The Wall Street Journal recently published a piece about several laid-off workers from the business sector, entitled “Where They Are Going.” It told tales of high-paid financial workers converting their sudden unemployment into a chance to turn a new leaf, find themselves, and start over. One such six-figure man suffered a six-month stint as a truck driver—a job he could not bear to return to—while two others used their savings to find their calling driving another type of vehicle: a Mister Softee ice cream truck. As I read about incredibly wealthy people taking unemployment as a way to return to a simpler life, my thoughts on what was supposed to be an uplifting article shifted to only one expression: fuck off.
The reality of the recession was best reported by The New York Times last Friday in their piece on the boomers, or “Generation B.” While high-paid executives are finding a new lease on life, the economic downturn has devasted regular folk. The generation of our parents, aged 45 to 65, now has the highest suicide rate of all age groups. “It’s hard to maintain your focus that you’re a valuable member of society when you go three months and nobody really wants to employ you,” 59-year-old David O’Bryan of Barre, Vt. told Time. It’s no surprise that according to the U.S. Federal Suicide Prevention Resource Center web site, “widespread increases in unemployment” are “strongly linked with increases in suicide rates.” Even those who have work face the constant stress of looming job cuts and the fear of “Will I be next?”
Here’s a generation that grew up thinking that success came from hard work and finding a stable job. And for a while, most of them had that success. They had jobs, they had houses, and they had stability—until the summer of 2008, when it all began to fall apart.
While Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke declared last week that the recession “is over,” the jobless rate in the U.S. is still at a 26-year high. New York City now faces unemployment above 10 per cent, and the U.S. overall is at 9.7 per cent. That means roughly one in ten Americans that would like to work is unemployed. Ask around, and it won’t be hard to find students with unemployed parents. The boomers aren’t just losing their jobs, but also their houses. Two weeks ago, Bloomberg reported that foreclosure filings in the U.S. exceeded 300,000 for the sixth straight month. Sure, a lack of income can be weathered out with unemployment insurance and savings, but that can only last so long. Though the U.S. government and banks are trying to modify mortgage payments to prevent foreclosures, the climbing jobless rate is making that impossible.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, jobless rates will likely remain high for years to come. In fact, job prospects have been so bleak that the United States’ discouraged worker rate—also known as persons of legal employment age who are not actively seeking employment—reached 758,000 in August, doubling from last year. That’s not even including the PhDs who have taken on part-time jobs, or other such cases of underemployment.
Unemployment is a lagging indicator of economic growth. The OECD explains that recovery will be slow, due to how quickly and severely the recession began. As I explained in my last column, New York University prof Nouriel Roubini and Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz fear the economy will either recover very slowly, or dip back into a deeper recession, bouncing back later. Even the optimistic option is bad for morale.
Regarding the six-figure workers who “found themselves,” I feel badly about getting so enraged at their happiness. But the sentiment remains. Yes, losing your job allows you to take a look at who you are and reconsider your career options. But for far too many, losing your job is a nightmare you can’t wake up from—at least according to current economic forecasting—for several years.
