American Jobs Act Features Sop to Unemployees

Walter Olson of Overlawyered.com reveals another way President Obama's American Jobs Act would complicate the process of hiring a person. The bill [pdf] will make it illegal to consider an applicant's employment status when making a hiring decision. It would also ban advertising that makes reference to current employment status and put other restrictions on employment agencies. Here it is in glorious legalese: 

SEC. 374. PROHIBITED ACTS.

(a) Employers- It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to--

(1) publish in print, on the Internet, or in any other medium, an advertisement or announcement for an employee for any job that includes-

(A) any provision stating or indicating that an individual's status as unemployed disqualifies the individual for any employment opportunity; or

(B) any provision stating or indicating that an employer will not consider or hire an individual for any employment opportunity based on that individual's status as unemployed; or

(2) fail or refuse to consider for employment, or fail or refuse to hire, an individual as an employee because of the individual's status as unemployed;

(3) direct or request that an employment agency take an individual's status as unemployed into account to disqualify an applicant for consideration, screening, or referral for employment as an employee.

(b) Employment Agencies- It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employment agency to—

(1) publish, in print or on the Internet or in any other medium, an advertisement or announcement for any vacancy in a job, as an employee, that includes--

(A) any provision stating or indicating that an individual's status as unemployed disqualifies the individual for any employment opportunity; or

(B) any provision stating or indicating that the employment agency or an employer will not consider or hire an individual for any employment opportunity based on that individual's status as unemployed.

(2) screen, fail or refuse to consider, or fail or refuse to refer an individual for employment as an employee because of the individual's status as unemployed;

(3) limit, segregate, or classify any individual in any manner that would limit or tend to limit the individual's access to information about jobs, or consideration, screening, or referral for jobs, as employees, solely because of an individual's status as unemployed.

At the end of August and the beginning of this month, I wrote about the so-called 99ers (non-workers who have exhausted their extended unemployment benefits), about the damage I believe the most famous 99ers are doing to their own hiring prospects and about Obama's verbal support for legislation like the requirements above.

Somewhere in there I noted that I think discriminating against a person who is not currently working is poor hiring practice – but then again I've never had to cull a stack of 500 résumés. 

Creating a new protected class, however, is a poor precedent, and the advertising restrictions raise First Amendment issues. Adding new legal hoops for employers also strikes me as a strange way to get people hiring again. In any event, the 99ers have already been displaced in the public imagination by The 99 Percent. 

So I repeat my earlier exhortation to the 99ers: Do any work you can, even if it's day labor, rather than building a personal brand as an unemployee. The president really can't help you on this.