I know plenty of people that are long-term unemployed. With some the idea of talking about work is deeply upsetting, they just cannot bounce back, pick themselv

I know plenty of people that are long-term unemployed. With some the idea of talking about work is deeply upsetting, they just cannot bounce back, pick themselves up, learn a new skill and get set into a new career. To them I should be an example of how it is done - I had to change career a few years ago, and despite being long in the tooth with no formal university education in things like OOP, I was able to learn enough to get a programming gig and move on from there. I do e-commerce for my sins and I am fortunate enough to always get work. Last time I had to pick up the phone I had 12 interviews lined up by tea time with a couple of those being of the 'start Monday' variety. From this perspective I am aware that, for what I do, there are more jobs than candidates. Sometimes I watch the news and see some story about unemployment, particularly among the younger entrants into the job market. Normally you have some talking heads in the news article where the government gets blamed for individual circumstances of despair and no opportunity. I then feel bemused, and wonder why the world of work is how it is with companies like my current employers unable to find me a front-end dev for love or money. Sure we would take zero experience for the right candidate, although a few years of experience would be far preferable. I truly doubt we would have more candidates even if there were a million out of work coal miners in a five mile radius, that is what I find odd about this article is that there were '1000 applicants'. For all of my out-of-work friends I do try and find them some work, even if they are not able to enter the job market properly. I can conjure up some translation work (for those that have a different mother tongue) or some customer service work (that requires no pre-requisite skills). I also offer to train them up in everything I know. But do these opportunities, even the easiest, baby-step stepping stones get followed up on? No!!! Never!!! Those of us in the world of work, able to get up in the mornings and able to wear clean clothes doing as we are told working for the man at some desk all day with a convenient pay check just do not 'get it' when it comes to understanding the long term unemployed. To us it seems obvious - learn a new skill, get some experience, put together a portfolio, move to a new area, but many, many people are fundamentally depressed and excluded from the job market. Our advice and gentle nudges falls on deaf ears. We don't understand them and they don't understand us. Articles like this one and every news article ever written on unemployment just has this naive view of things and never touches on the issues of self esteem and confidence that haunt many job seekers.