Unemployment soars, citizens rejoice!

by Matt Baxter

More people are jobless than there should be; at least that is what I keep hearing on the news. Fired, laid off, misplaced, downsized, reorganized or disorganized, removed for cause, or locked out. A veritable storm of working individuals prevented from doing their job, or any job for that matter. They hammer at the doors of employment like flesh-hungry zombies but are denied entrance. Maybe because they look like flesh-hungry zombies.

It turns out that there are acceptable numbers for unemployment, and then there are unacceptable changes in unemployment. When the workers (our team) far outnumber the non-workers (their team) the status quo is upheld. If their team grows in size, however, they are actually taking members from our team. We fear the competition and begin to believe that we’ll lose the next Big Game.

We are displeased when their team drafts other players because we secretly wish we were the chosen ones. The grass on their playing field really is greener, and they don’t have to wake up every morning to go to work like we do. We wouldn’t even care if we were third string sleepers-in, so we jump up and down, waving our hands and crying, “Pick me! Pick me!” [End of uncomfortable sports metaphor.]

An unacceptable change in unemployment is usually when it increases precipitously. If too many people are freed from their shackles at the same time, the ones left behind wring their hands as if they were sad for their former coworkers. In truth, they are just jealous. No one ever complains if unemployment declines by a large amount because they are happy to see all of the new faces at work, miserable just like them.

Still, some remain unemployed. When I am out walking the streets of my city, I wonder who these jobless folks are. Are they the people I see on the midmorning bus, or are those faces pressed against the glass headed to a job behind a counter, behind a grill, or at a desk? Are the jobless citizens the individuals shoving in front of me at the grocery, or the post office, or the barber during my daytime visits? Or are my fellow first shift non-busybodies on lunch break, preparing for their swing shift job, or on a much-deserved day off?

People who see me probably ask the same thing. I spend the morning packing my three children into the car, and then I stand on the front porch watching the oldest drive them all to high school. Out and about between eight and five, I am not old enough to be retired, I am not dressed as though I have anywhere important to go, and I do not appear to be a tourist. What is the explanation for my lack of participation in the economic machine?

I am newly a writer, unfettered from gainful employment. After my kids leave for school I write for a while. Two whiles if I am feeling particularly productive. After that I am out the door with the wife and we are walking the dog. If it is Wednesday we might walk to the nearby park to watch senior citizens play softball. That’s always a hoot. The run from home plate to first base can last as long as a meatball hoagie. The players don’t seem to worry about whether they are unemployed, they are so old they are just happy to be alive.

I quit my fifth-grade teaching job last spring so I guess I am jobless. But can that be true if I don’t want a job? I might be unemployed, or just unemployable. Maybe I am unjobbed. I write a monthly column for a local newspaper and get paid sixty bucks for the privilege of seeing my words (and a snappy little headshot) in print, but that doesn’t exactly make me employed. Not when the credit card bill comes in the mail.

At some point I very well might seek paid employment again, because I’ll need the money or to fill the endless hours of my life or because I feel like a slacker. Each of us, my children will tell me when they become cogs in the great economic machine, need to contribute to full employment. That way the economy will improve, and consumer confidence will soar, and I won’t be so embarrassing to them.

The last point is, of course, the most important.

But, I will respond to my lovely and gainfully employed children, full employment doesn’t even imply zero percent unemployment. That’s what award winning economists say. Full employment occurs when everyone in the economy who is willing to work at the current market rate for someone of his skills have jobs. Full employment does not imply that all adults have jobs. Some have said that an unemployment rate of 3% was full employment. Other economists have provided estimates between 2% and 7%, depending on the country, time period, and the various economists’ political biases.

So if it depends on so many things, how about we just decide that we are at full employment right this very second, even if the unemployment rate in my county is 7.9% (the worst since 1983), in California it is 8.2%, and for the U.S. it is 6.5%. That seems to fall within the parameters of the vague and varied numerical facts from the previous paragraph! Hallelujah! We have achieved full employment, despite what you and I have heard in the news!

If you don’t like those numbers, do something about it. Round up all your lay-about friends and drag them down to the first place you find with a Help Wanted sign. Then again, perhaps you should first go out and get a job yourself if you are without. Perhaps you think I should.

But I don’t want to. For now I shall remain unjobbed.

Work continues to confuse most people. Originally it was designed to provide income, allowing citizens to trade their human capital for the funds that buy the things they didn’t make themselves or get for free. Then, when cocktail parties were invented in the 1970s, work turned into human definition. No longer you are what you eat, but rather you are what you do. If your job wasn’t interesting or compelling, the other partygoers would shun you and you would drive home in miserable silence, plotting revenge by seeking promotions and pay raises that would only further your devotion to work and your lack of a life.

Work is overrated. Let’s be honest. We wouldn’t do it if we weren’t getting a paycheck. So let’s stop acting like unemployment is a bad thing. Rejoice! Use your free time to learn tae kwon do, or put crazy photos of your cats online, or call your friends to borrow money because you can’t pay the electricity bill.

In these times of economic peril, I urge you not to go back to work. For your own sake.

————————————————

Author Bio

Matt Baxter is a humor columnist and author who dabbles in the art of wordsmithing because gainful employment took up too much of his time. His wife and children do support his efforts, but his unconventional approach to life sometimes makes them wonder. Read more at www.mattbaxx.com.