From democraticunderground.com comes this interesting and disturbing set of observations from a Swiss businessman who frequently works with Americans, who was interviewing a number of Silicon Valley lawyers to fill some local vacancies.
In this case our lawyers were preparing employment contracts for about half a dozen people a Swiss company intended to hire in Los Angeles. I asked the guy how their recruiting was going and what he said alarmed me, not because it was unbelievable but the way he described it. This man had been with the UN in Bosnia and he said that the only experience he could compare it to was debriefing refugees. In Bosnia he was to identify individuals who should either be interviewed by war crimes investigators, investigated themselves or had medical needs that necessitated immediate evacuation to the EU.
He said that the edge that came off most of the candidates was unsettling to him and no matter how confident or outgoing or friendly an interviewee was many of them displayed the same subtle body language and speech ticks he had come to recognize in refugees fifteen years ago.
He said he might have expected to see desperate and traumatized people in Detroit but didn’t expect to see this among professionals in California, especially not after having worked in California during the .com years. One of the candidates who is currently employed he described as “shell shockedâ€, another volunteered that she “just doesn’t take holidaysâ€.
The effects of long-term unemployment are very real and, over time they are devastating. Of course, this unidentified Swiss businessman ought not to be too surprised if he knew that California has one of the highest unemployment levels of any state in the Union. But that’s really beside the point; as long as we keep putting off creating real jobs for Americans to help them get back on their feet, this kind of damage will accumulate and continue to poison our collective quality of life for years to come.
