Greener Joblessness?!

In I wrote that technological advances can allow us to be much more efficient, but this is an example you may never have considered: Unemployment! Look what’s happened in the last twenty years.

In 1991 you looked for work in person- door to door- or searched the newspaper. You kept lists and clipped ads, you printed up masses of resumes and bought all the envelopes and postage you could afford. You burned a lot of gas cruising to offices to fill out applications, one by one. The state sent you a paper form to fill out each week and you mailed it back. You waited with bated breath by the phone and mailbox for any word.

Now it’s almost all different, revolutionized by the World Wide Web. A few places still put a sign in the window, but newspaper classified ads are almost extinct. They’ve been replaced by Craigslist, WorkSource, and myriad other listing sites. You might print a few resumes, but it has become an almost exclusively electronic creature, quickly customized for each application, pumped out with each contact. Postage is almost eliminated. You’ll still use fuel, mostly to go to resulting interviews, but even there, interviews, arranged on email, sometimes take place over the phone.

The Washington State Unemployment Security Department still has paper forms if you need them, but almost everyone uses either the telephone or online weekly claim check-in. You will find excellent resources at any Work Source location, and an amazing array through their website. So even in a painfully slow economy things are improving!

There are now about 320,000 unemployed persons in Washington, so each week, compared to the old way of being out of work we save around 640 reams of 8 ½” x 11” paper on state claim forms, plus 320,000 envelopes, plus all the printing on each, plus postage each way, plus perhaps 400,000-500,000 resumes per week, plus their printing/copying, plus their envelopes, plus the time and effort of all that addressing, plus postage, plus all the energy for delivery, plus a newspaper subscription per person, plus  most fuel usage. That’s almost solid green, but it is counterbalanced somewhat by the additional purchase of all the computers, smartphones, web tablets, and all, but what a spectacular improvement in sheer utility!

Even the person who is least concerned about the environment will understand what a huge savings this represents for the State and the unemployed in our time of financial hardship.