Lost jobs haunt a new year

The holiday phone calls didn't yield much in the way of glad tidings. Most of us are hale and hearty - or at least ambulatory. But I was struck by how many friends and extended family members have been hit by the hacking blades of the Great Recession, with its layoffs, foreclosures, and bankruptcies.

A cousin told me her son, a college grad, had been laid off. He's just one of several young adults I know whose early experience with the job market has been marked by layoffs, cutbacks, shortened hours, and smaller paychecks. News of an acquaintance I hadn't heard from in years included her husband's futile, yearlong quest for work. Other friends reported that they had found jobs at last, but were earning less.

I've grown used to the mind-numbing news reports of double-digit unemployment, a "jobless recovery," and "structural" difficulties that suggest well-paying jobs may be slow to appear. Still, I was taken aback by the personal accounts of people I know - proud folks who don't whine or expect handouts, but whose nerves were clearly fraying after months of financial difficulty.

It's no wonder so many Americans were happy to turn the calendar's page to 2010. Few will miss the last year.

President Obama will reportedly make job creation his top priority in the coming year. Aides whom I've talked to have reiterated the administration's fixation on jobs, for both political and practical reasons. Congressional Democrats are worried about their chances in midterm elections, with so many voters angry over economic conditions. Over the holiday recess, they have heard enough to scare them about their prospects for keeping their own jobs.

But keeping politicians in office is the least compelling reason to worry about the recession and its effects on families across the country. From what I've heard from people I know, extended joblessness has a way of eating into every corner of your life; it not only restricts your budget and forces a different shopping routine, but it can also keep you awake at night and make you angry, depressed, and short-tempered. It interferes with relationships and threatens marriages. For most workers, a job bestows a sense of self-worth. A lost job, then, destroys that sense of self-worth.

The best news for the young adults I know is that their joblessness is likely temporary. They are mostly college-educated, mobile, and resourceful. They'll rebound. For older workers, especially those who are less educated, the future is not so hopeful. They'll face those very real "structural" problems.

A holiday week spent in my hometown, Monroeville, Ala., gave me a close-up view of those problems, brought on by globalization. Like many Southern towns, Monroeville, never wealthy, survived on textile manufacturing. Now, most of those jobs have shut down or shipped out. And they're not coming back.

Some of my high school classmates who used to work in textiles exist on low-wage jobs such as elder care, waiting for their Social Security eligibility. (They would have been better off with the option to buy into Medicare, a proposal Sen. Joe Lieberman killed off in the health-care reform debate.) Others have tried to upgrade their skills by taking courses at the local community college, but the job landscape still looks bleak, even after they've learned word-processing.

Workers like those in Monroeville - bypassed by the information revolution, washed up on the shoals of globalization - languish all over the country, whether in big cities like Detroit or rural outposts. Getting them back on their feet will take imagination and resolve - the willingness of the political class to take some risks and to concentrate on more than the needs of the moneyed interests that back their campaigns.

Here's hoping that 2010 brings our politicians that sort of gumption.