So if you are reading this during work hours you might be home and unemployed with nothing else to do. I am honored that you are reading this. You are probably educated, have a good resume, dress well, have experience in your field but after the interview for a job you learn that the bosses sloppy nephew got the job. Nepotism is alive and well and encouraged in the workplace like never before.

We have seen some improvement in the job market but most good educated people are in a state of shock because they are still trapped in unemployment for as much as three years now. Never in the last 60 years has the length of joblessness been this long. Four Million people, a full third of the unemployed have been out of work more than a year. They have been severed from the workforce. Ben Bernake, Chairman of the Federal Reserve calls it a “national crisis.”

The great recession as we call it arrived in 2008 where an executive making a fairly good salary will suddenly be told times are tough ,we have eliminated your position and you would be home the same day with nowhere to go the next day. So, after being the only one home and staring at the computer for the last 3 years, your unemployment has run out too. Now what?

Unemployment benefits run out after 99 weeks. There is a population of college educated individuals in their 40’s and 50’s that are in this situation of stagnation. These are dedicated people who thought their company was going to take them all the way to retirement. There was a time years and years ago when you would even get a gold watch from your company thanking you for years of dedicated service. Now, they throw you away for a new fresh faced inexperienced kid just out of school paying them little money.

So, now these older workers are bitter, fed up with the lies, fed up with society and the new corporate world with their deceit and greed. It is the falling out of the middle class. They have turned in their car loans, taken food stamps, taken their kids out of college and have faced foreclosure. There is no comparison to being unemployed for 6 months and being unemployed for 99 weeks.

Your needs change in a drastic way. The change is the mindset. Two years of unemployment erodes your self-confidence, your self-esteem and separates you from your education and your profession. It causes divorces and problems with children. Yet, these people can still remain hidden because they feel discouraged and ashamed to reach out for help.

They are shocked and feel as if they have failed meanwhile it is the corporate code of honor and greed that has failed the workers. These people have done everything they were supposed to do. They have the education, the certification and still cant get a job. Yes, they can be a landscaper or cashier or anything you don’t need a certification.

The first thing to getting out of the penniless hole they have fallen into is to confront their fears and depression. Things have changed since they have gone for a job the last time according to Joe Carbone, the President of “The WorkPlace,“ which is the state unemployment office where he has seen as much as 21,000 people in this category. He runs a program called “Platform To Employment” that helps these people gain self-esteem but at the same time be humbled. The have no choice.

Most of the unemployed in this category refused to work at the grocery store or flip burgers; the only jobs that are easy to get for little pay. The program has taught them to be humbled and to start again even though in the past they got the college degree, they were successful at one time in their lives and were working for 30 years.

The program has placed them into internships which is better than nothing, gets their foot back into the corporate door, lets the company know their value and in some cases leads to that full time employment in their chosen career again. Fifty percent of the unemployed have found work again through the help of this program. It is nice to have work in the morning rather than look for work in the morning.

There are still about 4 Million educated, experienced workers out of a job in America now. There are 38 thousand people a week who try to join this program to get an internship.