Unemployed Men: An Ongoing Crisis

My father was, as the saying goes, a “Jack of all trades and Master of none.” I’m told that he was a truck driver when he and my mother met.

Within my personal memory – and I was the youngest of four children – he worked in heavy construction, farming, as an auto mechanic, insurance salesman, and back again to truck driving. He died of a heart attack shifting a load so that he could make it through a weigh station.

I was thinking of this as I read fellow boomer-blogger John Agno’s “So Baby Boomer” blog yesterday (http://www.sobabyboomer.com/2011/04/job-crisis-for-boomer-men-continues.html). In it, John cited a headline from the Bloomberg Business Week for April 11, 2011 which crowed that the four-month drop in the jobless rate, to 8.8 percent from 9.8 percent, was “its largest decline since 1984.”

That is good news, John pointed out, but there are dark clouds behind that silver lining. “Part of the reason for the lower jobless rate is that many people, particularly men, have simply given up looking for a job and for that reason are no longer counted among the unemployed.”

“The male labor force—those employed or seeking work—has actually shrunk 0.7 percent since the male unemployment rate peaked at 11.4 percent in October 2009. That’s one reason the jobless rate for males was down to 9.3 percent in March.”

My father was, of course, of an older generation than the men sidelined by the economy today but I don’t think that his psychology is that much different.

Men, particularly those of my father’s generation and the generation immediately following his, the Baby Boomer generation, cut their teeth on the expectation that they will grow up, get a job, have a family, and be the principle breadwinner for that family. This expectation is a part of their identity, their sense of self.

There may be some who will argue that this expectation is an example of male chauvinism and that men should base their sense of self on something deeper, more intrinsic, than their role in the economy of their families and their nations. I won’t argue that question.

While I am unemployed, I am not a man, so I can only guess at their mindset by extrapolation back from what I observed in my father. On that basis, I think it is safe to say that long-term unemployment has a devastating effect on men that goes even beyond financial or economic issues and strikes at the very roots of their psyche. The stress on these men – and on their families – is profound and troubling.

My father did whatever needed to be done to support his family. When a broken back necessitated the end of heavy construction, he went to farming. When a tornado destroyed our farm, he went into business for himself as an auto mechanic, when a heart attack made that strenuous work impossible, he got his GED, took the training, and began selling insurance.

At this point, I was out of the home and I really don’t know what it was that impelled him from insurance back to truck driving. Whatever it was, it cost him his life.

The man just could not “do nothing”. He had to be working at something, he had to be productive, in order to see himself as anything but a failure.

The point is, he did what was needed. While there are undoubtedly some deadbeats, I believe that most of the men who are currently unemployed, under-employed or inappropriately employed (working at jobs that they were not trained for or that are not a part of ther previous and, often, high-status, high-paying careers), would be more than happy to do what is needed – if they could only find a job.

I can’t offer them much hope, but I can give them my understanding and my sympathy.