Elders Find it Difficult to Find Jobs in Washington DC

According to the attached article, elders find it hard to find jobs in Washington DC, especially when they hope to go back to the work force as life expectancy becomes longer these days. Because they are not proficient in computer skills, they are not as competitive as young employment seekers. The article stresses how elders are trying to pick up computers skills, technology oriented job fair, and a lack of opportunities for elders (Washington Post).

Through my personal experience in this semester, I can totally understand their situation. Having lived here for a semester, I feel that there are two extreme kinds of jobs in Washington, one is intellectually intense and the other is highly practical and organizational skills-intense. The first kind of course are open to a selective number of people who have extraordinary working or academic background, while the latter is actually demanding as well. As a young person, I even feel the strong need to enhance my computer abilities. I always felt I know enough to handle office works, but not until I saw how my supervisor, who is from the same age range, could manage different settings, mastered almost all functions of Microsoft Office, and can incorporate multiple softwares in order to generate some documents and layout that look very basic and easy did I feel that the workforce is becoming much more demanding and one almost need to be both a generalist and a specialist, a generalist to be able to comment on a wide range of issues, and a specialist who is able to assume full responsibility of a sector of work at a work place.

I think largely because of the nature of the work available in Washington, the unemployment remains 9.9%, so we should probably pay more attention to even development. When the administration tries to introduce manufacturing jobs to the country, there should also be other kinds of jobs created for all demographics. Otherwise, the dropped unemployment rate would due to many people leaving the job market and giving up finding a job, just like Ms. Frances China, a senior lady mentioned in the article who eventually chose to starting her own baking business while keeps seeking employment after her substantial efforts of finding a job.