Work and careers

Sometimes we say that someone we know is "a square peg in a round hole." This simply means that the person we are talking about is not suited for the job he is doing. (He may be a book-keeper^who really wants to be an actor, or a mechanic who likes cooking^hfoitunately, many people in the world are "square pegs"; they are liot doing the kind of work they should be doing, for one rdiSbtrSf another. As a result they are probably not doing a very gbbd job and- certainly they are Jtappy. Most of us spend a great part of our lives at our jobs. For that reason we should try to find out what our talents are and how we can use them. We can this through aptitude tests, interviews with specialists, and consulting reference books on the subjects that interest US;

There are many careers open to each of us. Perhaps we like science; Then we might prepare ourselves to be chemists, physicists or biologists. Perhaps our interests take us into the business world ahd inta such work as accounting, personnel management or public relations. Maiiy people find their place in government serviced Many other fields— teaching, newspaper work, medi­cine,engineering — offer fascinating areas to those with talent.

People without work

For millions of Americans, work is a problem because they have none. The money, self-respect, and routine that work pro­vides do not exist for them.

The number of officially unemployed Amene^nshas varied in the last four decades. Changing economic conditions determine whether unemployment increases of Klecreases.

But these statistics hardly tell the story. Since government statis­tics are averages for the whole year, they hide much of the reality of people who are unwillingly idle. If we look at how many people were out of work for some period we see that up to 20 percent were unemployed (some for many weeks, others for a few weeks).

Many people who want to work but cannot find jobs are ex­cluded from these statistics. Among them are the following: people who work part-time but want and need full-time work; those reentering the work force (such as mothers who took time off to raise young children) but have yet to find a job; and people on welfare, prisoners, and older people whom employers will not hire. At any given time, the actual unemployment rate is at least twice the official rate.

The effects of unemployment are devastating. They hit poor and working-class families the hardest, not because these people are more likely to unemployed but because they have no fi­nancial resource to fall back on. Depression, lower self-esteem, illnesses, anci suicides all increase. In various surveys workers report they cannot sleep (20 to 50 percent of them); they smoke and drink more.

We may think that unemployment benefits soothe the pain and lessen financial hardships,They do to some degree.But very often less than a half receive them.

With temporary exceptions, unemployment has been a per­manent feature of the US economy. It exists primarily for two reasons. First, the existence of millioris of unemployed people tends to prevent most of those forking from asking for higher wages since they can he replaced easily. Second, iix their searp^ for profits, corporations move to wherever labor is cheapest.