Beats Might Fold (Sorta) & The Struggle of the Long-Term Unemployed: Top Stories for Tuesday

WHERE ARE YOU FROM? – Pfizer and AstraZeneca, AbbVie and Shire, Mylan Laboratories and Abbott Laboratories, Medtronic and Covidien, Burger King and Tim Hortons... it seems all of corporate America, and especially the pharmaceutical industry, is on the market for a foreign bride. The dowry is a sweet tax deal – an "inversion" – allowing the American company to move its headquarters abroad, and with it its country of taxation. Preferably one with lower or no corporate tax. With Congress unlikely to agree on legislation until next year, the US Treasury has taken its "first, targeted steps" against inversion. The rules apply to new inversions from Monday on and some retroactively to recent inversions. CNNMoney's Jeanne Sahadi details them here (or here in the official, longer version), but they're essentially accounting rules making it tougher for inversion candidates to avoid taxation on foreign earnings and to meet the 80-20 rule (the US company must own less than 80 percent of the merged company for the residency to be changed.)

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HONESTY IS THE BEST-PAYING POLICY – The SEC is awarding a foreign whistleblower more than $30 million for doing the right thing. What that thing is, we're unsure: neither the person nor the case were identified, to protect the individual. "This whistleblower came to us with information about an ongoing fraud that would have been very difficult to detect," said the US regulator in a press statement. The award is nearly twice the previous record but could have been even more, had the whistleblower come forward sooner, the WSJ's Rachel Louise Ensign explains. "Under the program, which was established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law, tipsters can get between 10% and 30% of the amount of penalties collected if their information leads to an SEC enforcement action with sanctions of more than $1 million," she writes. If you're tempted, make your target Wall Street, not government: not all whistleblowers are made equal.

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BEATS.ME – The Internet is in a frenzy, as it loves to be whenever the word "Apple" is typed, over the future of Beats, the music streaming and headphones brand the Cupertino giant bought for a hefty $3 billion. Techcrunch's Josh Constine came out with the news yesterday, saying Apple planned to shut down Beats Music, the streaming service started by Beats' Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine. Apple came back with a "not true;" Re/code's Peter Kafka reports that Beats Music could in fact be folded under the iTunes brand (or would that die too?). Constine stands by his reporting. "Apple’s response really depends on the interpretation of “shut down”, he writes. "If Apple rolls Beats Music into iTunes and removes the dedicated Beats Music app from the App Store, I would call that being shut down." I would too.

What's known is music has been slowly sliding down the list of things Apple does well. We haven't heard much about what exactly the plan is for Beats and it's been months since the acquisition. Not that it's uncommon for Tim Cook and Co. to work in total isolation before launching a product. And there's only a short walk from secrecy to being out of touch. "Once upon a time, Apple was at the bleeding edge of culture. Remember those iPod commercials?" writes my colleague Katie Carroll. She doesn't have kind words for Apple's botched U2 album release:

I can see why Apple may have looked at Beyoncé's surprise release and thought, "See? People still buy albums! Let's recreate the buzz!" But they miscalculated users' motivations. By sticking with an outdated music model and picking a band that's lost its edge, Apple squandered a chance to put themselves back at the forefront of culture. (Read the full post.)

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LEFT BEHIND – Rutgers University has a chilling survey out: one in 5 Americans laid off 5 years ago is still unemployed. The study also shows that barely more than half of those laid off received unemployment insurance, and 83 percent of those saw their benefits run out before they could get a new job. It also paints a picture of the financial and personal struggles of the long-term unemployed, even after finding a new job. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3 million Americans are long-term unemployed. It's an improvement from the high of 6.6 million in 2010, but who knows – after benefits run out and years of search prove unfruitful, there is little incentive to keep registering. Many of those left behind in the recovery do not show up in statistics. "Only about 11 percent of the long-term jobless find jobs each month, little better than in the depths of the recession," Ben Casselman, chief economics writer at FiveThirtyEight, writes on LinkedIn.

Rodrigo Gambra-Middleton wrote of his own experience on LinkedIn:

I will start by counting how long it has been since I started looking for a job. Exactly two years, three months and twenty eight days. That roughly translates to 849 days. Some days have felt very long, some have gone in the blink of an eye. Some are mildly clear in my memory but for the most part they tend to blur with one another. (Read the full post.)

"Rejection is part of the job search process, but it doesn't mean you aren't qualified or capable," writes Influencer J.T. O'Donnell. The stigma of long-term unemployment is real; this is how she suggests fighting it. And recruiters out there: Lillian Leblanc explains why that very bias is making you miss out too.

"A sad fact: The longer that someone is out of the so-called "traditional" workforce, the harder it will be to land a job. Why? The usually incorrect assumption is that there is "something wrong” with the individual. Often, the only thing wrong is poor timing or maybe just plain bad luck. (Read the full post.)

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Photo: Jack Newton via Wikimedia