If you've been looking for work full time for 6 months and not a single employer has wanted to hire you, being unemployed for 6 months is the least of your problems.
Usually, what happens is, they spend the time looking for jobs they are qualified for and want, and don't get. Then they spend some of their time looking for jobs they are overqualified for as well, and usually don't get.
That's 6 months.
I've done it. I was unemployed for about a year; during that time I went on about a dozen interviews, did volunteer work, took courses etc. so as to have something to explain what I did during this blank period on my resume.
I learned much better multi-tasking skills during this period, and how to organize dozens of contacts, because if job x calls you and you've applied to 28 jobs in the last 10 days, you have to know immediately who they are and what they do as well as what you said to them in your customized application.
Personally, I'd like to see better integration between linkedin and my smartphone to facilitate this. Anyone working on that?
Applying to jobs is hard, not getting them is hard, and there's about 10% unemployment in the US for a reason. It's not just because 10% of people are lazy or incompetent and 90% are hardworking and good.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
> Nonfarm payroll employment edged up in March, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
> In March, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 4.6 million. These individuals accounted for 39.6 percent of the unemployed.
One must wonder if 39.6 percent of 7.6 percent is 10 percent, or is it 3 percent.
A three percent incompetence rate is lower than ten percent. It's also almost identical to the 3.1% of the population who are under correctional supervision: either in prison or on parole. (http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/aainjail.htm)
With a full 3% of the population actually in the correctional system, it is not hard to imagine that there is also 3% of the population incapable of contributing meaningfully to a job. Half of Detroit residents are functionally illiterate. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/07/detroit-illiteracy-...) 36% of Washington DC residents are functionally illiterate. (http://voices.yahoo.com/more-than-one-third-washington-dc-re...) Nationally, 21% of adults are functionally illiterate. To think that the vast numbers of illiterate adults who are also unemployed are ready and capable of holding down a job in a meaningful sense is a complete fantasy.
Your illiteracy studies? Not particularly rigorous science behind them. Not usually a good sign when what you cite sources no peer-reviewed studies at all. It's interesting that you chose those two places along with the correctional system to focus on, though.
But go ahead, blame my math, logic, and research skills.
Your first link referenced what amounts to a policy paper by the Detroit Regional Literacy Fund. Which is actually interesting because it implies the link goes to a study by the National Institute for Literacy.
As an aside, I'm not doubting the reputation of the National Institute for Literacy. I just don't trust any study I can't see the data from. This is a personal thing, but it comes from working and being friends with people that routinely manipulate data for Federal Policy Think-Tanks.
So first you have the Huffington Post with two sources, one that doesn't have any references in it and makes statements without visible justification and another that is The Wall Street Journal. Second, you've got a Yahoo Voices article: Your second link listed these sources: www.proliteracy.org, The Washington Post, Wikipedia, BBC News and the Associated Press. So you've got publications sourcing other publications.
The reason I don't immediately trust everything on the Huffinton Post and periodicals that don't actually source any studies AT ALL, is because they often draw inaccurate conclusions from bad data, or use sources that have no scientific grounding.
This happens a lot with medical studies.
The other problem is you seem to be assuming that the unemployed population is the same as the illiterate population. I don't know why you assume this, as your sources don't have any causative inferences.
Detroit has high illiteracy. Detroit also has high unemployment. Without a study, though, there is no implied causation.
If all you want is a citation from a periodical, I can do that: how about this that says 53% of recent college graduates are un- or underemployed?
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/one-in-two-new... , or
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2012/04/overqualified-college-g...