quotations about unemployment
When unemployment is low, it becomes more and more difficult to get the labor force to grow faster because so many have already found a job.
RAYMOND SFEIR
"Orange County unemployment rate steady, but job growth slows", Orange County Register, April 21, 2017
Our unemployment is too high. Our poverty is too high. And our illiteracy is too high. All of that extends and lends itself to crime being high.
RANDALL WOODFIN
"Meet the young Morehouse grad running for Mayor of Birmingham", The Grio, May 9, 2017
An "unemployed" existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET
The Revolt of the Masses
We need to reform our job training programs, especially our unemployment system, and transform it into a reemployment system.
BILL CLINTON
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, William J. Clinton
Any system of economics is bankrupt if it sees either value or virtue in unemployment.
JIMMY CARTER
DNC acceptance speech, 1976
A man who has no office to go to--I don't care who he is--is a trial of which you can have no conception.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
The Irrational Knot
Different groups of the non-employed have vastly different likelihood of transitioning into employment. For example, people who want jobs have 13-14.5% probability of employment, while retired or disabled individuals have less than 2% probability of becoming employed. The unemployed are also a heterogeneous group. The short-term unemployed are twice as likely to enter the workforce as the long-term unemployed, who in turn are twice as likely as people who are out of the labor force but want a job.
MARIANNA KUDLYAK
"Measuring Labor Utilization: The Non-Employment Index", FRBSF Economic Letter, March 27, 2017
I lost my job. No, I didn't really lose my job. I know where my job is ... it's just that when I go there, there's this new guy doing it.
BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT
attributed, The Biteback Dictionary of Humorous Business Quotations
Lower unemployment is supposed to make for an ever-tighter labor market for employers. With fewer people looking for work, employers should need to lure candidates away from other jobs, which means sweetening the pot with better benefits and higher wages. Well, that's the theory: As unemployment goes down, inflation in wages goes up. It's captured in an old economic concept called the Phillips Curve. Except right now, wages are not going up -- not very much, anyway: 0.3 percent in this April jobs report, just 2.5 percent year over year. What gives?
MITCHELL HARTMAN
"The wages-to-jobs ratio is out of whack", Marketplace, May 5, 2017
If you look at the opportunities for economic growth within America, inner-city areas and rural areas, especially those that are heavily minority populated are a great opportunity for economic growth, because unemployment is high and the potential for consumer demand to grow is enormous. So the first thing we've got to do is to get some money in there.
BILL CLINTON
interview with Mark Riley and Laura Blackburne of WLIB Radio, New York City, October 18, 1994
I knew, not with cockiness but simply because of the faith I had in myself, that I would find another arena in which to excel. The thought that I may be unemployed and on the precipice of giving up entirely never occurred to me. Among the things I knew about myself then was that I was intelligent and hardworking, with many transferrable skills that would make me an asset in any number of industries -- but I no longer know these things. When I think about my unemployed status today these are the things I know: that I may never find anyone willing to hire me; that with every passing day I get a little older and a little less employable and the majority of my intelligent, articulate and sometimes witty cover letters are not even being read. Or perhaps they're not that witty after all.
VICKI NASH
"I'm unemployed and ashamed. The idea that people don't want to work is a ridiculous myth", The Guardian, March 21, 2017
Another week goes by sifting through job listings and submitting applications on Indeed.com. Maybe the resume robots will weed them out again and the interviews won't come. Side hustles and gigs trickle in money that disappears as soon as it lands in bank accounts. When the weekend rolls around, staying home is better than going out with friends and having them pick up the tab. Repeat this for months--or longer, in the post-Great Recession world of unemployment where jobless stats in OC and beyond continue to decline, but people still find themselves worse off than before the economy crashed.
GABRIEL SAN ROMAN
"Cal State Fullerton Professor Co-Edits New Anthology on Unemployment", OC Weekly, April 12, 2017
Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
fireside chat, April 14, 1938
The government has discovered a great new way of cutting down on unemployment -- they're going to raise the school leaving age to forty-seven.
JERRY DENNIS
attributed, The Biteback Dictionary of Humorous Business Quotations
I do not believe we can repair the basic fabric of society until people who are willing to work have work. Work organizes life. It gives structure and discipline to life.
BILL CLINTON
remarks to the Church of God in Christ in Memphis, Tennessee, November 13, 1993
My brother-in-law ... I wish he would learn a trade, so we'd know what kind of work he was out of.
HENNY YOUNGMAN
attributed, The Biteback Dictionary of Humorous Business Quotations
We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, September 27, 1962
I never thought unemployment would happen to me. I imagined having to take a job I didn't necessarily want but no job at all wasn't anywhere on my radar. I think it's probably this way for a lot of unemployed individuals. And this is probably the greatest lesson that has come out of this experience: that the idea that people don't want to work, that the unemployed are somehow lazy or unmotivated, is a ridiculous myth.
VICKI NASH
"I'm unemployed and ashamed. The idea that people don't want to work is a ridiculous myth", The Guardian, March 21, 2017
Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.
RONALD REAGAN
Sacramento Bee, April 28, 1966
To those people who say that our expenditures for public works and for other means for recovery are a waste that we cannot afford, I answer that no country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order. Some people try to tell me that we must make up our minds that for the future we shall permanently have millions of unemployed just as other countries have had them for over a decade. What may be necessary for those other countries is not my responsibility to determine. But as for this country, I stand or fall by my refusal to accept as a necessary condition of our future a permanent army of unemployed. On the contrary, we must make it a national principle that we will not tolerate a large army of unemployed, that we will arrange our national economy to end our present unemployment as soon as we can and then to take wise measures against its return. I do not want to think that it is the destiny of any American to remain permanently on relief rolls.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
fireside chat on government and modern capitalism, September 30, 1934