Word: jobless
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...would be a post-World War II record. Many other economists fear that the figure could reach 10%. If it does, and if unemployment stays high, the President's figures would be skewed. Every percentage point of unemployment adds $20 billion to the deficit in transfer payments (like jobless compensation) and revenue loss. One little noticed fact: although the number of jobless jumped to nearly 9.5 million in December from 7.8 million a year earlier, the number receiving unemployment compensation actually fell, to just under 4 million, from 4.2 million. One reason is that last year's budget...
Common among the jobless is a sense of being condemned to uselessness in a world that worships the useful. Out-of-work people who do not develop such feelings on their own are apt to be given them when they visit the unemployment office: there the applicant is more often treated like an alien culprit in need of interrogation than an unlucky citizen in need of assistance. Says a young writer who was among the anonymous hundreds that Harry Maurer taped for the oral history Not Working: "I always get the feeling that the people at the umemployment office think...
...worst jolt of joblessness may be that first notice of it-the firing, the layoff, the company closure. That event, whatever its form, typically arouses feelings like grief, as though a loved one had died, according to experts like Industrial Psychologist Joseph Fabricatore of Los Angeles. The victim, says Fabricator, passes through stages of disbelief ("This can't be happening"), shock numbness, rage. The elemental severity of such a reaction tells a great deal about the invisible desolation that is possible-and commonplace-in the world of the jobless. The bruising can show up in feelings of worthlessness. Rage...
Surprisingly, or so it seems at first glance, most of the emotional beating that the jobless take is self-administered condemnation. Says a former publishing company worker in her 30s, who was one of Maurer's subjects: "I was persuaded that I must be not only as bad as the company must have thought I was to fire me, but much worse than that. Probably the world's worst. Probably I didn't deserve to live. It doesn't simply take away your self-confidence. It destroys you." Elliot Liebow, chief of the Federal Government...
Such social convictions cannot be changed by preaching. Yet it is fitting considering the frequent bleakness of the world of the jobless to mourn the nation's way of casually accepting increased unemployment as an unavoidable trade-off cost in the effort to achieve monetary stability and defeat inflation. News paper Columnist Russell Baker had the notion of that trade-off in mind a few years back when he wrote: "It is obvious that unemployment is an honorable form of service to the nation." The pity is that he spoke more truth than humor. -By Frank Trippett