Remember unemployment?

Here are two recent findings on the link between unemployment and well-being.

First, in paper presented to this week’s RES Conference, Clemens Hetschko points out (pdf) that when unemployed men retire, they enjoy a big rise in well-being - even larger than that enjoyed by people getting married. This suggests that the unemployed are unhappy not just because they lack income, but because they feel stigmatized; when this stigma ends - nobody expects the retired to work - their happiness rises.

Secondly, Andrew Clark and Yannis Georgellis show not only that unemployment reduces well-being, but also that people do not adapt to it. People who become unemployed get unhappier the longer they are unemployed. In this sense, unemployment is worse than divorce or even widowhood, as people adapt to that and their well-being rises in the years after the event.

All this corroborates what we should know - that unemployment is a large and widespread source of misery. A political system that was serious about improving well-being would therefore have joblessness as its overwhelming priority.

Which our present system doesn’t. Joblessness is just one issue jostling for attention alongside political donations and the price of pasties. And when it does get attention, our rulers only make it worse.

Is it really a surprise, therefore, that voters should opt for a dictator-loving charlatan rather than our main parties?

Comments

[Luis Enrique]

yep.

imho what you call stigmatization comes from having internalized the idea that one ought to be working, it's not a matter of feeling stigmatized by others so such.

[John]

The future for the working class jobs is not good, the trickle down effect was supposed to give the worker the crumbs from the rich mans table, now the rich man wants to keep the crumbs as well. As margins have been squeezed they have put the burden on the workers by reducing wages and benefits. We need to move back to a goods producing economy, not the services myth we have today. gp jobs

[gp jobs]

We're now entering a period of long term mass unemployment & the longer it continues the more likely it will be deemed as acceptable by those who are not effected.

Jobs are not being created despite all the Tory lies. How is a job which covers maternity leave for example a new job? You are just temporarily replacing somebody.

Many 'jobs' on websites such as totaljobs are short/part time.

gp jobs

[Duncan]

I'm not a huge fan of George Galloway but would you extend the term 'dictator-loving' to the representatives of the Labour Party who have lined up behind Middle Eastern despots in recent years?

I've seen a lot of reactions to Galloway's victory today which seem very selective about their distaste, i.e. Galloway is beyond the pale because of his odious comments to Saddam Hussein but Tony Blair is not.

[George Carty]

Isn't the economy being choked by a combination of Home-Owner-Ism and expensive energy?

Land Value Tax would do something about the first issue, while smashing the anti-nuclear movement (which would include jailing politicians who oppose nuclear due to being in the pocket of fossil fuel profiteers) would do something about the second.

[Keith]

Every one seems to love dictators. So long as their "our" kind or doing us a favour. In the end off course they usually turn out to be a liability. Saddam was just fine so long as he fought the Iranian mullahs and shipped us oil. Only when he decided to attack the wrong countries under the impression he could do what he liked did he become a problem. At least Gorgeous George is a laugh and has rhetorical skill. Unlike the cardboard cut out talentless twats who constitute most politicians. As for humanitarian intervention it seems to have a very poor track record if you take it seriously as an idea. As every state needs a Government when you overthrow one group you must install another and the new lot seem to be no better. The actual range of options in terms of new management is one limiting case. It seems to doom any realistic plan for interventions.

[Bialik]

"A political system that was serious about improving well-being would therefore have joblessness as its overwhelming priority."

I was looking for an all-party parliamentary group on the subject the other day and there was nothing at all. Not even one for youth unemployment, the issue all governments want to persuade us they take seriously. A bit rubbish.

[Hoover]

"All this corroborates what we should know - that unemployment is a large and widespread source of misery. A political system that was serious about improving well-being would therefore have joblessness as its overwhelming priority."

May I trouble you by suggesting this is an error of logic.

Unemployment is a large and widespread source of misery - granted.

Solving joblessness should therefore be the overwhelming priority - disputed.

Disputed firstly because unemployment may not be the only large and widespread source of misery that the government should be tackling.

Secondly because when the pool of unemployed labour falls to one solitary man in, say Exeter, practical good sense dictates that saving him should not be the government's overwhelming priority.

Thirdly, because a wise government is - or ought to be - working also to improve things in the future. Lack of education correlates to joblessness, so the government must also improve education. You can devote all your resources to solving unemployment today, or you can support school reforms that will only start to yield fruit in five, ten or twenty years.

[Chris]

I've just returned from a meeting at a hotel in London with a German customer. I stayed Sunday night for the meeting on Monday; the customer flying in early Monday. I didn't notice that not a single member of staff was UK-born, but the German guy did. He also noted that in the half a dozen trips to the UK in the last 12 months he rarely met UK staff in service businesses.

This survey of one suggests we have created plenty of private sector jobs, albeit low-paid service jobs, and it's other EU citizens taking them up.

In the dim recesses of my memory I have a figure of 80% of quite a large number of private sector jobs (800,000?) created in recent years (10 years?)going to EU citizens.

My point is that we have created the jobs but our people might just be work-shy.

Perhaps, Chris, you have some data about this.

[George Carty]

Those hotels are probably staffed with Eastern Europeans who are happy to live fifteen to a room for a few years in order to save up for a house (back in their own country, where it is much cheaper than in London).

In other words, it is Home-Owner-Ism has destroyed the British work ethic. Why work at all when you'll never be able to earn enough to buy a house?