July 1, 2012 |
Photo Credit: shutterstock
Editor's Note: This is the first in an ongoing series on job insecurity.
Remember Dilbert, the mid-level, white-collar Cubicle Guy of the '90s
who could never seem to get ahead? In the 21st century, his position
looks almost enviable.
He has been replaced by Waiting-For-the-Other-Shoe-to-Drop Man.
Across America, freaked-out employees are coping with sweat-drenched
nights and heart-pounding days. They’re reaching for the Xanax and
piling on the work of two or three people. They’re running the risk of
short-term collapse and long-term disease.
The hell created by three grinding years of 8 percent-plus unemployment
brings us plenty of stories of what people suffer when they lose their
jobs. But what about the untold millions who live in chronic fear that
tomorrow’s paycheck will be their last?
Research shows that the purgatory of job insecurity may be even
worse for you than unemployment.
And it's turning the American Dream into a sleepwalking nightmare. From
young temporary workers to middle-aged career veterans, Americans are
being pushed to their physical and psychological limits in what has the
makings of a major national public health crisis.
The New Insecurity
We’re supposed to be a nation of cockeyed optimists. But many feel like
haunted wanderers in a dark forest, knowing that the slightest turn of
the foot could fell us. Just ask Alan L, a 32-year-old from Queens, New
York.
The path ahead should have been bright for Alan. After several years as
a music industry publicist, he took the ubiquitous advice of the
mid-aughts and went to back to school for a bachelor’s degree. Yearning
to do something more meaningful, Alan imagined teaching or perhaps
working for a non-profit, a job that would put his double major in
history and political science to good use.
Today he wakes up in the middle of the night, gripped by fear. He
checks his email compulsively, and suffers from the strange sensation
that he is invisible, that his body is floating in space.
Alan has a job. But not in a school or a non-profit. In fact, he can’t
even score work as a publicist, or even a position at a local bookshop
or music store. Since getting his degree in 2011, Alan has bounced from
one temporary assignment to the next, always aware the next quarterly
budget could send him packing. The specter of $40,000 in student debt is
his constant companion.
When Alan decided to go the college route, his parents and friends
cheered. Little did they know that a train wreck was coming. During his
second week as a full-time college student, the economy crashed. Still,
Alan worked hard. He made the Dean’s List. He won awards. “I wasn’t some
goofball, flaky student,” he says.
Now he has a constant sense of failure.
The temporary office jobs he lands offer no real path to full-time
employment. Tied to budget decisions, they frequently vanish with little
or no warning. “You begin to hear rumors that your job is going to be
cut,” Alan says. “People get passive-aggressive. It’s stressful.”
During what would be his lunch break, Alan runs a mini-command center
on his laptop, scanning job sites and sending out hundreds of resumes.
He’ll have three or four browsers open at one time, constantly hitting
the refresh button on jobs listings to see if any new posts come up.
Trying to look for a job while trying to keep a job is a frantic
enterprise.
Alan has started to experience the weird uncanniness of the New
Insecurity. He feels like someone on the outside of society, looking in:
“I’m not unemployed, so I’m not part of the TV narrative. I’m off the
grid. The advice I hear sounds like it was meant for someone else. ‘Live
cheaply! Go door-to-door to find a job.’ But I’m already in minimal,
survival mode. And as for going door-to-door in mid-town Manhattan? The
security guards won’t even let me in. My parents keep saying, ‘You
shouldn’t be on your laptop all day.’ But job searches are mostly done
online now—that’s the reality.”
Alan finds that the traditional ideas about finding, and keeping, a job
are bankrupt. He’s having panic attacks. Alan is not alone.
Xanax Nation
The 21st century started not with a bang, but with a bust. Two, in
fact. First, the Internet collapse and then, after a brief and illusory
reprieve in which the employment rate never returned to its previous
level, the financial crash. The economy remains stubbornly stuck in
second gear.
Job insecurity is nothing new for those on the lower rungs of the
economic ladder. Since the '70s and '80s, a shifting labor market and
anti-worker policies have been fraying the ties between employers and
employees, fueling the perception that a job is a temporary affair.
Globalization, outsourcing, contracting, downsizing, and recession have
conspired to make confidence in a stable, long-term job a privilege that
few can enjoy.
But the global recession has blown the numbers experiencing persistent
job insecurity through the roof. In the U.S., the stress of three years
of unemployment over 8 percent – the longest stretch at that level since
the Great Depression – has rocketed our anxieties to new heights, even
among traditionally secure workers. In Europe, where employees have
enjoyed more protections, workers are feeling
increasingly stressed, often trapped in low-wage and temporary employment with few benefits. Even in Germany, this trend of part-time "
mini-jobs" is wiping away the old image of Europe as a worker-friendly land of happy, full-time employment.
Compared to other western nations, Americans have few buffers when
things go badly. New Deal policies meant to protect us from brutal
economic downturns have been systematically shredded. At a time of high
unemployment and union disintegration, employers have less incentive to
provide health care and fair contracts. The vulture capitalism of
profiteering firms like Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital, which make a quick
buck by bankrupting companies and laying off employees, has created a
global image of America as a place where working people are so many
carcasses to be picked over by financiers. Better-educated workers are
still more secure than others, but a diploma is no longer the magic
ticket for holding on to a job. That's why the U.S. graduates of 2012
are
more concerned with job security than any other aspect of employment, including salary and benefits, one study found.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Our capitalist endeavor was
supposed to make us safe from the vagaries of weather conditions and
arbitrary events that harassed our ancestors. But somehow we’ve ended up
more worried than ever.
Anxiety disorders now plague
18 percent of the U.S. adult population
–- a whopping 40 million people. Only half that number are affected by
mood disorders. The drug alprazolam — familiar by its brand name, Xanax —
was prescribed 46.3 million times in 2010, making it that year’s
bestselling psychiatric drug. Prozac, the happiness-and-optimism pill,
has been pushed aside by a medication meant to just help you get through
the day without collapsing in a puddle of anxiety.
It’s easy to see the appeal of popping a Xanax. A
recent survey by the American Psychological Association paints a picture of workers on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
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Sixty-two percent say work has a significant impact on their stress levels.
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Almost 50 percent indicate their stress levels have increased between 2007 and 2008.
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Forty-five percent of workers say job insecurity has a significant impact on stress levels.
Today even bankers are doing time in the prison of job insecurity. Recent
layoffs sent
a shudder down the gold-plated halls of Goldman Sachs, which has
slashed 8.5 percent of its workforce over the last year over worries
about the European debt crisis and other negative indicators.
What We Don’t Know Can Hurt Us
Humans are pretty good at rolling with short bursts of pressure, but
chronic uncertainty throws us for a loop. Anticipating a major stressful
event can be worse than the actual occurrence itself,
research shows.
When we fear the hatchet will fall, when the future is a fog, when
we’re paralyzed by powerlessness, we start to flip out. We pile on more
work than we can handle. We don’t take sick days when we need them. We
start fueling up on coffee and cigarettes, and dropping the things that
are good for us, like leisure activities and trips to the gym. Under
chronic stress, our immune systems start to buckle from
“overresponsivity.”
Authors of a
recent study in Michigan
found that insecure workers were significantly more likely to meet
criteria for major or minor depression and to report a recent anxiety
attack, even after taking into consideration factors like race,
education, poorer prior health, and higher likelihood of recent
unemployment. Conclusion: Many of those who have managed to hang onto
their jobs during the Great Recession are getting mentally and
physically wrecked – often more so than those who have lost their jobs.
The study found that chronic job insecurity was a
stronger predictor of poor health than either smoking or hypertension. Months, even years, are shaved off of life expectancy.
Suicide rates are known to increase during economic downturns, and middle-age workers are especially vulnerable. Last year,
suicide rates were at an all-time high in Connecticut,
fueled by a sharp increase in rates among middle-age men. Middle-aged
workers may still have plenty to offer, but employers often consider
them used goods. In an economy with sky-high youth joblessness,
employers know that there are young, inexperienced people that can be
paid little and exploited at will. The jobs of older workers may be
“restructured,” the pace sped up, the pay reduced.
Why don’t the media spend more time investigating job insecurity? Maybe
we avoid it because it hits too close to home. A newsletter called
“Revolving Door” arrives in my in-box with nail-biting frequency to tell
me about the comings and goings in the media industry. It’s cheering to
see somebody moving up, but more often the news centers on a venture
failing, an editorial team let go, a rumor of impending cuts. In the
Great Media Meltdown of 2008, I lost half of my freelance gigs in the
course of a week. The panic in New York publishing circles was
widespread, leading me to start a Web site called Recessionwire with two
laid-off editors. I was never without some form of job, but I worked at
a maniacal pace to keep myself from thinking about my depleted savings
and uncertain prospects.
Stacey Warde, a 53-year-old magazine journalist, can relate. He had
nearly 30 years in the news and publishing business under his belt when
the economy crashed and he joined the tens of thousands of journalists
who were displaced. He turned to farm labor as one of the last
employment options that remains strong during downturns.
“In publishing, we were always scrapping and scratching,” says Warde.
“But it was nothing like what happened leading up to and during the
financial crisis.” Burdened by falling ad revenues and rising printing
costs, his magazine folded soon after the crash. “Before, I didn’t have
to worry about whether or not I could pay my rent. That’s all changed.”
Warde took a job as a blueberry grower for neighbors who own a small
farm. It’s hard work, but he has enjoyed many of the challenges.
Uncertainty is his new reality. “There are a lot of things that could
end my job,” Warde says. “Bad weather, conflicts with the landlord over
water. You just don’t know.”
Warde also has to contend with health worries. The health insurance he
gets now through the VA, to which he is entitled because his current
income renders him officially “indigent," is fraught with a bureaucracy
that keeps him from getting the care he needs. “I’ve had two melanomas
removed in the past, but I haven’t seen a dermatologist for four years. I
have rashes on my skin and I constantly worry.”
He also worries about his daughter, a medical student who is working
her way through school. “She’s a good sport, but it feels awful that I
can’t help her more.”
If Warde loses his current job, the local economy of San Luis Obispo
County, Calif. doesn’t have much to offer. The more secure government
jobs have been eliminated. “There’s a university, and a prison, that’s
about it,” he says. He tries to stay optimistic. “I don’t want to sit
here and feel sorry for myself. I focus on networking, on doing what I
can today. I’m lucky to have supportive friends.”
When you don’t know whether your job will be around next year, or even
next week, how do you plan for the future? What happens to dreams like
buying a home? Saving for college? Retirement? In the face of job
insecurity, thoughts of any of these things bring instant panic instead
of hopeful planning.
Unlike losing a job, the fear of losing the job you have is not a
discrete, socially visible event. Your course of action isn’t clear
because you don’t know whether or how the job loss will occur. Things
like unemployment insurance weren’t meant for your situation. There’s no
intervention mechanism. You may become paranoid at work – and for good
reason. Some managers have been known to try to get employees to quit so
that they don’t have to pay for unemployment insurance. The collegial
feeling among workers can curdle into cut-throat competition.
There’s no question that job insecurity is eroding our quality of life. And its
prolonged effects can lead to coronary heart disease and even cancer.
The apologists for unbridled capitalism tell us that employers need
maximum flexibility to hire and fire so that wealth can be created for
all. In the face of ever-increasing income inequality, that line doesn’t
play. And the public health costs of the New Insecurity -- which will
fall on everyone -- are not factored into the old equation.
Most Americans are prepared to work hard for a living, but is premature
death our only reward? The worst effects of pervasive job insecurity—on
health, family, society—take time to incubate. Some of the signs are
just now becoming visible. If this constant assault on our well-being
goes on much longer, its effects may linger for decades. We're on a
dangerous path -- and changing it should be a national priority.
Lynn Parramore is an AlterNet
contributing editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding editor
of New Deal 2.0, and author of 'Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in
Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture.' Follow her on Twitter
@LynnParramore.
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