January 21, 2012
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The brutal cruelness of unemployment
We have a big problem in the United States. People have been socialized into thinking that all cases of unemployment are indictments on the unemployed’s character. The result is reactions to unemployment and poverty ranging from dismissiveness to disdain to out and out abusive treatments. What’s more in the unemployed themselves, there is a sense of unworthiness and inadequacy and pervasive depression. All of which is a natural consequence to both being treated that way and buying into the myth that people are unemployed because they personally aren’t good enough and not due to societal and economic factors far beyond their control.
And the thing is, it’s an obvious falsehood. Yet people all across the country believe it. Indeed we’re going to hear a lot more of it as the Presidential election rolls around as the Republican party is going to make this their platform. The reason unemployment is high they will argue, is that people have become too weak and stupid and dependent and they just need to be pull themselves up by their boot straps and get used to hard work and then everything will be fine.
What’s incredible about these kinds of indictments is that they don’t take into account basic Mathematics. The simple fact is the jobs don’t exist. There’s 14 million unemployed people in the country and another 14 million without full time jobs. That’s just the people that we count. A lot of these people without full time jobs might as well be unemployed really. For example I have a friend who has two part time jobs but can’t get more than 8 hours of work a week, nowhere near enough to survive and no unemployment. That’s what a lot of companies are doing though, hiring lots of people at miniscule hours at pittance pay. They can do this because there are so many people out there desperate for work that they’ll take anything and have zero bargaining power. There are 6 unemployed job seekers for every single job opening, and they are competing not just with each other but also with everyone who hates their job and wants to switch or has a job but wants more hours or greater pay. Not to mention the millions of new people entering the work force every year and the competition from potential employees abroad.
Do you see the basic fallacy?
Even if you took everybody and made them all the hardest working people imaginable, turned them all into geniuses, made them all perfectly healthy, trained them up to be experts in every possible job, gave them the knowledge and credentials of people with multiple PhDs, made them all perfectly personable and skilled people persons, made them all get along with everyone, made them all impeccably dressed and well mannered, ensured they were all incredibly creative and innovative and capable and heck even beautiful. Even if you did all of that to every single person in this country today…. guess how many unemployed we’d have tomorrow or a month or two from now?
14 million.
The jobs DON’T EXIST.
They won’t appear by magic. Improving humanity will only shuffle up who has the jobs. It won’t create new jobs. Certainly not in the short to moderate term anyway. Maybe in the long term some of those geniuses will create new businesses that hire people who otherwise would not have had jobs. Maybe. I have my skepticism about how many real new jobs that aren’t just replacements of old jobs these entrepreneurs create. Very often improvements in technology that create new jobs also cause people who were working old jobs with old technology to lose their jobs.
But even if it does work, it won’t happen overnight. We’re talking decades. And over the course of decades our employment situation is already on course to radically improve even if we do nothing at all, provided we don’t screw up and induce more recessions.
It’s totally irrational to assume we can just make people better and everything will be ok. And it’s equally irrational to assume that all or even a majority of people are unemployed because of personal failing in them. Anyone who has ever interacted with our employment process on the hiring, firing, or seeking side has seen how very much imperfect the system is. So much of what causes people to hire one person and not another has to do with ineffable things and emotions like whim, instinct, a sense of camaraderie or similarity, emotional connections, desire to help out friends and family, desire for revenge. It isn’t a hard science. It’s quite frankly a lot of luck. Even getting your resume looked at for a good job is often a matter of someone chancing upon a needle in the haystack.
We need to start understanding that unemployment exists because of social problems not because of character. It’s system failure not individual failure. The simple fact is when you have a huge economic collapse leading to a prolonged depression a ton of perfectly capable ambitious well meaning intelligent high quality potential employees won’t be able to get jobs. And the longer they are out of work the harder it will be for them to get work. And the more society will judge them and treat them like shit because of it which in turn reduces their self esteem and makes it even harder for them to find jobs. So the end up opting out of society altogether, giving up, contemplating suicide, or considering a life of crime. And is that any surprise? If society writes off people why should we not expect people to write off society? People’s lives are ruined by being unemployed. Their entire futures lost. They suffer emotional and psychological damage that can last a life time and a reduction in future earnings that puts them often permanently on track for less prospects for their children, worse health, and constant struggle no matter how hard they try to change their future. And we don’t seem to care at all. We just treat them like it’s all their fault, these genetically inferior refuse, and they’re just getting what’s coming to them. We act like we should just avoid associating with the icky unemployed or low salaried so we don’t get their cooties.
But it’s not really their fault. It never was. They didn’t ask to be unemployed and so many of their work their asses off trying to become not unemployed anymore. In reality, it’s all of our faults for not doing what we need to do to make an economic system that actually works and gives everyone the opportunities they need and deserve. Instead of solving that problem we’ve decides to be cruel and vicious to anyone suffering so as to blind ourselves to our own culpability. That’s how we roll.
Comments (20)
Well said and so true.
excellent post! My hubby has been unemployed all winter and then some; he is college educated.
Very good post and the little bit one gets when unemployed is not enough to take care of one person little alone a family we really should have policies in place to take care of our own after all we are the taxpayers and we pay more than enough to play for government toys and to take care of our people
You said it all.
I live in the UK and unemployed, it pretty bad in some cities, I think in the city where I live 20+ people are chasing each job. The jobs do not exist.
I want to work, I have got a disability and it makes things harder in this climate.
Well said. Even in the best of economies, there are unemployed people. Technology changes, companies downsize or shut down all together, people lose jobs for irrational reasons, all of these things happen regardless of how the economy is doing. To add insult to injury, some companies won’t hire unemployed people for certain positions based on negative stereotypes of the unemployed. That makes it even harder for the unemployed to become the employed, and it really isn’t fair to them, and it’s not really that good for the companies either.
*Applause*
Fantastic analysis of the situation.
I would add the fact that there are too many laws on the books right now. If someone wants to start a business, such as a daycare or even a lemonade stand, the government can come by at any time and say, “Oh, you don’t have a license? Here’s a $155,235,886,128,122.02 fine. The sheriff will be coming by next week to enforce the court-ordered injunction. Of course, if we catch you practicing your unauthorized trade, you will be thrown into jail” and that is that.
very true and quite sad.
well written!
We are hiring at my work. We struggle in that when we hire people, many of them don’t want to work. It is amazing to me that after all the talk about the unemployment rate being so high that it is a challenge to find people that are willing to work. Now some will say that some of these jobs are low paying. It is true that some of the jobs that we are currently hiring for our low pay. But that is how you start out. It sucks but you start out at a low income (I did when I was young with a wife and a young child). Then you work all day and go to school at night. If you are really low income in our country, college is funded for you anyway. But even if you had to pay for it like me, you just work hard. I know some other people in our industry that are hiring. But they are struggling with the same problems. Recently a guy at our work told me he wanted to get fired so he could sit at home and draw unemployment. He said it wasn’t worth the extra $5000 a year to work.
Oh, and one other thing. . . listen up kids. Drop the degree in liberal arts and take computer programming or something you can use.
And by the way, I was just offered a job this morning which I didn’t take. Someone can go take that job.
@TheTheologiansCafe - As usual, the asshat replies with his bullshit.
On another note, didn’t you predict with a douchey air of certitude that Rick Perry was going to be the next President? He’s not even in the running anymore!!!! *facepalm*
You should work for Faux News. The stupider you are, the better. They’ll hire you.
There’s a lot of truth to this. Certainly, some people are their own problem, or a big part of it. But, as you simply put, there aren’t enough jobs out there for those that do work hard. I know a couple of people who are unemployed not for their own failings, but because of mergers(One of them had a job that paid quite well, and produced millions of dollars in sales for the company, but was still dropped and has yet to find work since – nearly a year). My dad, also, was forced to retire early because his company merged with a german company. They were foolish to fire him, he had done overtime often over the years without taking credit for it, out of fear he’d lose his job. He worked himself too hard and what he got for it was a security escort out of the building at over 60 years old with 25 years of experience at the company.
If something positive can come out of this, i hope it is that many people can find their creative side and develop a much more independent economic status. In the era of the internet, this is more possible then ever.
I was unemployed for a long time. I think there are too many people competing for the same job bc the unemployment rate is so high. I interviewed at a doctor’s office that had 800 applicants for two positions.
Amen!
In my area, there’s an average of 35 people competing for one job. Thirty fucking five. It’s ridiculous. This includes the unemployed, recent school graduates, and people who just plain hate their jobs and are looking for a switch. How the hell is anyone supposed to find work when the odds are so severely stacked against them? And there are still people who are so out of touch with the job market and economy that they think anyone can just walk in anywhere and suddenly become gainfully employed.
@TheTheologiansCafe - You can go fuck yourself.
@the_rocking_of_socks - Which part of my comment did you disagree with?
thanks for this post.
@the_rocking_of_socks - I recently applied for a teaching job at a school that is in the smallest division in Wisconsin. I think the high school is lucky if it has 100 students total. Anyway, I was up against 150 other applicants. Then the same school had a substitute position open and 100 people applied for that.
@TheTheologiansCafe - And that’s why I tagged you in my entry.
Also, check out godfatherofgreenbay’s comment right above this one.
@Unstoppable_Inner_Strength - I left a nice response giving you advise on your site and by the time I was done, I saw I was blocked.
Here was the comment I tried to leave.
Every job in the last 23 years except one I got from knowing someone. In other words, your friends are the people that can get you a job. Go to them first. I get offered a job almost every week. I must admit I spend all day with people that own their own business but I am not afraid to state my accomplishments. Almost every business leader in our business is hiring right now. But most of them don’t list jobs in public. They just ask around. We are looking for someone right now. We post the jobs but often we just pick someone that someone knows. Your friends will get you there. Again, I realize you might not see eye to eye with me but this does work. So sit down and make a list of 100 people you know that are in a position to help you. Then go to them one by one and ask them if they have someone. It has been my experience that a handful of people place everyone. In other words, some people are in a hiring position or know people but only a few actually place almost everyone. Focus on those people. You might know someone that helped a friend get a job. Go to that person. The same person that got your friend a job is more likely to get you a job too. Don’t sound needy to your friends. You need them to think you are a good find.
Let me work it out for you this way. I knew a business leader after I got out of the military. He knew a guy who owned a business and his sons worked for him while going through college. So I went and saw him. He was not hiring but I told him I would outperform all of his other employees. I just sat there in a chair in front of him. I then got a job because I knew almost everyone on a hiring board. I then got a job because I know the CEO of an organization. I then received a job where I knew the owner of the organization. I then got my first job where I did not know anyone. Then I got another job because I knew the owners which is my current job. So look at who you know first.
The second thing I would do is have my resume done professionally. Then I would spam it and change it to match job listings. The only time I got a job not knowing anyone, I spammed my resume out 150-200 times a day. I kept changing it for each position. I spent 8-10 hours a day spamming and changing my resume and I received a ton of responses.