The Psychological Affects of Unemployment

The harsh and sadistic truth is that no matter what, we need money. Nature of the beast, the society we live in, and given the cost of everything these days, we need a fair bit more of cash then we did. Obviously, the easiest and most legal way to get money is to get a job. Which is all well and good, but there may come a time where like many other companies, our work place decides to have mass layoffs at the very best or shut the doors for good at the very worst. Regardless, both result in us being considered unemployed.

The amount of people who are unemployed seem to grow. Whether you look at the official unemployment rate, which is just merely all people who are eligible for and do collect unemployment or just open up your eyes, to see what is going on, there are a lot of people who are struggling to find a job.

Unemployment as it turns out has a massive psychological affect on people.

The psychological affects are unemployed are far greater when someone loses a job that they have had for years and years. In some cases a couple of decades, but regardless that is the situation. One could see why that is a potentially grim thing. You work your way up through the years, clawing your way to the top. You become one of the senior employees, having seen more co workers come and gone than you care to remember.

Then you lose your job, all of your hard work means nothing. You have to start over. Whether or not you can find another job, is really irrelevant. You have grown to be used to working at the place. Perhaps in some ways, a long term employee of many years, even decades would rather grown attached to the place which they are working at. Then everything is all lost with just one stroke of the pen.

It would cause anyone to wonder if they worked a little harder, would their effort be the difference? Even if these people did the best they could, always in the back of their mind, they think better. Unemployment can cause a guilt complex, low self esteem, and the questioning of one's self work.

Even those who have a job for a short time, will feel the sting but it will not be hard. Unemployment hits more than the checkbook. Losing gainful employment can be a direct hit to the self esteem. That is one of the overlooked problems of unemployment.