The Myth of Unemployment & the New Normal

One of the things which really bothers me about all the chatter about the American economy and unemployment figures is the number of people who don't have a job, who haven't had a job, and who remain woefully unemployed. Like me.

I had my last full time job in 2007 at the Screen Actors Guild in New York City. My then girlfriend and I got married, spent a bunch of money on our wedding, bought a new car and moved to Los Angeles. That was in September of 2007. Now my wife has had some work and I have had some part time work in some places but it was never full time work and it never provided a living wage for where we were living at the time.

Moving back in with your family; (our friends, my grandfather, my mom, my dad, my in-laws) and just trying to make something of your life is not where I thought the first four years of being married would take me. But we never really can tell what is going to happen now can we?

I am totally upset at all the blather from politicians who say that there are all these "jobs created" and that "unemployment is going down" or "has leveled off;" do they even consider the vast number of people who have given up looking for work? Those who have gone off the reservation of sorts and have no outlet for getting unemployment benefits?

I left my job voluntarily in 2007. At the time I thought that there would be no problem finding work for which I was experienced in my corner of the country. Los Angeles is a huge place; I applied all over the place. But the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008 was when the Writers Guild went on strike. The writers weren't making enough money so they effectively stopped the driving economy of Los Angeles. You can't produce TV shows or films when you have no writers and other unions who won't cross picket lines. With no film and TV why else would people come to Los Angeles? So that one episode tanked the tourism economy.

And that was just that one event. So we took to something of a nomadic lifestyle. We moved from town to town; setting up shop for a night or a week or longer with whoever would take us in. Of course that's no way for a married couple to have a normal life. But this was our "new normal." This was the way it had to be for us; it's the way things still are.

So when I hear all this back and forth about how things in the economy are "normalizing" and how people are "getting back on their feet" it just makes me cringe. I'm not getting any payments from the endless well of unemployment benefits and I don't want that. I want to work. I just need to live in a country with a government who are interested in stimulating the economy such that business can have the resources to hire me!