Unemployed at Risk for Family Troubles : Hope Fades

Fear and frustration results when one has to go day in and day out without beginning productive. Worse when you can not see any light at the end of the tunnel it just increases the troubles of not being employed.

When hope fades, the unemployed of finding a good job becomes a way of life and  a future that includes prosperity seems only for others to enjoy. And no matter what someone tells us that things are better then we think, that kind of rhetoric doesn't put food on the table.

Unemployment Threatens Family Stability
Source: Eric Pianin, "New Evidence of How Unemployment Wrecks Families," Fiscal Times, September 29, 2014.

September 30, 2014

Two new studies illustrate how long-term unemployment hurts not only workers, but their families, reports Eric Pianin at the Fiscal Times.

A report from the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development chronicles how the long-term unemployed (those out of work for more than six months) have struggled during the recovery. One in every three unemployed Americans had been unemployed for more than six months as of August 2014.

Not only have these workers struggled to find jobs, but their families have been significantly impacted, beyond direct financial effects. According to a new study from the Urban Institute, which analyzed families with children up to the age of nine, unemployment threatens family stability. According to their research:

• In families with two married parents, the possibility of divorce doubled upon the unemployment of one of the parents.
• In families with single mothers, children were much more likely to live without their mother in the year following her job loss, compared to children whose mother was working.

Pianin notes that the percent of unmarried American adults is at a historic level. According to a study from the Pew Research Center, when asked what they were looking for in a spouse, 78 percent of unmarried women and 46 percent of unmarried men said they were looking for "a steady job."