Poem: "The Erasure of Unemployment"

>> I have struggled SO LONG with my burnout and underemployment and unemployment. <<

*hugs* How awful.

>> And what am i, if i dont have a job, what do i call myself when someone asks me "what do you do?" <<

You find some other way of identifying yourself. People have used parent, homemaker, creative pursuits such as writer or artist, spiritual ones such as priestess, hobbies or volunteer efforts like historical reenactor, etc.

>> And at that i am one of the lucky ones, i have a loving partner who pays the bills. I have financial security but not existential security, if that makes any sense...

Finding a sense of self worth has been horribly difficult. <<

It makes sense. Even if you have money, people often don't want you around just because you don't fit their expectations of what people are doing.

They forget that you don't "get" a job. You BEG for a job. Someone else decides whether or not you're permitted to have one. And it's rarely about qualifications -- when there are 60+ people applying for a skilled job and hundreds or thousands for an unskilled job, obviously most of those people could do the job but only ONE of them is allowed to work.

>> Thanks for this. Brief but pointed, as some tools are. <<

I'm glad I could help.

Short-term unemployment is a moderate problem. It causes a small but statistically significant reduction in the person's engagement in society, which is permanent. But it's something people can overcome, and it's never going to be possible to avoid ALL unemployment.

Long-term unemployment is devastating. It kills people. This is the kind we really need to reduce, and instead, it's increasing. Employers stop wanting people around age 40, but the legal retirement age is rising. So that's 30+ years when employment is precarious or impossible for large numbers of people who have little other means of survival. And employers don't want to pay people a lifetime's wage in the 10-20 years of work they seem to be interested in.

>> I wonder if people who are voluntarily out of jobs (retired, gone back to school) go through this same sense of loss, or if some do and some don't. <<

In my observation it runs the spectrum. Many people who quit voluntarily are fine because they have some other goal, and it was their choice. Others thought they would be fine, but the dismount did not go smoothly.

>> It seems for Dale it's been a mix of him really having to work to separate his identity from the store, and also coming back to himself with all the things that work suppressed (e.g., creativity). <<

And quite a few have mixed feelings like this.

Thank you!