Serious Disturbance for Job

Café Torepazione Italia in Seattle advertised job position two weeks ago. The wage is only 7-8 dollars per hour. However, almost 100 resumes poured in. It was quite different from the same period last year when the café received only 4 resumes for 2 weeks. Moreover, 70 percent of the applicants were highly qualified people who once worked for the high technology, ranging from the former web designer to the customer counselor at the Amazon Dot Com.

Pen Hoitt, who received the annual salary of 85,000 US dollars from a company in Dallas, moved into another Dot Com company with more salary early last year. After six month, he moved into other company again. It was easy to change the work place. He had 12 interviews by entrusting the headhunter company, and chose one favorite place.

Although he was laid off in May, he was not worried. He was confident that he could find a new job soon. However, Having sent out 300 resumes, there has been no one place to accept him. He has been unemployed for 6 months.

While the U.S. society is weighted down with the depressing news like terrorism, war, and anthrax, unemployment brings up another concern.

According to the statistics of the U.S. Ministry of Labor, 415,000 people lost their jobs in October. Compared with 213,000 in September, the number doubled up. The jobless rate jumped from 4.9 percent in September to 5.4 percent in October. The increasing rate of 0.5 percent is the highest level in 21 years since 1981 May when the structural adjustment was severely carried out.

The aggravation of the unemployment in the U.S. is not only due to the 9.11 terrorist attacks. More than one million people in the manufacturing were already laid off during last 15 months due to the stagnation of the IT industry and the economic recession. On top of this, the 9.11 terrorism aggravated the situation.

The service industry received the most severe blow. As many as 110,000 people in hotel, airplane and tourism industry were laid off in October. The employment condition of the IT industry continues to aggravate. The jobless rate in Santa Clara County in which the Silicon Valley is located marked 5.9 percent in September, tripled from 1.8 percent in September.

One of the characteristic of the current situation of unemployment is that it affects not only the blue-color but also the middle-class. The U.S. Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, ``The number of the unemployed in the management and professional jobs increased by 63 percent for the last one year.``

sechepa@donga.com