Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations: Last Friday, when the new jobs report came out, pundits happily greeted the news that the unemployment rate had dropped all the way to 8.6 percent. Which is to say that only 13.3 million people — roughly the populations of New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego — were out of a job.
In fairness, this was almost 600,000 lower than the October figure.
Still, it reminds me of the old joke about the policeman who came upon a man rhythmically banging his head against a brick wall. “Why are you doing that?” he asked, rather alarmed.
“Well,” answered the head-banger, “it feels so good when I stop.”
But even by that standard, any celebration is premature. If you dig into the numbers a bit more, you’ll find we haven’t really stopped banging our heads against the wall. The payroll figures show that we gained only 120,000 jobs last month, which is barely enough to keep pace with the natural growth in the working-age population. And while there were encouraging upward revisions to previous monthly estimates, more than half of the decline in the unemployment rate came from people dropping out of the labor force.
Think of it this way: While New York, L.A. and San Diego were out there fruitlessly hunting for work, the city of Pittsburgh gave up in despair.
Of the people who stayed in the job hunt, 5.7 million had been unemployed for more than 6 months.
These are disastrous numbers. Long-term unemployment is not just a sad economic stat to shake our heads about as we debate the effects on President Obama’s re-election campaign. For the 5.7 million people who make up that statistic, it is debilitating.
Obviously, job loss strains household finances — many experts agree that unemployment is now the primary driver of America’s high foreclosure rate. But the financial dislocations are the least worrying problem.
Research has confirmed what anyone who grew up with a Great Depression survivor long suspected: Prolonged periods of joblessness and economic insecurity can permanently change your outlook, and mostly not for the better.
My grandfather — who came of age on a farm just as prices were crashing, banks were failing and loans were coming due — used to hide large sums of money around the house. My grandmother once found $10,000 stuffed into a teapot she was about to donate to a rummage sale. Until I myself went through a multi-year spell of unemployment, this was a funny family story; now it’s, well, almost reasonable.
I will certainly never again wonder why the old ladies I grew up with hoarded rubber bands and tin foil in giant balls. If you’ve been through it, you probably don’t either: Losing a job and not being able to find another one makes you afraid in a way that never really leaves you.
Those who have endured a lengthy bout of unemployment are more anxious and prone to depression than those who have not, and less likely to participate in community activities, even decades later. Unemployment strains marriages and friendships as the jobless withdraw to nurse their shame in private. Even when the dark period ends, those bonds can’t always be repaired.
Long-term unemployment also increases the risk of ... more unemployment. In this economy, many people are obviously unemployed through no fault of their own. But employers are inundated with hundreds of resumes for every job, which means they need to winnow the pile — and can afford the risk of excluding some good candidates. We have already seen many job listings proclaiming that the unemployed need not apply. Many more potential employers are probably thinking along those lines.
Unfortunately, they’re not entirely unjustified: Long-term unemployment really can make you a worse worker. Skills get outdated; industry knowledge fades. The very habits and thought patterns of work, such as getting up at the same time every day even when you don’t feel like it, start to erode. This has permanent implications, not just for the workers, but also for those of us lucky enough to have jobs. Those 5.7 million people who have been out of work represent a slow destruction of human capital, a reduction in our national economic capacity.
World War II reversed the worst of these effects for the Great Depression generation. Desperate to feed the war machine, employers would hire anyone who could breathe and carry a tool bag, giving them an opportunity to rebuild their skills and burnish their resumes. But that’s an economic strategy we can’t, and shouldn’t, repeat. And unfortunately, no one has yet come up with a very plausible substitute.
We should be glad, of course, that we’re no longer banging our head into that wall quite so hard. But it won’t actually feel good until we stop.
In fairness, this was almost 600,000 lower than the October figure.
Still, it reminds me of the old joke about the policeman who came upon a man rhythmically banging his head against a brick wall. “Why are you doing that?” he asked, rather alarmed.
“Well,” answered the head-banger, “it feels so good when I stop.”
But even by that standard, any celebration is premature. If you dig into the numbers a bit more, you’ll find we haven’t really stopped banging our heads against the wall. The payroll figures show that we gained only 120,000 jobs last month, which is barely enough to keep pace with the natural growth in the working-age population. And while there were encouraging upward revisions to previous monthly estimates, more than half of the decline in the unemployment rate came from people dropping out of the labor force.
Think of it this way: While New York, L.A. and San Diego were out there fruitlessly hunting for work, the city of Pittsburgh gave up in despair.
Of the people who stayed in the job hunt, 5.7 million had been unemployed for more than 6 months.
These are disastrous numbers. Long-term unemployment is not just a sad economic stat to shake our heads about as we debate the effects on President Obama’s re-election campaign. For the 5.7 million people who make up that statistic, it is debilitating.
Obviously, job loss strains household finances — many experts agree that unemployment is now the primary driver of America’s high foreclosure rate. But the financial dislocations are the least worrying problem.
Research has confirmed what anyone who grew up with a Great Depression survivor long suspected: Prolonged periods of joblessness and economic insecurity can permanently change your outlook, and mostly not for the better.
My grandfather — who came of age on a farm just as prices were crashing, banks were failing and loans were coming due — used to hide large sums of money around the house. My grandmother once found $10,000 stuffed into a teapot she was about to donate to a rummage sale. Until I myself went through a multi-year spell of unemployment, this was a funny family story; now it’s, well, almost reasonable.
I will certainly never again wonder why the old ladies I grew up with hoarded rubber bands and tin foil in giant balls. If you’ve been through it, you probably don’t either: Losing a job and not being able to find another one makes you afraid in a way that never really leaves you.
Those who have endured a lengthy bout of unemployment are more anxious and prone to depression than those who have not, and less likely to participate in community activities, even decades later. Unemployment strains marriages and friendships as the jobless withdraw to nurse their shame in private. Even when the dark period ends, those bonds can’t always be repaired.
Long-term unemployment also increases the risk of ... more unemployment. In this economy, many people are obviously unemployed through no fault of their own. But employers are inundated with hundreds of resumes for every job, which means they need to winnow the pile — and can afford the risk of excluding some good candidates. We have already seen many job listings proclaiming that the unemployed need not apply. Many more potential employers are probably thinking along those lines.
Unfortunately, they’re not entirely unjustified: Long-term unemployment really can make you a worse worker. Skills get outdated; industry knowledge fades. The very habits and thought patterns of work, such as getting up at the same time every day even when you don’t feel like it, start to erode. This has permanent implications, not just for the workers, but also for those of us lucky enough to have jobs. Those 5.7 million people who have been out of work represent a slow destruction of human capital, a reduction in our national economic capacity.
World War II reversed the worst of these effects for the Great Depression generation. Desperate to feed the war machine, employers would hire anyone who could breathe and carry a tool bag, giving them an opportunity to rebuild their skills and burnish their resumes. But that’s an economic strategy we can’t, and shouldn’t, repeat. And unfortunately, no one has yet come up with a very plausible substitute.
We should be glad, of course, that we’re no longer banging our head into that wall quite so hard. But it won’t actually feel good until we stop.
