Examining Unemployment

It is a universally accepted norm that adult humans must engage in one or more forms of gainful employment activities in order to eke a meaningful living. We rely on income from labor to maintain or improve our living standards. Rewards of labor give us a sense of personal achievement and self-worth. Losing a job translates to lower living standards and loss of self esteem. Unemployment comes with a severe impact on a person’s emotional and economical well-being. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” (King). This means that unemployment is not a problem for the affected individual alone but for the entire national economy as well. Unemployed citizens are considered by economists as an impediment to the growth of a country since they do not contribute the country’s production and national output.

Productive labor is internationally recognized as a means to an external but basic end. As a gainful activity, employment is an instrumental good. It is instrumentally valuable to the individual due to the income that it brings. From a socio-economic point of view, employment is also instrumental in the production of common wealth. Unemployment, therefore, adversely affects a person physically and mentally. Unemployed people are bound to suffer from conditions such as depression, obesity, malnutrition, and self-resentment besides the torment their families and dependants undergo. They lose their self-esteem when the society seems not to recognize their skills and achievements. The end result is development of deviant or unproductive behavior such as alcoholism or crime which might permeate through successive generations. This is what creates cultural stereotypes and discrimination in distribution of jobs.

From a simple citizen’s point of view, I find it absolutely scandalous for a country as rich as the United States to have over 46 million of its citizens collecting food stamps due to rising rates of unemployment. The real scandal here is that unemployment is a problem hardly discussed in the same level as warfare and celebrity gossip. Problems related to unemployment come to the center stage during election years only. I had the misfortune of accessing the national unemployment statistics recently and was quite disheartened to learn that by August 2011, African-American unemployment rate had surged to 16.7%, which was the highest since way back in 1984. At the same time, white-Americans’ unemployment had fortunately dropped to around 8%.

I say “fortunately” to underscore the scandalous nature of unemployment in one of the richest nations in the world. Job losses due to the current economic crisis seem to have affected some groups more adversely than others. This unemployment situation is even more scandalous considering the words of Thomas Thoreau: “If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself” (Thoreau). Thoreau’s statement in this case refers to the instigators of the 2008 financial crisis whose actions resulted in massive lay-offs worldwide. These culprits took away the only means most people had in the pursuit of success and happiness. Most people who lost their jobs were not responsible for the financial crisis and deserve to be reinstated back to work. Wall Street, Enron, Citibank, and other companies responsible for the current rise in unemployment rates should be made to give back the plank to the drowning people and pay for the lost wages and salaries.

High unemployment rates among minority youths call to mind the state of Ireland’s poverty stricken youths described by Dr. Jonathan Swift as young laborers who “cannot get work, and consequently pine away from want of nourishment, to a degree, that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labor, they have not strength to perform it, and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come” (Swift). Jonathan Swift’s implication in this statement is quite relevant to the present situation where some sections of the American citizenry are denied working opportunities for such a long time that when they eventually become employed they can never meet the demands of a highly competitive corporate world. They are eventually laid off on the pretext of incompetence yet the government does little to correct this injustice. Provision of full employment for all deserving citizens regardless of race or gender should be the central purpose of every government. As Thoreau states in the famous “Civil Disobedience” discourse, a state that is not governed by principles of reason has only poverty and shame to provide to its citizens (Thoreau). This implies that a government that does not address unjust distribution of jobs breeds poverty and shame among its citizens.

There are however some legitimate views to the argument that unemployment is, to a large extent, self-instigated. The government plays its part by providing access to successful employment such as in provision of quality education for all and implanting laws that ensure there is no discrimination in the hiring process. Most companies operate under an ‘equal employers’ status meaning they do not discriminate on the basis of age, gender, and race. It is therefore imperative for minority groups to stop pointing fingers at rising unemployment rates and strive to improve their status. This is possible through development of skills and capacities for all citizens equally.

It is the legitimate business of every government to ensure that deserving candidates for employment positions are never denied such opportunities due to age, gender, or ethnic bias. Equal employer policies should not only exist on paper but in practice too. Above all, the economy of the country should be structured on principles that lead to creation of more job opportunities for all rather than on amassing wealth for a few billionaires. These are, in my honest opinion, rationally justifiable objectives our government should pursue in its efforts to reduce unemployment.

Works Cited

King, Jr. Martin Luther. Letter from a Birmingham Jail. African Studies Center – Universityof Pennsylvania, 16 April 1963. Web. 26 March 2012.

Swift, Jonathan. A Modest Proposal: For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland,from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial tothe publick – 1729. Guttenberg. 27 July 2008. Web. 26 March 2012.

Thoreau, Henry David. Civil Disobedience. Berkeley Digital Library. 20 Aug. 2001. Web. 26March 2012.