VOA慢速英语2011--America and the Struggle for Jobs

THIS IS AMERICA - America and the Struggle for Jobs

FAITH LAPIDUS: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I’m Faith Lapidus.
DOUG JOHNSON: And I’m Dough¹ Johnson. This week on our program, we look at the job situation in the United States. There was zero job growth last month. The national unemployment rate was the same as in July, 9.1 percent. That does not even include people who have stopped looking for work or part-time workers unable to get full-time² jobs.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Coming up, we talk to Don Peck, author of a new book called “Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures³ and What We Can Do About It.” And we hear from two people about what they had to do to find a job.
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FAITH LAPIDUS: Americans face different economic issues. Which one worries them most? A Pew Research Center-Washington Post opinion poll asked a thousand people earlier this month. Forty-three percent said the job situation. About half as many said the federal budget deficit⁴.
Smaller numbers said rising prices and the financial and housing markets were their biggest economic worries.
Three out of four people said additional spending on roads, bridges and other public works would improve the job situation at least a little. Many said the same about cutting business taxes, the federal budget and personal income taxes. But there was no clear agreement about which ideas would do a lot to help.
DOUG JOHNSON: Last Thursday night, President Obama spoke⁵ to Congress to present his plan for job growth. His proposals include an extension of jobless benefits for workers who have been unemployed⁶ for extended periods. The plan also includes tax breaks for companies to hire more workers and money for projects to fix roads and schools.
The Labor⁷ Department counts about fourteen million workers as unemployed. Millions more are working part time as they try to find full-time employment.
The so-called Great Recession officially lasted from December of two thousand seven to June of two thousand nine. Unemployment was five percent at the start. It reached 10.1 percent in late two thousand nine. This year the jobless rate has been stuck around nine percent.
There are concerns that the United States -- and the world -- could face another recession. Some economists⁸ say a "double-dip" could be more painful for average Americans because the economy is weaker than it was before the first recession.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Don Peck is a writer and editor at the Atlantic magazine. In his new book, “Pinched,” he says economic conditions are limiting opportunities for millions of Americans. He says the generation of young Americans known as millennials -- those now graduating from high school and college -- are especially affected⁹.
DON PECK: “The first few years on the job market are extremely important to setting the career track and life path of young people. When young people struggle -- when whole generations struggle in their first few years in the job market -- academic research shows that not only do they start out behind, they never catch up to where they otherwise would’ve been.”
FAITH LAPIDUS: Mr. Peck says early in the recession, millennials thought any period of unemployment would be short. There was even a name for this kind of thinking: "funemployment."
DON PECK: “The idea that a few months perhaps of unemployment during the recession, could not only be easily overcome but could be kind of fun. You know, people were getting unemployment checks, they didn’t have many financial commitments.
"Many of them took that opportunity to reassess career, to take vacations, and I think in part millennials were just trying to make the best of a bad situation.”
DOUG JOHNSON: But now, he says, young people are thinking differently.
DON PECK: “That idea that this period is something that can be easily enjoyed and that will not materially affect millennials in the rest of their careers is clearly waning¹⁰ within that generation. I think today you see among millennials much higher job tenure¹¹ -- they’re clinging to their jobs more tightly, they’ve expressed a desire for a single job, a single employer throughout their career rather than the ability to switch careers. So that notion of funemployment which many millennials began the recession with, I think, is long gone today.”
In today’s economy, says Mr. Peck, any work is better than no work.
DON PECK: “This is a time where young people need to be extremely aggressive and entrepreneurial and have humility¹². You know, say yes to whatever job offers one gets because it’s certainly better to be working than have the stigma¹³ of unemployment all together.”
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FAITH LAPIDUS: Twenty-two year old Jessie Way finished college in less than four years and with honors. She graduated from George Mason University in Virginia with a degree in technical writing in January. After that, she spent three months helping¹⁴ her mother who got sick. Then she spent five months searching for a job.
Jessie was lucky. She recently landed a position as a legal assistant with a law firm.
JESSIE WAY: "The problem I found myself having was, it's what everyone complains about -- there's jobs that want experience, but nobody wants to give you experience."
A demand for experience is not a new problem for young people, of course. But Jessie Way thinks the situation today is more difficult than it was for graduates ten years ago.
JESSIE WAY: "Back then you could say, oh well, I’m just out of college, so I’m a lot cheaper than these people with experience. So companies could say, OK, we'll hire some college graduates and we'll have to train them a little but the price cut is worth it to them.
"Nowadays so many people are out of work and have been let go and all that stuff that they can offer that same salary to somebody who does have five years experience that they used to offer to somebody like me. And it's gotten to the point now where college kids either can't get a job or can't get a job that's actually going to pay the bills."
DOUG JOHNSON: Author Don Peck says one way for young job seekers to improve their chances is by moving.
DON PECK: “I would really encourage people, particularly if they’re living in highly depressed¹⁵ places, to consider taking a leap and moving to a more dynamic region. I think that will help them in the long run.”
A willingness to move helped Jessie Way find a job. Her new job is more than an hour from where she was living. But she did not have time to find an apartment, so she is sleeping on a friend’s couch until she can find a place of her own.
(MUSIC)
FAITH LAPIDUS: Thirty-nine-year-old Norm Elrod of Queens, New York, has been laid off from jobs four times in the past ten years. The last job he lost was with an online marketing¹⁶ agency. He left in two thousand eight. After that, he says, he set out to find a way to make himself a better job candidate. He used online resources to create a website and teach himself new skills in the process.
NORM ELROD: “That’s how my website came about. I built that and ran it and essentially¹⁷ trained myself, or re-trained myself, taught myself new skills that allowed me to get the job I have now.”
DOUG JOHNSON: Norm Elrod created a blog called Jobless and Less: The Blog for the Employmentally Challenged.
NORM ELROD: “I wrote about the one thing I seemed to know, which was at that point being unemployed. [Laughs]"
FAITH LAPIDUS: Jessie found her job by answering an online job posting. But Norm says he had no success applying for jobs on the Internet.
NORM ELROD: “You send your resume out and it goes into a void and one person will get in touch with you for every one hundred to two hundred resumes you send out. And it's not because you're not qualified¹⁸. It's because they get so many, and oftentimes they're looking for just a certain thing and there's no way to know what that is.”
His advice to people looking for a job is to learn new skills and meet new people.
NORM ELROD: “It's very easy to sit at home and send out your resume by clicking buttons on your computer at your dining room table and feel like maybe you're being productive. But it's much harder to actually get out there and meet the people who may know things or can point you towards things or make that face to face contact. I feel like that is where any job seeker is going to get more traction¹⁹.”
His wife’s full-time job helped the couple pay their bills. They also used savings²⁰, payments from state unemployment insurance and money from projects he worked on while job hunting.
It was nearly three years until a contact he met through one of those projects led him to his current job. Norm Elrod works full time creating content for the website of a major media company.
(MUSIC)
DOUG JOHNSON: The Great Recession was the worst downturn since the Great Depression in the nineteen thirties. Don Peck says the long-term unemployment that many workers have experienced can have lasting²¹ effects, and not just on them.
DON PECK: "When you have these long periods of unemployment, they can really leave pretty big scars on people, families and communities that are not lost even once the recession is over. When men, in particular, struggle economically, or when they don’t have jobs, women simply don’t marry them, but they do have children with them. And that creates often the sort of unstable²² family environment in which children really struggle.”
FAITH LAPIDUS: What would he do about the employment problems in the United States?
DON PECK: “One of the main messages of my book 'Pinched' is we can recover from this period faster with concerted public action.”
In the short term, he thinks the government should invest more in public works to create jobs in manufacturing and construction.
DON PECK: “But I think in the longer term we also need to really work to build new skills and create more pathways into the middle class for high school students who might not be going to college.
“That sense of possibility and that concrete sense of how one can move forward in life if one isn’t going to a four year college to some extent has been lost in the U.S. over the past twenty or thirty years. One of the things we need to do is rebuild that and give young people an understanding of the ways in which they can build skills and build real careers.”
(MUSIC)
DOUG JOHNSON: Our program was written and produced by Brianna Blake. I’m Doug Johnson.
FAITH LAPIDUS: And I’m Faith Lapidus. You can read and listen to our programs and comment on them at voanews.cn. Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.

1 dough   

n.生面团；钱，现款

参考例句：

• She formed the dough into squares.她把生面团捏成四方块。
• The baker is kneading dough.那位面包师在揉面。

2 full-time   

adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的

参考例句：

• A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
• I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作，我不知道她是如何对付的。

3 futures   

n.期货，期货交易

参考例句：

• He continued his operations in cotton futures.他继续进行棉花期货交易。
• Cotton futures are selling at high prices.棉花期货交易的卖价是很高的。

4 deficit   

n.亏空，亏损；赤字，逆差

参考例句：

• The directors have reported a deficit of 2.5 million dollars.董事们报告赤字为250万美元。
• We have a great deficit this year.我们今年有很大亏损。

5 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

6 unemployed   

adj.失业的，没有工作的；未动用的，闲置的

参考例句：

• There are now over four million unemployed workers in this country.这个国家现有四百万失业人员。
• The unemployed hunger for jobs.失业者渴望得到工作。

7 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

8 economists   

n.经济学家，经济专家( economist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The sudden rise in share prices has confounded economists. 股价的突然上涨使经济学家大惑不解。
• Foreign bankers and economists cautiously welcomed the minister's initiative. 外国银行家和经济学家对部长的倡议反应谨慎。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

10 waning   

adj.（月亮）渐亏的，逐渐减弱或变小的n.月亏v.衰落( wane的现在分词 )；（月）亏；变小；变暗淡

参考例句：

• Her enthusiasm for the whole idea was waning rapidly. 她对整个想法的热情迅速冷淡了下来。
• The day is waning and the road is ending. 日暮途穷。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

11 tenure   

n.终身职位；任期；(土地)保有权，保有期

参考例句：

• He remained popular throughout his tenure of the office of mayor.他在担任市长的整个任期内都深得民心。
• Land tenure is a leading political issue in many parts of the world.土地的保有权在世界很多地区是主要的政治问题。

12 humility   

n.谦逊，谦恭

参考例句：

• Humility often gains more than pride.谦逊往往比骄傲收益更多。
• His voice was still soft and filled with specious humility.他的声音还是那么温和，甚至有点谦卑。

13 stigma   

n.耻辱，污名；(花的)柱头

参考例句：

• Being an unmarried mother used to carry a social stigma.做未婚母亲在社会上曾是不光彩的事。
• The stigma of losing weighed heavily on the team.失败的耻辱让整个队伍压力沉重。

14 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

15 depressed   

adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的

参考例句：

• When he was depressed,he felt utterly divorced from reality.他心情沮丧时就感到完全脱离了现实。
• His mother was depressed by the sad news.这个坏消息使他的母亲意志消沉。

16 marketing   

n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西

参考例句：

• They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
• He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。

17 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

18 qualified   

adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的

参考例句：

• He is qualified as a complete man of letters.他有资格当真正的文学家。
• We must note that we still lack qualified specialists.我们必须看到我们还缺乏有资质的专家。

19 traction   

n.牵引；附着摩擦力

参考例句：

• I'll show you how the traction is applied.我会让你看如何做这种牵引。
• She's injured her back and is in traction for a month.她背部受伤，正在作一个月的牵引治疗。

20 savings   

n.存款，储蓄

参考例句：

• I can't afford the vacation,for it would eat up my savings.我度不起假，那样会把我的积蓄用光的。
• By this time he had used up all his savings.到这时，他的存款已全部用完。

21 lasting   

adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持

参考例句：

• The lasting war debased the value of the dollar.持久的战争使美元贬值。
• We hope for a lasting settlement of all these troubles.我们希望这些纠纷能获得永久的解决。

22 unstable   

adj.不稳定的，易变的

参考例句：

• This bookcase is too unstable to hold so many books.这书橱很不结实，装不了这么多书。
• The patient's condition was unstable.那患者的病情不稳定。