Integer Leadership Consulting

If there is one thing that has become evident in my research on involuntary job loss it is this: unemployment causes systemic anxiety and stress in the individual which also carries the specter for devastating consequences regarding longer-term emotional well-being. With the national unemployment rate hovering around 10% I am predicting an exponentially expanding pandemic of emotional disruption and instability for adults experiencing IJL (involuntary job loss) and their children.

In a new research article by the title, Short-Run Effects of Parental Job Loss on Children’s Academic Achievement by Stevens and Schaller, the case is made that the children of parents with only a high school education show evidence of increased academic struggles. These scholars have made a connection between the well-being of children and the economic/employment status of their parents.

This is significant for obvious reasons. Coping resources notwithstanding, unemployment through IJL immediately injects stress and anxiety into the lives of adults which then can be systemically translated to the children of those parents. Not only are parents stressed by IJL but children as well are damaged collaterally as a result.

My concern is that the deep and broad emotional burdens placed on unemployed adults because of their involuntary terminations are also affecting children. The toll of this is beginning to unfold. I am reasonably confident that if an aggregate qualitative or quantitative measure of the mental health of the nation during this period of massive unemployment were available it would show great reasons for concern.

It will take years, not months, to grow employment form the current employment malaise. The very fabric of the labor market is experiencing a “significant tectonic shifting” that is unsettling. These longer-term shifts are, even now, impacting at psychological and existential levels, the unemployed person’s psyche and spirit. As a by-product, this stress is fracturing the well-being and stability of the family. And the children, the most susceptible because they are unable to process their own anxiety, will continue to be listed as the casualties along with their unemployed parents.

I do not mean to “horriblize” here but rather to say that we have work ahead of us. Step one is getting people to work but, close on the heels of this, is ensuring that we “stand in the gap” from an emotional perspective with dads, moms, and their children.