The unemployment figures for the last month are out, and they ain’t pretty:
Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 345,000 in May, about half the average monthly decline for the prior 6 months, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. The unemployment rate continued to rise, increasing from 8.9 to 9.4 percent. Steep job losses continued in manufacturing, while declines moderated in construction and several service-providing industries.
The number of unemployed persons increased by 787,000 to 14.5 million in May, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.4 percent. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has risen by 7.0 million, and the unemployment rate has grown by 4.5 percentage points.
The bad news: 345,000 more jobs were lost in May. The good(-ish) news: that means the rate of job losses has continued to slow. (Remember that April saw 539,000 jobs vanish.) Not that that’s much of a consolation if you’re one of those 345,000 newly unemployed, of course.
And then there’s the ugly — today’s Los Angeles Times breaks the shocking news that rich people can afford not to worry if they get laid off:
Michael Van Gorkom was laid off by Yahoo in late April. He didn’t panic. He didn’t rush off to a therapist. Instead, the 33-year-old Santa Monica resident discovered that being jobless “kind of settled nicely.”
Week one: “I thought, ‘OK … I need to send out resumes, send some e-mails, need to do networking.”
Week two: “A little less.”
Every week since: “I’m going to go to the beach and enjoy some margaritas.”
What most people would call unemployment, Van Gorkom embraced as “funemployment.”…
Never heard of funemployment? Here’s Urban Dictionary’s definition: “The condition of a person who takes advantage of being out of a job to have the time of their life. I spent all day Tuesday at the pool; funemployment rocks!”
It may not have entered our daily lexicon yet, but a small army of social media junkies with a sudden overabundance of time is busy Tweeting: “Funemployment road trip to Portland.” “Funemployment is great for catching up on reading!” “Averaging 3 rounds of golf a week plus hockey and bball. who needs work?”
“Funemployment?” Really?
Look. If you get laid off and you’ve been able to stash some money away to tide you over until you find your next job, good for you. Seriously! Everybody should try to have an emergency fund for just such an eventuality.
But millions and millions of people work hard just to provide for their families and get by from day to day. They don’t have the luxury of trust funds or well-padded savings accounts to fall back on if they lose their job, and the cost of living doesn’t leave a lot of their paycheck at the end of the month to drop into a savings account. For them, there’s nothing “fun” about “funemployment.” For them, losing their job is a glimpse into the abyss.
So if you’ve got some economic security and can afford to take a few months off laying on the beach or sinking putts or riding trains across Europe or something if your job disappears, you might take a moment to consider that running around yelling at the top of your voice about how much gosh darn fun it is to be unemployed kind of makes you look like an incredible jerk.
Just a thought.