, they don’t have to hire me. So what used to be a policy to provide minorities and women a chance to put your foot in the door, it is now, a policy that only allows minorities and women to stand in line, without the possibility of ever seeing the employer’s door. The door is officially shut. And I have personally seen it shut and slammed on my face and sadly, there is nothing I can do because the places I applied did allow me to stand the application in line, as for my future, it is still remains uncertain.

Hopefully, this Christmas I am able to find a job offer in my stocking instead of a lump of coal like the one I found last year.