http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123974560
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455219391652725.html
The current US unemployment situation is most drastically affecting white Midwest manufacturing workers and "trophy kids" from the Millennial Generation, which we've already discussed a bit: http://worldaffairs-manwnoname.blogspot.com/2009/02/welcome-to-recession-spoiled-brats.html
Self-esteem without basis encourages laziness rather than hard work... The ability to persevere and keep going [is] a much better predictor of life outcomes than self-esteem...There’s an element of entitlement—[Millennials] expect people to figure things out for them.
- Jean Twenge, psychology prof. at SDSU
It's foolish to generalize an entire generation, but new graduates born between 1980 and 1991 grew up with comfort, security, and high expectations. As suburban Boomers had fewer kids and bigger incomes, they doted on their children and taught them to believe that they were special and destined for great things of their choosing. But with that mindset, if things don't go well for them, it can't be their fault, right? They're perfect; what are Harvard and Google smoking to reject them? Something must be wrong when 74-79% of Millennials surveyed thought of themselves as physically attractive and very intelligent. It can't be all grade inflation and TV. More Millennials think that they will have postgraduate degrees and high-paying jobs versus previous generations too. Maybe even scarier, more Millennials think that they will be able to earn a living as entertainers and artists versus their predecessors. Good luck.
But it's not all their fault; sometimes "society" and timing are to blame too. Studies of the 1980 and 1990 recessions showed that for every 1% the unemployment rate rises, new graduate salaries drop 7%. So similarly skilled people who entered the job market during a boom may enjoy 25% higher pay than those who entered during a bust, which will haunt them their entire careers (by cursing them to a lower baseline). The number of graduating seniors given job offers was down 21% from 2008 to 2009. An American's first job has huge impact on his or her career potential too. Recent graduates stuck with a less glamorous job out of desperation are handicapped for future promotions or job transitions, because employers write them off as low achievers (in general, but of course there are exceptions with a few truly talented young workers getting ahead). So maybe the Millennials who shun boring, subsistence jobs and prefer to spend a year or two "finding themselves" and living off their parents are on to something (and the clingy, enabling Boomer parents are complicit in this for another precious opportunity to dote and feel life in their homes again). But they can't wait too long, as the younger crops of grads with more current skills, more fire in their bellies from spending their teen years in a recession, and no "gaps in employment" will be breathing down their necks.
Here's more reason to feel for the Millennials: studies have shown that prolonged unemployment during the post-high-school-to-age-30 years increases the risk for lifetime alcohol abuse, poor health, and depression, even when controlling for people's psychological background, exposure to alcohol, and socioeconomic situation. So maybe all those years of being praised as wonderful (when they were always just average) makes the let-down of "you're not even good enough to get a job" all the more bitter. This is another reason why it may do more harm than good for parents to coddle and overly inflate their kid's self esteem.
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“A man is not a man without work.”
“During the Depression I lost something. Maybe you call it self-respect, but in losing it I also lost the respect of my children, and I am afraid I am losing my wife.”
“I still love him, but he doesn’t seem as ‘big’ a man.”
Quotes from people who lived through unemployment during the 1930s.
And now for the older folks: 3/4 of recent job losses were incurred by men, since male-dominated construction, manufacturing, and finance have had the most layoffs, while female-oriented service, health, and education jobs have fared better. For the first time ever, women may comprise the majority of the US workforce by mid-2010. But unless the woman earns significantly more in a non-traditional household, an unemployed father/husband has disasterous effects on the family. Besides their financial contributions, men are less likely to help with household work while unemployed (maybe in rebellion against their loss of manhood from unemployment), and being out of work affects them more psychologically (self worth, mood, treatment of others, turning to destructive behaviors).
Only a death is more traumatic to a family than male unemployment. The likelihood of divorce increases drastically when the man is out of work, especially for over 6 months, which is now the average duration of American unemployment (the longest period since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started the measurement in 1948). All the divorces and unstable households will have terrible impacts on the children and America' future. Despite some arguments that children can still excel from single-parent homes (like Obama), statistics show the opposite. And more unmarried, unemployed men on the streets causes social problems. Married men are less likely to be involved with gangs, crime, and drugs, since they are spending more time doing wholesome family activites (in theory). This point applies more to poor blacks than whites or Latinos, but all races are affected. People are still having kids at normal rates (which is expensive and can negatively impact work performance), but fewer people are deciding to marry during this recession too (as in the past), which makes sense due to the exorbitant costs of the "ideal marriage" played up by the wedding industry, and shifting priorities during hard times.
All this has been going on in predominantly white communities from the Rust Belt to Buffalo even before the recession began. And the jobs lost there will never come back, despite what the politicians may promise and what the people may hope for. If they want to return to the workforce, they may need complete retraining, which is expensive, time consuming, and maybe not practical for many of them. Plus they will be competing with more qualified and experienced urban folks for new jobs. We've already seen the effects of this phenomena in urban black blue-collar communities in the 1970s. As the jobs left, those African Americans had difficulty transitioning to other employment, due to cultural and racial barriers. A macho steel worker can't become a courteous customer service rep overnight. So instead of joining the urban service sector as women and immigrants did, blacks languished and turned to depression and crime. I don't know if Rust Belt white communities are heading down that same path, but it's possible.
And on a societal level, recessions and tough times can make people meaner, less progressive, and less tolerant (against those who get blamed for the harships of the masses, namely immigrants). Politicians say that they draw inspiration from the American spirit of good people helping each other, working together to deal with hardships, and getting back to basic values. Like those Allstate commercials and whatnot. In some cases, recessions do make people more compassionate and grounded, as class tensions and wealth gaps shrink. But in the current recession, the rich-poor gap has actually increased (thanks, Goldman Sachs). Anger against the rich (and by extension, our leaders) has spiked, as we've seen with the Tea Parties and populist backlash. White lower-income Americans are increasingly feeling left out of the American promise (blacks and Indians are saying, "Welcome to our world!"), and are raging against that.
To close, I'll leave you with this statement from The Atlantic's Ron Peck:
In The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, the economic historian Benjamin Friedman argues that both inside and outside the U.S., lengthy periods of economic stagnation or decline have almost always left society more mean-spirited and less inclusive, and have usually stopped or reversed the advance of rights and freedoms. A high level of national wealth, Friedman writes, “is no bar to a society’s retreat into rigidity and intolerance once enough of its citizens lose the sense that they are getting ahead.” When material progress falters, Friedman concludes, people become more jealous of their status relative to others. Anti-immigrant sentiment typically increases, as does conflict between races and classes; concern for the poor tends to decline.
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