There is commonly something extraordinary in the fortunes of those who fly from society.  If people were equal tomorrow and all wore the same coats, they would wear different coats every day.  In December of 2014, the United States of America added 252,000 jobs to the economy. Where are these jobs being created? Well, professional and business sector increased the number of jobs by 52,000. There have also been increases in construction where we saw 48,000 new jobs created. Many experts, like Rebecca Jarvis, chief business and economic correspondent for ABC World News are surprise to see such a high increase in food services jobs, which saw employment numbers surge by 44,000, which is 14,000 above expected projections. There were 34,000 new positions created in the health care industry, and manufacture experienced modest growth of 17,000 jobs. The average hourly earnings, however, decreased by $.05, to $24.57 an hour, which means the average worker makes $47,174.40 annually.

Losing a job can be the most distressing economic event in a person’s life. Most people rely on their labor earnings to maintain their standard of living, and many people get from their work not only income, but also a sense of person accomplishment. Typically, a job loss means a lower living standard in the present, anxiety about the future, and reduced self-esteem. Unemployment means that people are not employed, are unavailable for work, and have tried to find employment during the previous 4 weeks. It also includes those waiting to be recalled to a job, from which they had been laid off. The unemployment rate is currently 5.6 percent, which is just a little above the natural unemployment rate of 5.2 percent. Here are the unemployment rates by worker groups: adult women are at 5 percent, adult men are displaying a rate of 5.3 percent. Teens have the highest unemployment rate of 17 percent, while African Americans come in with the second highest unemployment rate of 10 percent, which is almost twice as high as the national unemployment rate. Hispanics are experiencing a 6.5 percent rate of unemployment, and Asians are doing the best with only 4 percent unemployed.

Measuring the amount of unemployment in the economy might seem like a simply task, but it is actually more complex than it seems. While it is easy to distinguish between a person with a full-time job and a person who is not working at all, it is much harder to distinguish between a person who is unemployed and a person who is not in the labor force.  Because people move into and out of the labor force so often, statistics on unemployment are difficult to interpret. One the one hand, some of those who report being unemployed may not, in fact, be trying hard to find a job. They may be calling themselves unemployed because they want to qualify for a government program that financially assists the unemployed or because they are actually working and paid under the table. It may be more realistic to view these individuals as out of the labor force or, in some cases, employed. However, some of those who report being out of the labor force may want to work.

Nonetheless, most spells of unemployment are short. These individuals may have tried to find a job and may have given up after an unsuccessful search. Such individuals are called discouraged workers. Discouraged workers do not show up in unemployment statistics, even though they are unemployed because they have been out of the work force for more than 4 weeks. One reason economies always experience some unemployment is job search. Job search is the process of matching workers with appropriate jobs. If all workers and all jobs were the same, so that all workers were equally well suited for careers, job search would not be a problem.  Teens and African Americans supposedly have such high unemployment rates due to the fact that some are allegedly inexperienced and require an advanced degree.

In Fact, workers differ in their tastes and skills, jobs differ in their attributes, and information about job candidates and job vacancies is disseminated slowly among the many firms and households in the economy. There are currently 2.8 million Americans, who are long-term unemployed (discouraged workers), they have been jobless for 27 weeks or more, and account for 32 percent of the employed, but because they have been out of the workforce for so long, they are considered jobless, not unemployed. Nearly 66 percent of nonworking men ages 25 to 64 received income from some source. Among those with unearned income, the average amount was $11,551.00 a year, with the largest sums coming from Social Security and disability payments. However, could you imagine being single and living off of $962.58 a month—in many places you would not even qualify to rent an apartment because your income is less than the average rent of $1,003.00 a month. Not surprisingly, wives are also an important source of financial support for nonworking men, but only 42 percent of male non-workers between the ages of 25 and 54 are married; compared with 68 percent of their employed counterparts. So many people are left wondering, if you only make $962.58 a month, how you can even afford to live, as they do not qualify for food stamps and some individuals alone spend $400.00 a month on food.

Well, Social Security is usually for people who retire. By the time they retire, these people have paid off their cars, homes, and only have to worry about utilities, and are usually married, so they are fine, and probably having savings. However, some people are young and disabled. They once used to work and make a lot of money, but are now hurt and cannot afford to work and are living on disability, so how are they able to make it? Well, some of them get settlements, for being injured at work or in an accident, and they used that money to pay for their housing and live off disability, until they are well enough to go back to work, or decide that they would rather run the risk of reinjuring themselves, or making the injury worse, than to live off of such low pay.  Another misconception I want to clear up, not all people who are disabled or lazy or disfigured, nor are they crazy. Maybe there is something internal going on. You actually have some coworkers who are mentally disabled and physically disabled, but they are still able to work.

However, for those who cannot work or choose not to, living off of less than $1,000.00 a month can be challenging. The experiences of nonworking adult men and women can be quite varied, and many have severe disabilities. A lot of them end up homeless because they cannot afford to rent or live out of shelters. Others rent rooms from people, or someone is kind enough to share a sofa with them. Others are lucky to find limited low income housing and still life on tight budgets. And I know what you are thinking….but what about the people born with disabilities and cannot work.

Well, their parents usually build a nest egg for them and support them their entire lives, and that is far better than aborting a child. And some born with disabilities do, in fact, work and make just as much as your local news anchor. So there is always hope.  The one thing I do not recommend is abusing government services because it is a trap, when you have to go back to work or need to, you will have no skills and be competing with teenagers for low skill jobs, and it will crush yourself esteem. Not only that, but you have a new added cost of getting to work and pay for insurance. Speaking of transportation, the United States of America is seeing gas prices drop to less than $2.00 a gallon, so that may help some who are jobless, in their search for work, and lower fuel prices will help those who commute everyday put more food on the table. Therefore, esteem people for what we find in them, not what they may have been. Even people with high incomes do not want you in their financial information because they do not want people to target them and use them for their income, position, assets, network or resources—love me for who I am, no matter if I am rich or poor.