[radog]

I think it is more symptomatic of the terrible job market than anything else. For most jobs available today (talented engineers in NY/SV excluded) there are usually hundreds of applicants for almost any half-decent position, and so employers have the luxury of culling based on any non-protected class that has any sort of predictive value, even if the correlation is extremely weak.

If the economy ever turns around, I suspect this issue will disappear. I certainly don't recall this when unemployment was at 4%.

[pyre]

It almost seems backwards though. When unemployment is high, it is less likely for someone that is unemployed to be so 'for a good reason.' If unemployment is low, and you are unemployed for long periods of time, I would think that would be the time to raise questions, because it would presumably be easy to actually get a job.