Unemployment Blues: Downward Mobility

Virginia Bola, PsyD All the indicators show an improving economy and, finally,
the start of job growth. More than eight million unemployed
workers see hope around the corner and re-enter the
nightmare of job search with increased enthusiasm and the
positive outlook they lost six months ago when they
virtually gave up on ever finding a good position.

What do they find?

Service jobs: customer service, hospitality, tourism, food,
travel, entry-level healthcare, retail. What are these jobs
offering? 30%, 50%, 75% less income than the old
manufacturing jobs which have moved to foreign countries.
Where are the benefits, the insurance, the paid holidays,
retirement plans? Where have the stability, seniority system
and regular raises gone?

It is a new world, an evolving economy, a changed future.
Everything will work out, government forecasters confidently
predict. With tax reductions continuing, the economy will
expand and thousands of high-tech, highly compensated
positions will be created. Keep the faith, job seekers are
advised -- this is the United States where innovation and
entrepreneurship always prevail and life gets better and
better.

Keep mouthing the platitudes and perhaps the 50 year-old
former auto worker with an eleventh grade education or the
60 year-old dislocated engineer with outdated job skills and
high blood pressure will actually start to believe it. At
least until they return to active job search and encounter
the real, not the hypothetical/political, labor market. That
is when the true economic progression of twenty-first
Century America emerges: an increasing number of
millionaires, an increasing number of entry-level, low paid
workers, and a great middle class vacuum.

The displaced worker is confronted with the choice of
working at a level far below his/her skills, education, and
abilities warrant, or staying unemployed. When the
government reports that in the near future "Every one who
wants a job will get one," the connotation of unemployment
is that jobless workers do not WANT to work. This political
myth leads to increased depression, diminished self-esteem,
and the final conclusion by the legions of the unemployed
that their personal fears turned out to be true: they are
worthless, unwanted, redundant. The universal anxiety about
not being quite good enough, not measuring up, not able to
run with the big dogs has been validated and the mental
health of the unemployed deteriorates further.

About the Author

Dr. Bola operated a rehabilitation company, developing
innovative job search techniques for disabled workers, for
20 years. A licensed clinical psychologist, she directed
vocational programs for the mentally ill, served as a
Vocational Expert in administrative and civil court, and
pioneered vocational testimony in Workers' Compensation.
Author of The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival
Manual, she can be found at: http://www.virginiabola.com