“If you can’t get a job in this economy, then it’s your own fault.”
That’s the statement I overheard some time ago at a meeting I was attending. The comment wasn’t intended for me and the other people engaged in the conversation all seemed to agree with this statement.
Of course that’s easy to do when you have a secure job and have probably had one for a long time.
But these individuals were missing so much. There are so many things to consider when we encounter someone who does not have a job, even in a supposedly great economy.
Making a statement like the one that was said publicly is easy to do. Especially when we think our own situation and experiences are the norm for everyone else. And it’s easy to make this kind of generalization because it really applies to no one in particular. There are no names attached with it. No faces. No lives. Just a critical statement that releases everyone else from responsibility.
And then there is reality. Real people. Real faces. Real lives. And these real people are much more complicated than the statement implies. Poverty works that way. Yes, there is a lack of employees for open positions. Does that mean that all people looking for work qualify for all jobs open? Hardly. The reality is, even with a smaller pool of potential employees, employers are picky about who they hire. I have no issue with that. You want the best candidate for the job. That makes sense.
And we need to face another reality – we have a whole bunch of people that no one is interested in hiring for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons are self-inflicted. Some concern mental states, health concerns, changing jobs and locations.
So instead of making easy statements that devalue people, can we acknowledge that we have bigger problems. It is a reality that businesses are looking for employees. It is also a reality that there are many people who want to work but can’t get a job. The two truths can co-exist and both be true. So the question is this – now what? What do we do with people who want to work, but are unqualified for the existing jobs, or don’t have people skills needed, or have some kind of mental health challenge, or are struggling with homelessness or poverty?
Maybe we should see that there are at least two issues at hand and start to tackle these instead of believing that jobs available and job seekers are always related.
It would be a start. And it might stop us from making simplistic statements about people that we know nothing about.
Laced up Lutheran 
Agreed. I find people that make such simplistic statements lack the maturity to grasp just how complex personal situations can be. Many a time during our homeless journey insensitive believers would tell us to just get a job or “if a man don’t work, he don’t eat’. These people gave useless words that failed to enter into our situation and only made it worse. If they had only taken a few minutes to empathize the would have easily seen how impossible it was for our family but that would have required effort on their part. Rarely will those with jobs expend the effort to help the poor and homeless. That is just the reality. It is far easier, and costs less, to just give useless advice and condemnation until the poor go away.
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“useless words that failed to enter into our situation” . . . what a statement . . . thank you, Homer
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Yup. Make the problem go away is usually what happens. I think often people have a sense that they have no idea what to do, so it is much easier to make the problem go away. The enormity of it all overwhelms people.
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Agreed with you that it’s easy to make statements like that when you are financially secure…and likely grew up in a financially secure household that enabled you to graduate from high school and/or attend college and rely on your parents for some help until you were able to stand on your own two feet. People’s current circumstances aren’t isolated; they were built in a lifetime. It’s hard to imagine how different my life would be if I grew up with, let’s just hypothesize, parents who were never financially secure and constantly moving around to different low-income apartment complexes. Would I have graduated hs or had the means to attend college? Would I have dropped out at 17 and started working at Burger King bc my family or I needed money to survive then, fast forward ten years, I’m almost 30, have no advanced job skills, and have no money put away or means to do something for myself like get a degree? What if I had a child on top of it all? It kills me when people cannot comprehend that everyone did not grow up the way they did. I used to be that way, but thank God He made the scales fall from my eyes.
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Seeing beyond our own circumstances is not a given for most people. It takes conscious effort. Yet, I think everyone understands this as a basic need everyone has is to be understood. It just isn’t always linked with understanding others first.
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