Unemployment and Underemployment

By Tom Hemphill

We are often told that the economy is picking up. Wall Street seems to be thriving, large companies are making huge amounts of money, and our elected officials assure us that all is well. However, millions of Americans are facing unemployment or underemployment – many of them for the first time.

What is “under-employment”? If you cannot find work in your field or at your accustomed level of income, what are your options? Stay unemployed and keep searching for a job that’s right for you? Or take something far less in order to have some income? When you agree to do work that is much below the level that you are capable of, you are underemployed. We often hear of the rate of unemployment, but rarely of the rate of underemployment.

Experts say that for every American currently out of work, there is another working at well below his or her capacity. These are the underemployed – people who take whatever job they can, typically at a salary far lower than their skill and experience warrants, just to be able to keep working and meeting their family’s needs. Why should we care about people who are unemployed or underemployed?

Why is this a spiritual concern? Because unemployment and underemployment eat people up. Being out of work or working hard for little reward typically destroys self-confidence, dreams, and initiative. It endangers family relationships. Unemployment and underemployment destroy people’s spirits. As anyone who has been through it for more than a month or two can tell you, unemployment is rough for many reasons. The most typical difficulties are in finances and perseverance. The unemployed suffer all of the hardships that go with no income or sharply reduced income.

In addition, they must work up the drive to “market” the toughest thing anyone ever sells – themselves. They must “package” their product with the right resume and covering letter. They must be diligent in “market research” - finding and then following up job leads. They must “advertise” their product through conversations, contacts, letters and applications. Then they must “promote” their product through questionnaires, phone interviews, and face-to-face interviews until they “make a sale” – i.e., they find a job.

Small wonder that their spirit takes a beating! In the late 1990s I worked in a training program for unemployed professionals and executives. Virtually all of them – well-educated and accustomed to well-paying jobs – struggled with the difficulty of the marketing process which is job hunting. They clung to their convictions of who they were, and sought others to affirm this by hiring them.

Difficult though unemployment is, the task facing an underemployed person is even more spiritually defeating. All of the underemployed people I have talked with fought hard to avoid going that route. All of them were first unemployed for a long time, seeking to find work and a salary appropriate to their skills, experience and goals. None of them willingly chose underemployment.

After extensive (and expensive) periods of no income, standards were lowered, dreams were given up, convictions were whittled away, and willingness to compromise in order to survive became necessary. For almost all, the compromise was not just about a less interesting job or a smaller paycheck. In virtually every case, they felt they had compromised themselves.

After you have tried to deal with the world on your own terms – this is who I am, this is what I do, this is what I want in return – and lost, your sense of self takes a major hit. Some “New Agers” might say, “Oh, that’s all just ego. You have to surrender to God’s will.” For someone who has worked hard and been successful in honest work, it is difficult to believe that God has suddenly chosen to cut him off at the knees.

One could argue that if you are filled with an inflated ego and grandiose dreams, then this comeuppance is inevitable and may be even healthy. Yes, I agree. However, the blow to self is just as severe if you are not filled with ego, and your dreams were modest. Whatever your self-assessment was prior to underemployment, it is far lower after some months – or years – of apparently meaningless work with apparently no end in sight.

Historically for men and increasingly for women, our career or profession – our work – is an important piece of our self-definition. It is how we say who we are. In unemployment, we offer ourselves and promote ourselves, asking the world to affirm our self-definition. When this does not happen, the blow to the spirit can be severe. Beyond that, underemployed people live with a kind of disability. Like someone with an illness, or someone in a wheelchair, they live with a limitation. In order to be employed, they have had to accept the world’s rejection of them, and take work that formerly would have been inappropriate. This new job does not “fit” them.

If they felt a sense of vocation or mission in their previous occupation – that they were serving God in some capacity - the blow of having that taken away is especially difficult to accept. It is as though their offering of self-sacrifice and service has been rejected.

We might reasonably honor these people for their willingness to do what they must in order to feed their families. More typically, however, when we see them in their new role that role becomes self-defining. Rather than being seen as one who is at a high level of skill or accomplishment (and therefore, high social worth), the unemployed are now seen in their new role, exercising a mediocre level of skill in a lower level responsibility (with a much-lowered social worth).

This is not cruel, necessarily. Most of us see people not as they are but as what they are doing.

Nevertheless, underemployment is harsh for the person who has accepted it. The inability to find a job appropriate to his or her skills is felt as a rejection by society. If she has worked very hard to get to that stage in her career, there is a sense of betrayal as well. The rejection and the betrayal are felt to be unreasonable, unwarranted and unfair.

Many people who are well along in their careers take a step lower, or side-step into something unrelated, believing this to be a temporary digression. They believe they will soon be back where they should be. However, as the time of under-employment lengthens, or perhaps passes from one underemployed position to another, their new situation increasingly defines them. They know with each passing day that the world will see them as they have become, not as they once were. Their career is shot. Their prospects of getting back “up the ladder” are sharply decreasing. Nothing lies ahead but more (or less) of the same.

The spirit of an otherwise healthy person can be eaten alive in this setting. Every day the underemployed person is conflicted – believing in her memory of her accomplishments and her vision of her potential, yet forced to endure the ignominy of social rejection, low pay and no hope to change it.

In addition, the work that is done is often meaningless to one who is accustomed to much more. If he has been ruler over much, how is he to be content, when he is given responsibility for very little? If he has successfully faced and accomplished great difficulties, how is he to take pleasure in achieving small tasks?

While underemployment affects men and women both, there is an additional complication for the one who carries a lot of masculine energy (whether in a male or female body). Freud taught that for a man to be happy required two things – someone to love, and meaningful work. There is something in a man that cries out for work to do that has meaning. Each man may define that differently, but they have this in common: work that is not meaningful can never be satisfying. It will always leave the worker feeling shallow, irrelevant, incomplete, betrayed.

To accept underemployment may be necessary for financial reasons. It may be prudent under the circumstances. It may be “not so bad” to the rest of us. Yet, for the person who is underemployed, as the months become years, life becomes tainted with meaninglessness. Some react with anger, lashing out in inappropriate ways to attack the people around them. Others go to self-pity and become lost in a sense of hopelessness. Still others react with a sense of defeat; they have tried so very hard to make sense of life and live it effectively; now they have accepted that they are failures.

For the underemployed person to accept meaningless work in a job that is not true to who they are is to accept that they have failed at life itself. Nothing else seems to matter in light of that. It is no wonder that among the underemployed, psychological problems and substance abuse abound.

So what does a spiritual person do in such a situation? That’s a tough question. The easy answer, of course, is that this must be a growth experience that the soul has chosen, and therefore should be addressed with a positive attitude, hard work and a willingness to learn.

That’s all well and good. However, in sharp contrast to those who blithely insist that, “there are no accidents,” Dr. John taught that in the course of life, stuff happens. Not everything goes as planned. There are indeed glitches, snafus and missed cues - yes, even at the spiritual level of planning and guiding a human life. So, in fact, the harsh frustration of being unemployed, or the cancer of underemployment, may be – but is not necessarily - serving some useful life purpose.

The metaphysicians might say that, if you’re having this experience of unemployment or underemployment, it must be an experience your soul chose to have in this lifetime. Is this karma? Or just an opportunity to face a challenge and grow through it? (As a friend of mine often says, “It’s just another !!$#&%!! growth opportunity!”)

So if my soul chose it, I should not fight it, right? Just roll with it? Smile – or grit my teeth – and get through it? Sometimes, when life falls far short of whatever seems reasonable, just “getting through it” can be a huge task.

Dr. John would add that it is the job of the personality (guided by the soul, of course) to rise to whatever challenges and difficulties she comes to. The point is not whether you have more or fewer challenges than someone else, but how you deal with whatever challenges come into your life.

With one out of eight Americans (and a higher percentage of Europeans) now unemployed or underemployed, it is good for all of us to remember that this experience can be overwhelming. Over time, it can wear down the spirit and destroy the will to do well. While they are not as dramatic as a crippling accident or illness, death of a spouse or other major life tragedy, unemployment and underemployment damage the human spirit insidiously and persistently.

If you must go through such a challenge, bear in mind that for most people this is truly a difficult time. I know of no one who has sailed lightly or easily through such an experience. Other life challenges may be more dramatic (and therefore evoke more sympathy from family and friends), but unemployment and underemployment are nonetheless heavy enough to crush one’s spirit and undermine one’s faith.

The only real advice I can give to anyone who is unemployed or under-employed is: know that you’re not alone. Even as you go through this experience, God is with you. You may never figure out why this particular life challenge came to you, or why it was as heavy as it was. Just do not forget that, even in the midst of misery and apparent meaninglessness, you are not alone.

Whether this experience is karmic, or a life lesson chosen by your soul, or just one-of-those-things, your job is to get through it as well as you can, learn from it what you can, and get on with your life.

That’s easier said than done. But the more energy you put into anger or self-pity, into resisting or complaining, agonizing over your plight or resenting it, the more you complicate the fundamental process of experiencing, learning, growing, and healing. Try not to fight it. Try to accept it and roll with it.

If someone you love experiences unemployment and/or underemployment, I urge you to step back from judging them for how they seem to be dealing with it. Love them if you can. Give them space if you need to.

Most people in that situation turn to anger or self-pity or both as they struggle their way through. They may turn, at least temporarily, to some kind of substance abuse. If you can be supportively loving, you do them a real spiritual service. If you are judgmental, critical, impatient, or fault-finding – especially if you yourself have not gone through this experience – then you do your loved one a great disservice. Try to avoid doing that. What they are going through, including the inner emotional battering, is trial enough without a loved one attacking, belittling, rejecting or abandoning them.

For someone going through unemployment or underemployment, the most candid support I can offer is what my father said to me, during a time of trial more than 30 years ago: “Remember that you abide in God’s love and care – just as you always have.”

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