Yes, we do feel that bad when our career is taken away from us. And the residual negative effects tend to linger permanently. In 2003, I lost my communications boutique - and then my mind Download Geezerguts. And I've never been the same.
Economist at the University of Warwick Andrew Oswald did research on this. In the current issue of NEW YORK Magazine, Jennifer Senior reports that Oswald found "that the psychological effect of unemployment is even greater than the loss of income that accompanies it." The recovery is slower than that from losing a spouse of even health and may never be full. For example, our capacity for happiness may never reach pre-layoff levels and our earnings could be 10 percent lower even a decade from now.
That documents what we might have observed among those who have been unemployed in earlier downturns and in our own experience. An acquaintance from the energy industry who was out of work for two years became a very different person. Once professionally ambitious, he finally after being knocked around even more took a job in government, where he had started before his corporate climb.
This all is no newsflash. Losing a professional identity, at least in America, entails so many aspects of our daily routine, networks, sources of satisfaction and status, and confidence. This can be a harsher experience during a severe recession like this one when the last thing former colleagues as well as current family, neighbors, and friends want to hear about is another person entering unemployment. Worse for them is that we might cling to them for emotional or job-placement help.
My career has come back, so has my earning power. But the sweetness and the light are gone. Maybe that's the way it should have been many years ago. Perhaps sustained affluence, at least in my line of work, kept me childlike.
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