The Frustrated Teacher: unemployment

Showing posts with label unemployment. Show all posts

7/18/10

An Hour Of Franken Sanity On The Floor Of The Senate

Yes, he should be president!

7/16/10

The New Guy Will Vote To Keep Millions Out Of The Poor House

Rockefeller: Goodwin Will Vote for Unemployment Benefits Extension

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) just answered the question on the minds of all the people who have lost their unemployment benefits in recent weeks: Senate appointee Carte Goodwin (D-W.Va.) will vote in favor of the unemployment benefits extension bill that the Senate will take up shortly after he is sworn in at 2:15 p.m. on Tuesday. That means there will be 60 votes in favor of the bill, enough to overcome a Republican filibuster.

Rockefeller announced Goodwin’s anticipated vote for him as he made remarks during a press conference today. West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D) announced during the presser that Goodwin will replace the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D).

3/8/10

Unemployed America: Headed For Bereavement

At least the bankers got their bonuses.

Andrew Oswald, an economist at the University of Warwick, in the U.K., and a pioneer in the field of happiness studies, says no other circumstance produces a larger decline in mental health and well-being than being involuntarily out of work for six months or more. It is the worst thing that can happen, he says, equivalent to the death of a spouse, and “a kind of bereavement” in its own right. Only a small fraction of the decline can be tied directly to losing a paycheck, Oswald says; most of it appears to be the result of a tarnished identity and a loss of self-worth. Unemployment leaves psychological scars that remain even after work is found again, and, because the happiness of husbands and the happiness of wives are usually closely related, the misery spreads throughout the home.

Especially in middle-aged men, long accustomed to the routine of the office or factory, unemployment seems to produce a crippling disorientation. At a series of workshops for the unemployed that I attended around Philadelphia last fall, the participants were overwhelmingly male, and the men in particular described the erosion of their identities, the isolation of being jobless, and the indignities of downward mobility. (link)