Four and a half years ago, I was laid off from a major drug store chain where I had been employed for almost six years; first as a cashier then as a shift supervisor and assistant store manager. The reason for the dismissal of many salaried assistant managers had more to do with the chain's financial difficulties than it did with the quality of work we produced. Indeed, many of us were steady, middle aged employees. The problem had to do with the company buying another drug store chain. The stock went from $7 per share prior to the transaction to less than .25 per share. The company found itself 6 BILLION dollars in debt. Suddenly, they chose to take salaried positions and make them hourly. This meant fewer employees to do more work with fewer hours and for less money and fewer benefits. Older workers were especially targeted, hence, I was laid off.
Unfortunately for me, this was 2009 and the height of the Great Recession. I never had much difficulty finding another job in the past so I wasn't overly worried until six months had passed with few interviews and no employment. The months dragged on into a year and unemployment benefits ran out. I had long since lost health insurance coverage. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me that I couldn't find a job. I had been working since I was in high school so it wasn't a case where I had little or no working experience. It took some time but I started running across articles which pointed to age discrimination AND discrimination against the unemployed as chief factors in the long term unemployment of older job applicants. Finally, I knew I was not alone but that did not help my situation much. I became very depressed and found myself needing professional psychological help because of how serious the depression had become. In my case, the illness was my salvation. I received the help I needed but was classified disabled because of my diagnoses of Bi-Polar Disorder, Autism and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This was enough for me to be able to tap into my earned Social Security benefits and Medicaid. Without the severe financial stress, my life became more stable but still without employment.
Once again, I discovered that I am far from alone. Though the recession is supposedly behind us, many, many long-term unemployed remain. According to Dean Baker and Kevin Hassett ( "The Human Disaster", New York Times, May 13, 2012):
In 2007, before the Great Recession, people who were looking for work for more than six months — the definition of long-term unemployment — accounted for just 0.8 percent of the labor force. The recession has radically changed this picture. In 2010, the long-term unemployed accounted for 4.2 percent of the work force. That figure would be 50 percent higher if we added the people who gave up looking for work.
A disproportionate of the long-term unemployed are older workers (over 50) and the prospects for employment are fairly dismal.
A worker between ages 50 and 61 who has been unemployed for 17 months has only about a 9 percent chance of finding a new job in the next three months. A worker who is 62 or older and in the same situation has only about a 6 percent chance. As unemployment increases in duration, these slim chances drop steadily (ibid).
With dimming job prospects, the long-term unemployed face increased emotional, financial and even health crises. While the emotional and financial crises may be somewhat predictable, if awful, the effects of unemployment on a persons health is less self-evident. According to Baker and Hassett, however, the life expectancy for a male long-term unemployed person drops by a year and a half. Reasons for this include suicide:
A recent study found that a 10 percent increase in the unemployment rate (say from 8 to 8.8 percent) would increase the suicide rate for males by 1.47 percent. This is not a small effect. Assuming a link of that scale, the increase in unemployment would lead to an additional 128 suicides per month in the United States. The picture for the long-term unemployed is especially disturbing. The duration of unemployment is the dominant force in the relationship between joblessness and the risk of suicide (ibid).
This fact alone is reason for the government to intervene to create jobs but there is more. There are causal links between long-term unemployment and cancer, heart disease and psychiatric problems. There are also negative effects on the immediate family. Divorce is much more likely as is negative achievement of children in school (ibid). What this demonstrates is that unemployment of six months or longer is a crisis, not only for the worker but for family and for society as a whole. This crisis ought to have been addressed long ago but it has largely gone unnoticed by the governmental bodies able to assist. Congress has done nothing. The White House has ignored us with no mention of the long-term unemployed in months, if not years. It is as if we no longer exist. We are invisible. We are, seemingly, irrelevant.
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