Where is Dickens When We Need Him?

Dickens' novels all seem to turn around the questions of the "deserving poor" versus the "undeserving poor". While the theory of Social Darwinism -- which Dickens argued against -- has been widely discredited in academia, it keeps popping up in business circles. And today's New York Times has a particularly depressing example.

According to an article by Catherine Rampell, "A recent review of job vacancy postings on popular sites like Monster.com, CareerBuilder and Craigslist revealed hundreds that said employers would consider (or at least "strongly prefer") only people currently employed or just recently laid off."

In other words, if you're looking for a job, you need to have a job. This, despite an unemployment rate of 9.2%, according to the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Refusing to consider someone who's currently unemployed for a job "probably does not violate discrimination laws because unemployment is not a protected status, like age or race," Rampell writes. New Jersey has recently passed a law outlawing the practice, and other states (and Congress) are considering similar action.

But such legislation may not help much: if proving age- or race-discrimination is hard, proving that you didn't get hired because you were unemployed at the time is going to be that much more difficult. Moreover, in a few occupations -- like technology -- it may be legitimately important to stay on top of the ever-changing field. This does not explain the ads that the Times found for concierges, orthopedics device salesmen, air-conditioning technicians, and others that required current employment.

A related, and equally distasteful, practice is that of companies using job-applicants' credit scores to decide whether to hire them. While there may be a handful of cases where such scrutiny is valid (where there is clear opportunity for embezzlement, say), in most cases it is just another obstacle for people who have been laid off and have fallen behind on their bills. And how are they supposed to raise their scores back to prior levels if they don't have a paycheck to cover those bills?

Both techniques are easy shortcuts for companies inundated with hundreds of resumes for every posted position. I understand the problem. I understand the frustration of dealing with resumes that are completely wrong for the position. I understand that even HR departments are short-staffed these days. But short cuts are rarely the ethical choice, and they certainly aren't in this case.

In fact, they may be exacerbating this country's racial divide. In another article in today's Times, Sabrina Tavernise reports that "Hispanic families accounted for the largest single decline in wealth of any ethnic and racial group in the country during the recession, according to a study published Tuesday by the Pew Foundation." In the period from 2005 to 2009, median wealth for white households declined by 16 percent, for African-American households, by 53 percent; for Asians, by 54 percent; and for Hispanics, by 66 percent, meaning that the wealth gap between white households and others is "the largest since since the government began publishing such data a quarter century ago". (The full Pew Foundation report is available on the Times website, here, or on the Pew site, here)

So maybe it isn't Dickens we need, but Joseph Heller. How else can you describe this but Catch-22?