US Unemployment Checks - Two Million Say Good Bye

Today two million unemployed Americans say goodbye to their unemployment checks.

I have never been good at saying goodbye. For the purposes of this post that really does not matter.

I have never received unemployment benefits. So I will not be one of the two million US citizens who will have to say goodbye to their unemployment checks today.


These folks have been collecting free money from the US Government for at least 99 weeks. That is about two years for all you math gurus.

Many democrats are disappointed. They wanted to extend unemployment further. They felt that we should keep on paying folks who have been out of work for two years.

hmmmm...

Personally I think that logic is nuts. I think two years is nuts. I think our policy makers must be ignorant to the fact that a HUGE portion of the folks who collect unemployment are milking the system for a free ride. I know I was clueless until about 4 or 5 years ago when I I was of the age and maturity to have friends and acquaintances who were unemployed.

I must confess that I do not know a whole lot of folks who make less than 40,000 especially if you don't include those whom are students.

Just the same I have estimated that I know of about 8-12 people on unemployment. Nine of those folks (in my humble opinion) are working the system over. They are not working because they are getting paid not to work. Many of them would look at you stupid if you asked why they don't want to go get a job while they are collecting unemployment. Maybe they are right.

Life is all about incentive and very little else if anything else.

So why is it that someone whom collects a pay check whether they clock in for 8 hours doing something they would most likely rather not do or if they do as they would if on an extended weekend.

I am not sure one can argue with that logic.

There is pride... but that is "hit" once your on unemployment, so why not milk it.

There is principle... but those folks never apply for unemployment.

Frankly, I think anything over two or three months of "free money" is plenty. Sure maybe in many situations those folks should still get some sort of aid from their government. But the shape and form of that assistance should not be a blind check week after week.

If nothing else we should at least put them to work and get some kind of value for the tax payers buck.

I would not be surprised if some of you are growling as you read this post. but let's just take a second and step back.

Every week 2,000,000 checks go out. These checks are going to folks who under normal conditions would have been dropped from unemployment due to the normal expiration of a citizens right to unemployment. However we extended them. So these people whom have already maxed out the system were given an additional 100 pay checks. The working man paid for an additional two million salaries every week for two years. Don't forget these are just the folks whom were extended the extra 99 week duration. By this I am implying that there are way more then two million collecting unemployment.

Given the above considerations, if we do the math at just a 100 dollars a week then we come up with about 20 billion dollars. That is about the amount that all online advertisers spend over 3 to 5 months total. That accounts for at least a decade of porn revenue. Now our figure we just calculated is wrong. People get more then 100 a week.

I don't want to take part in a more realistic calculation. It is to scary.

So... as I stated earlier, two million unemployed Americans will have to say good bye to their unemployment checks.

GOOD!

How much you want to bet we see a spike in employment numbers with in 25 - 35 days.

I am calling it.

LEADING THE WAY IN BUSINESS SUPPORT

Earlier this month, I wrote about the fact that 70 per cent of all employment growth in Wales during the period 2003-2010, equating to 68,000 new jobs, had come from small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

This unequivocally demonstrated that it was SMEs that have driven employment growth in Wales during the last decade, especially within our more deprived communities.

However, as the proportion of employment within large firms continues to decrease within the Welsh economy, it is important that programmes are put into place that can enable the SME sector to become more competitive and, more importantly, to continue to grow and create employment.

As the business community is all too aware, the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) has largely abandoned support to the SME sector as part of its economic renewal programme, a situation which may, ironically, lead to other organisations stepping up to the mark to fill the gap left by the civil service withdrawal of funding from such activities.

Given the bureaucracy that has bedevilled public sector support schemes over the years, some are now suggesting that the withdrawal of WAG support may not be such a bad thing and that the programmes being developed elsewhere are far more relevant to the needs of Welsh businesses.

Take, for example, the LEAD Wales initiative, which is a focused leadership programme aimed at owner-managers of SMEs.

Originally developed for the North West region of England as a partnership between the North West Development Agency and the University of Lancaster, it was introduced to Wales in 2009 as an £8 million European Social Fund project funded from Wales EU Convergence Funding, with match funding provided from the higher education partners.

It aims to provide leadership development to 700 businesses in the West Wales and the Valleys Convergence region between 2009 and 2015 and is being delivered through Swansea University’s School of Business and Economics, demonstrating the role that university business schools in Wales can play in driving forward economic development.

It is substantially different to many other business support programmes in that it is essentially driven by the needs of the businesses.

For example, the programme includes a learning experience to bring together the companies and build trust between them. It then moves onto a series of half-day sessions designed to stimulate thinking and build awareness in areas of leadership and business growth. These divide into ‘business’ masterclasses led by business school faculty and other external subject experts on themes of interest identified from delegates, and ‘leadership’ masterclasses led by proven leaders from corporate, public and sporting spheres and designed to provide inspiration and opportunity for reflection on leadership style and context.

The programme then moves to deal directly with the individual issues raised by participating companies in which an owner manager presents a personal current business challenge and other entrepreneurs ask open-ended questions to identify new options and actions. Presenters are charged with implementing action plans and reporting updates in subsequent sessions, thus providing each SME owner-manager with a board of temporary non-executive directors.

In addition, the companies are supported through a programme of business shadowing and exchanges and a series of one-to-one mentoring sessions with experienced, professional business coaches.

According to Swansea University, an initial review of the programme suggested that the average turnover of the first cohort of participants had grown by over 30 per cent in the past year. However, what is most interesting is the main factor behind this growth, namely gaining the confidence to win new business, particularly from larger companies. This demonstrates that the intangible benefits of attending such programmes are as important as those targets set by the programme funders.

Therefore, it would seem that a facilitated leadership development programme, with a strong emphasis on action learning and which is light on formal teaching, can be a powerful tool for small business development.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is that the LEAD programme, because of its nature, can only benefit a small proportion of the appropriate population of entrepreneurs although, as research has shown, whilst fast growth companies represent only 6 per cent of all UK firms employing ten or more people, they account for more than half the job growth. More relevantly, if appropriate ‘high growth potential’ entrepreneurs can be recruited, the LEAD programme can help create of a cadre of entrepreneurs to spearhead best practice in small business leadership in a peripheral economic region.

Business support in Wales is currently going through a revolution as government withdraws funding from all businesses except those in certain so-called ‘key sectors’. This will leave a vacuum which can provide new markets for other actors provided they are ready to take advantage of this situation.

Certainly, these changes give business schools across Wales a real opportunity to interact more with their local business community as well as their current focus on attracting overseas MBA students, and the Leadership and Management Wales initiative led by Cardiff Business School will certainly help with this aim.

Indeed, Welsh business schools could, and should, become major providers of leadership and management training to the SME sector in Wales and, as the LEAD programme has demonstrated, ensure that our entrepreneurial businesses not only become more competitive, but grow their capacity to create jobs within their local communities.