It’s common knowledge that jobs ain’t what they used to be. Just because someone creates a new job doesn’t mean that it actually replaces one of the many jobs shipped offshore or otherwise eliminated for American workers. In other words, one new job will not be enough to provide for one worker’s income. More and more a family needs two jobs to make up for a lost job. From the Utne Reader:
A good job means one that pays enough to allow a family to buy or rent a decent home, put food on the table and clothes on their backs, afford health insurance and child care, send the kids to college, take a yearly vacation, and retire with dignity. A good job means that two parents don’t have to juggle three jobs to stay afloat, and that they still have time to spend with their kids.
The article points out that Government is in a perfect position to create those jobs when private industry can’t or won’t. But more alarming still is the very real cost if unemployment is allowed to continue unaddressed:
Harvey Brenner is a longtime student of the correlations between economic fluctuations and mental and physical health. According to Brenner, who is a sociologist and a public health expert at Johns Hopkins University and the University of North Texas Health Science Center, for every 1 percent rise in the unemployment rate (about 1.5 million more people out of work), society can anticipate 47,000 more deaths, including 26,000 fatal heart attacks, 1,200 suicides, 831 murders, and 635 related to alcohol consumption.
Unemployment is not just abstracted numbers or a game that translates into political advantage. It can cut short dreams, hopes, and sometimes lives.
Isn’t this the truth. I was just thinking the other day about how my father, at my age, was only five years away from comfortably retiring – having achieved all the things you mention above. Admittedly I’ve had some trips and falls along the way in my career but much of that has been due to the economy and layoffs and, yes, having to accept positions below my abilities just to put food on the table – forget college for my daughter, vacation and retirement – all things that would have been possible for us 10-12 years ago. Are we the first U.S. generation that will not, financially speaking, do at least as well as our parents?