U-S jobless rates in November were up in 37 states as national unemployment rose to 6.7 percent. The labor department reported that more than a million jobs were lost in the last three months alone. That figure is not just a number, there are people behind those statistics, and psychological ramifications for those individuals. NPR recently interviewed Michigan psychology professor Richard Price in a feature on Day-to-Day entitled, This is Your Brain after You’re Fired.
In that interview Price shared his findings from interviews he had done with people who had been fired. He followed them for two years. He said while the job loss itself was traumatic, it’s the cascade of things that happen afterward that are the most difficult for individuals to deal with on a psychological level.
From securing health insurance to paying the mortgage, the difficulties mount to a degree that might incapacitate a person. Without cash, transportation might become an issue which can impact the job search. Price says nearly 20 percent of people who are fired are vulnerable to some sort of depression or other debilitating psychological effects. This impacts not only moving forward in the job search, but the quest for a better work life integration as the idea of career or work tends to trump personal needs.
If you have lost your job, or know someone who did, just the awareness of the rough road in our current economic times is a start. The next step Price says, is to identify, examine and explore other marketable skills we might not have embraced in the past. The interview is worth a listen.
