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Bilingual Reading
US Feels Reverberations of long-term Joblessness
The US labour market used to be whizzy. People would ①chop and change jobs at a furious pace，but not many stayed out of work for long. If you wanted to see countries sagging under the weight of long-term joblessness，you had to cross the Atlantic.
②On the eve of the global downturn in 2007，10 per cent of ③the US unemployed had been out of work for a year or more，compared with 25 per cent in the UK，40 per cent in France and 57 per cent in Germany.
Times have changed. The sheer force of the recession has driven 8.2m out of work in the US and pushed the unemployment rate to the highest since 1983.
Long-term unemployment is already much worse than in the 1980s： in October，5.5m？C almost 40 per cent of the US jobless？C had been so for at least six months，the highest on record. Twenty per cent had been unemployed for a year or more，compared with a fairly static 25 per cent in the UK.
This could have lasting ④reverberations both for America‘s people and its economy.
“It’s a killer disease，”says Thomas Cottle at Boston University，author of Hardest Times：The Trauma of Long-Term Unemployment.“People are going to be damaged and may not recover in their lifetime.”
The longer people are jobless，the more their skills and confidence decline and the less appealing they become to employers.“There‘s a lot of research showing lengthy unemployment essentially erodes the productive capacity of the economy，”says Timothy Bartik，a labour market economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute.
The Congressional Budget Office released a report in 2007 into long-term joblessness，which was at the time something of a niche topic.
After an unemployment ⑤spell of six months or more，people’s new jobs paid an average 20 per cent less than their previous ones，it found. More worryingly，the CBO discovered that about one in four of the long- term unemployed dropped out of the labour force altogether.
譯文梗概
長期失業(yè)將削弱美國經(jīng)濟(jì)“元?dú)狻?/STRONG>
美國勞動力市場曾經(jīng)表現(xiàn)出色。人們飛快地改換工作，但沒有多少人長期失業(yè)。如果你想看到承受長期失業(yè)重壓的國家，就只能跨過大西洋。
2007年全球經(jīng)濟(jì)陷入低迷前夕，美國失業(yè)人口中有10%失業(yè)一年或更長，而英國的這一比例是25%，法國是40%，德國是57%。
今非昔比。經(jīng)濟(jì)衰退的絕對威力已令820萬美國人失去工作，失業(yè)率升至1983年以來的最高水平。
美國的長期失業(yè)狀況比上世紀(jì)80年代糟糕得多：10月份，550萬人(幾乎占美國失業(yè)人口的40%)已至少失業(yè)6個月，為有記錄以來的最高水平。20%的失業(yè)者已失業(yè)一年或更長時間，而英國的這一比例穩(wěn)定在25%。
這可能對美國民眾和美國經(jīng)濟(jì)產(chǎn)生持久影響。
波士頓大學(xué)的托馬斯·科特爾表示：“這是一種致命疾病。人們將受到傷害，可能在有生之年都不會恢復(fù)。”科特爾是《最艱難時代：長期失業(yè)之創(chuàng)傷》一書的作者。
人們失業(yè)的時間越長，技能和信心就下降得越厲害，對雇主的吸引力也越低。W.E. Upjohn Institute的勞動力市場經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家蒂莫西·巴蒂克表示：“大量研究表明，長期失業(yè)本質(zhì)上會削弱經(jīng)濟(jì)體的生產(chǎn)能力。”
國會預(yù)算辦公室在2007年發(fā)布了一根長期失業(yè)報告，當(dāng)時這還是個有些小眾話題。
報告發(fā)現(xiàn)，失業(yè)6個月或更長時間后，人們新工作的薪酬平均比之前的工作低20%。更讓人擔(dān)憂的是，國會預(yù)算辦公室發(fā)現(xiàn)，大約有四分之一的長期失業(yè)人口徹底退出了勞動力市場。
(文章來源：FT中文網(wǎng))
點(diǎn)評：
①chop and change，固定用法，意為“快速變化，變化無常”。chop意為“砍， 剁， 切，劈”。
②on the eve of，在…的前夕。downturn，經(jīng)濟(jì)低迷時期。
③the US unemployed在這里意為“美國失業(yè)人口”。the+adj.的結(jié)構(gòu)表示“…的人”，如the old老人，the rich 富人。
④reverberation影響，反響。
⑤spell，一段時間。spell作為名詞還有“符咒，魅力，輪班”的意思；作為動詞，意為“拼寫，拼成，意味著，輪值，招致，迷住”。 |