The Jobless Jihad
by Trude Diamond, UP board memberLink to article
What are the characteristics of recent terrorists? “Desperation … Occupational opportunities are extremely limited. … Come from upper and middle-class families. … Have some college education …. either professional or semi-professionals … solidly anchored in family responsibilities … married and … have children.”1 Does this sound like today’s long-term unemployed or desperately underemployed white collar professionals? This phenomenon has been studied, and some of those studies are a dry read, but they’re enlightening.
First, a cold, hard look at the ugliest possible outcome. What characterized the state of mind of our homegrown all-American terrorists, Unabomber Ted Kaczinski and Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh? “Criminals must come to believe their actions will be beneficial — to themselves, their community, or society. … The Olson hypothesis (source unknown) suggests that participants in revolutionary violence predicate their behavior on a rational cost-benefit calculus to pursue the best course of action given the social circumstances. … A terrorist plot in a democratic society is less likely to involve senseless violence than a scheme hatched under an authoritarian regime because under the latter, terrorists realize they have nothing to lose ….”2
Well, we do have a (reputedly) democratic society. Sure, under the current regime, um, I mean “administration,” corporations seem to have bought the government somewhere among their own industry mergers. Both houses of Congress harbor too many of our representatives who have become puppets of the lobbies for financial services (banking, insurance and the rest), pharmaceuticals, broadcast communications, and petroleum (whence commeth our current Executive branch leaders). Legislation has consistently protected big-contributor businesses but not the voting public.
For the white collar un- and under-employed, however, both their government and their fellow citizens have become somehow less “ours” and increasingly “other.” The Land of Opportunity seems to have become the Land of Outsourcing to increasing numbers of the disenfranchised. So, although their potential desperate acts of civil disobedience may not involve senseless violence, certainly these well-educated and disaffected folks may become quite creative in pursuing “the best course of action given the social circumstances” because they believe “their actions will be beneficial — to themselves, their community, or society.” We’ve all read Thoreau — we may not be Transcendentalists, but we sure want to transcend our current economic doldrums.
What is the current psychological state of white collar professionals experiencing long-term unemployment or severe underemployment because of outsourcing and other causes of U.S.-based job shrinkage in the standard corporate “exempt” professions? You don’t have to take my word that despair, lower self-esteem, frustration, and anger are part of the mix. Bloggers have been expressing themselves unreservedly.
One notes a “disturbing video [on YouTube]… Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers.”3
On The Big Picture site, an early September 2007 post titled “4.6% Unemployment is actually 5.5%” (once you look at the real stats) motivated one responder to draw attention to a chart that correlates declining Employment Population Ratio with subsequent recessions. It also piqued a response (on the original Big Picture posting page) from “spongetoddsquarepants,” who waxed sarcastic about the federal government’s playing fast and loose with other statistics: “W told us last year that the economy was strong and they were going to keep it strong. Fudging the calculations to get the data you want is one way to another ‘mission accomplished.’ Should we expect anything else from Enron cronies? By the way we are also kicking ass in Iraq.”
The Disgruntled Workforce blog (a site for the anxiously and just plain miserably employed) contains expressions of depression, anger at, and alienation from, a Corporate America that has not kept its brand promise. Examples:
- “Dear heartless former employer, How can you be so cold as to fire me because I had to stay home with my sick kids two days in a row? You are the lowest of the low. I pray that next time you are sick nobody is around to take care of you.”
- “Dear devil of a boss and evil coworkers who turned their back on me,
This will all come back to haunt you. Mark my words. There is no way that you can be so cruel to someone, and get away with it. Bad Karma will come your way, and make you miserable.” - “I just spent 5 years at an institute of higher learning - obtaining my Bachelor’s AND Master’s - and have crap to show for it in the way of gainful employment. NOBODY seems interested in hiring me. I’m forced to whore out my resume to everyone and anyone I know - to no avail. I’m forced to consider going back into retail sales - something I have not done since high school, and vowed to never do again.” Responses to this despairing and angry fellow shared similar stories. “I dread interviews, because, even though it’s a chance to find a job, it’s also another opportunity to be told ‘No thanks’, and feel completely denigrated. “I was the same way when I graduated after the IT bubble burst. I have lived from temp job to temp job. All I can say is good luck and your soft skill will have more value than any sort of engineering or science. Don’t believe the hype, as I know many engineers, some with multiple degrees that don’t have work or have gone into manual labor union jobs.”
- One corporate recruiter gave the jobless and desperate some do/don’t advice about job search techniques, resumes and interviews. One bit of his wisdom was, “It’s not all about money. In fact, you don’t need to bring up compensation. Why? Because if you’re worth it, you’ll get it.” He meant well, but the anger of the financially struggling community flamed him back: “Hey, when the collector wolves are growling at your door for bill payments because the cost of living isn’t fucking free, it most definitely is about money.” “You know, for every “tip” in this post, there are a dozen HR professionals telling job seekers to do the exact opposite.”
Alienated. Disrespected. Devalued. Cynical. Betrayed. Hmmm. “Going postal” may soon expand to “going corporate” or “going societal.” I’m not thinking conspiracy or organized sabotage. Organizations haven’t served this population well. Not professional organizations, nor corporate organizations, nor government bureaucracies and programs. These are smart, independent, highly capable people. They’re more Ted Kaczinski than Timothy McVeigh and not likely to join an Al Qaeda sleeper cell. Who goes postal? That’s been studied. People go postal when a “…hostile atmosphere fosters emotional and psychological instability among employees. … We know what kind of people do this type of thing: frustrated, lonely people who have complained before.”4 That sounds too familiar.
Disaffected white collar professionals who had happy, loving childhoods and successful early adulthoods are more likely to communicate with their Congresspersons before they do anything rash than to issue a manifesto to the New York Times after they’ve begun blowing up people and places. United Professionals, MoveOn.org, AARP and other advocacy organizations urge and enable “tell your Senator and Congressperson” campaigns regularly.
But once alienated professionals become fed up with the lack of action from legislators, they’re likely to do something. They’re rational - angry, but rational. They’re likely to be more understanding of the pace of policy change … for awhile. But after some years of flipping burgers and greeting mega-store shoppers instead of doing the jobs for which they’re qualified, they will have had plenty of time to reflect upon the lack of any policy progress toward re-inventing the “deal” for educated professionals employed by corporations in the former Land of Opportunity.
Can socio-economic conditions drive reasonable professionals crazy? A study of “Cultural Psychopathology: Uncovering the Social World of Mental Illness” found that “[t]he examination of both social and cultural processes is one way to help guard against [minimizing] the powerful political economic inequalities that coexist with culture.”5 Another study, this one of “Joblessness, Family Disruption, and Violent Death in Chicago, 1970-1990″ found these indicators of violence: “when paths to family formation and stability are blocked by extreme levels of unemployment among young men. … violence-sustaining beliefs and norms eventually evolve in response to the extended and severe economic deprivation and social isolation… high suicide rates in affluent neighborhoods are influenced by sensitivity to status loss. … … both deliberate interpersonal violence and accidental deaths are associated in similar ways to the structural processes of employment and family disruption, especially for males.”6
After working two jobs to keep the family intact while also taking federally or state funded training in some new workplace skills or tools, and finding that they’re too “overqualified” (read: old) to be considered for the entry-level jobs that demand these skills, and realizing that without some “entry” there is no “moving up” … and after realizing that full retraining in a growing profession costs far more than the grants provide or that they can afford themselves … after all that, what do people with no means of re-entry into meaningful work do?
What do they do with their despair, their lowered expectations and undermined self-esteem, and their alienation from a society where recruiters ask them what value they can add to the job, while hedge-fund managers pay themselves millions of dollars for adding no value and actually putting our entire economy at risk, lowering the international value of the American dollar? Once despairing professionals have done that math, what do they do with their unvalued creativity and imagination?
Can the observations and theories of group conflict and insurgency described in Environment, Scarcity, and Violence predict their actions? Author Thomas F. Homer-Dixon finds that “insurgency is a function of both the level of grievance motivating challenger groups and the opportunities available to these groups to act violently on their grievances. If a group’s sense of relative deprivation rises, then its level of grievance will rise; if the group perceives that the structure of power relations surrounding it has changed in its favor, then it will perceive greater opportunities to address its grievances. … [R]elative-deprivation theory says that some groups will become increasingly frustrated and aggrieved by the widening gap between their actual level of economic achievement and the level they feel they deserve. The rate of change is key: the faster the growth of the gap, the greater the grievance.”7
Surely college educated professionals, promised the benefits of education and hard, loyal work, can understand the economic data of the skyrocketing wealth of the top one percent of U.S. households and the widening gap between those extreme-haves and the middle class, which loses more to inflation every year. What will disenfranchised professionals do to redress their grievances after the “petition Congress” option has proven fruitless?
Elizabeth Kandel Englander explains the context and motivations for civil unrest in Understanding Violence. The situation sounds all too familiar. Bold print is my emphasis. “[F]rustration and aggression can be caused by relative deprivation, which arises when people perceive a widening gap between the level of satisfaction they have achieved (often defined in economic terms) and the level they believe they deserve. Deprivation is therefore relative to some subjective standard of equity or fairness, and the size of the perceived gap obviously depends on the beliefs about economic justice held by individuals. … Serious civil strife is not likely unless the structure of political opportunities facing challenger groups keeps them from expressing their grievances effectively and peacefully, but offers them openings for violence against authority. This opportunity structure depends on the relative power and resources of challenger groups and the state, on the power of groups that might ally themselves with challenger groups or the state, and on the costs and benefits that groups believe they will accrue through different kinds of collective action in support of or in opposition to the state. … The likelihood of insurgency is greatest when multiple pressures at different levels in society interact to boost grievance and opportunity simultaneously. Environmental scarcity can change both variables by contributing to economic hardship and dislocation, by increasing intergroup segmentation, and by weakening institutions such as the state. …Whether or not people become aggrieved and violent when they confront economic difficulty depends, in part, on their notion of economic justice. People belonging to a culture that inculcates acceptance of deprivation and unequal distribution of wealth-as has been the case among lower castes in India-will not be as prone to violence as people believing they have a right to economic well-being and an egalitarian distribution of wealth. … If people come to believe that the state is responsible for their hardship, its legitimacy will be reduced, and the likelihood that they will engage in violence against the state will increase.”8
Will alienated professionals become a “challenger group” or individual challengers? Nobody can predict what they may do - but we may not like what they think up.
I do think that the social, corporate and governmental leaders of the United States would be well advised to consider this nation’s history of civil unrest by the best and the brightest, and begin quickly to enact programs that keep white-collar professionals well-employed and significantly contributing members of our society.
Resources
1. Sageman, Marc. “The Normality of Global Jihidai Terrorism,” Journal of International Security Affairs (8: Spring, 2005), online at http://www.securityaffairs.org/issues/2005/08/sageman.php.
2. O’Connor, T. “The Political Theory of Anarchism as a Theory of Terrorism” and “The Economics Theory of Rational Choice as a Theory Of Terrorism” in “The Criminology Of Terrorism: Theories And Models.” Carolina Wesleyan College, online at http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/429/429lect02.htm
3. Hudson, Rex A. “The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?” A Report Prepared under an Interagency Agreement by the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, online at http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/frd.html4.
4. New York Times. (July 2, 1993) “Postal Study Aims to Spot Violence-Prone Workers,” online at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE4DA1339F931A35754C0A965958260
5. Lopez, Steven Regeser and Peter J. J. Guarnaccia. “Cultural Psychopathology: Uncovering the Social World of Mental Illness.” Annual Review of Psychology. (2000)
6. Almgren, Gunnar, Avery Guest, George Immerwahr, and Michael Spittel. “Joblessness, Family Disruption, and Violent Death in Chicago, 1970-1990.” Social Forces. (Vol. 76, 1998)
7. Homer-Dixon, Thomas F. Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. Princeton University Press, 1999.
8. Englander, Elizabeth Kandel. Understanding Violence. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997.
Tags: , desparation, economy, Jihad, Jobless
February 5th, 2008 at 11:58 am
I found your article very enlightening.
My background: I’m currently in a new job (after 4 years of unemployment) at a statistical modeling firm. I made $75k as a Senior Product Engineer. Now I make $60k, or 20% LESS than before. I guess that qualifies me as “under-employed.” I also did seasonal work for $6.25/hr slinging boxes for UPS. I was told many, many times I was “overqualified based on my years of experience” (translation: old).
I tried, during my four-year roam in the wilderness, taking a part-time martial arts school to fulltime. I was not successful. I sold my Toyota 4 Runner to pay rent for one month, and then close the school the next month. I am still teaching at the YMCA. I still dwell on my failure. I try to keep myself up as “failure is feedback,” an aphorism that provides little comfort at times.
I went through a serious time of depression and a disturbing dream that completely frightened me. I felt less of a man due to my failures in my early forties to keep a good job. It affected my family life and my marriage. I blogged my angst and depression on: http://outsourcedamerican.blogspot.com. That became a book called “Unemployed: A Memoir.” That was about my only revolutionary act.
I’m glad to see from a global and a local US perspective that someone has the foresight to ask these questions. Teenagers may not be the only ones “making themselves famous” (Robert A. Hawkins) in mall shootings if we don’t get a handle on this — or cease sending our jobs overseas!
February 5th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Add in a religious belief that self-sacrifice while striking out at an oppressor will be a ticket to Heaven, ala radical Islam, and you have a recipe for suicide bombers. Could happen here.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Trude,
This is spot on. People in situations they are not used to can create all kinds of havoc, or can help people bring meaningful change. In my case, the failure of a business and the resulting bankruptcy caused me to revisit everything I do, and I now avoid helping corporations make more money, and instead shop locally, if at all, use cash, cook dinner, and keep spending to a minimum.
While down, I did the same thing as Reggie: wrote a book. It’s a fiction about an MBA who crashes the stock market (naturally, bringing the whole thing down is something I wanted to see, so I wrote about it). It is here: http://www.myleftone.com/the_global_grid
February 7th, 2008 at 11:52 am
One mid-life professional single mother of three is literally handing out her resume on busy streets during rush hours, holding a sign saying “Single mom needs work. Take a resume.” She tells the reporter, “It’s just unstable. I feel unstable.” Financial instability breeds other instabilities, and you know the saying “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobobdy happy.” Read the story here: http://www.sptimes.com/2008/02/07/Business/Hire_me__anyone__plea.shtml
February 8th, 2008 at 10:39 am
“Returning military members face tough work searches and lower wages.” A study by Abt Associates Inc., reported by the Associated Press, found “employers often had misplaced stereotypes about veterans’ fitness for employment, such as concerns they did not have adequate technological skills, or were too rigid, lacked education or were at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder.” So now they’ll also have job-hunting traumatic stress disorder. For Vets and other displaced workers, this is why Congress needs to extend the time for unemployment benefits and expand the grant money available for retraining in currently in-demand skills. The AP story is here: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/V/VETERANS_JOBS?SITE=NDBIS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
February 27th, 2008 at 5:31 am
Reggie - $60,000 per year? I would dance in the damned streets if I got to “settle” for $60K per year. That’s ten times what is, to date, my peak lifetime income, oh so generously paid out to me as a teaching assistant for a work week that in practice never dropped below 40 hours in a week before studies, and often rose above 60. High dean’s list average from a top 20 school, by the way, in spite of that; I’ll toss that one out and pretend that it matters, even though life has taught me that it doesn’t, and that I was a fool for having ever cracked open a book, when the compensation of ex-frat boys has proved that the real route to success is to party with the right people.
$60K. Please. I wish. In the time since I attained MA and ABD status in Mathematics and then augmented that with the coursework for an MSEE, which has been a bit more than four years, never mind how much more, I have yet to find any real job, unless one wants to count my on again, off again (mainly off again) math tutoring gig as a real job, absolutely nobody who has been willing to help in my search, and all I’ve really asked of the system is that somebody among those who have already found gainful employment give me what somebody once gave them - a real chance at my first real job. Maybe even one that payed more than $10K/year.
What I’ve seen instead have been employers who’ve stubbornly refused to consider hiring anybody for any work who hasn’t worked at what they consider to be a real job - that 40-60+ hour assistantship not counting as one for some reason - offering only the vaguest of answers to the simple, logical question of how, precisely, somebody attempting to enter the job market is supposed to get those 2-5 years of experience, especially when he is deemed “overqualified” to be an intern.
You complain about being stuck in the middle class. Try getting by on the less than $3/day one gets on welfare in Chicago, welfare you’re stuck on not because you’re unable or unwilling to work - working one’s way through school pretty much answers that one - but because you simply can’t find anybody willing to allow you the opportunity to do so for year after year, until it all starts to blur together, until the day your welfare gets cut off and you get a deepened appreciation of the words “hoping for the best”. To read your complaint, one might think that the complaint is that some of us won’t be able to have homes in the Hamptons, when the real complaint many of us have is that we aren’t being allowed a real opportunity to begin our lives, that we’ve been effectively blacklisted for the heinous crime of having gone to graduate school. Ex-cons get to put their criminal careers behind them when they get out, but an unemployed graduate’s life is over, utterly destroyed on a collective corporate whim. Your family life? At least you got to start a family.
$60K? What’s next? Prince Harry bitterly complaining that he’s only a prince and not the crown prince? A protest like this trivialises the real complaints to be made, which aren’t about not being able to afford a trip to Europe or a sports car or whatever you were hoping to spend the really big bucks on, but about frequently not knowing where one’s next meal is coming from, and not having any way out of that situation.