Unemployment Quotes

The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits. ~ Philip Larkin

We Conservatives hate unemployment. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Unemployment doles can have no other effect than the perpetuation of unemployment. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

And what if Britain lost? There would be a financial crisis, unemployment, and destitution. Working-class men would take up Ethel's father's cry and say that they had never been allowed to vote for the war. The people's rage against their rulers would be boundless. ~ Ken Follett

Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic? ~ P.D. James

No bonds are innocent in an age when holding onto something and refusing to let go usually leads to unemployment, where you have to lie to work, and you have to keep on working in order to continue lying. ~ The Invisible Committee

I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

In the 1930s one was aware of two great evils - mass unemployment and the threat of war. ~ James Meade

As I see it today, Hitler and Goebbels were in fact molded by the mob itself, guided by its yearnings and its daydreams. Of course, Goebbels and Hitler knew how to penetrate through to the instincts of their audiences; but in the deeper sense they derived their whole existence from these audiences. Certainly the masses roared to the beat set by Hitler's and Goebbels' baton; yet they were not the true conductors. The mob determined the theme. To compensate for misery, insecurity, unemployment, and hopelessness, this anonymous assemblage wallowed for hours at a time in obsessions, savagery and license. The personal unhappiness caused by the breakdown of the economy was replaced by a frenzy that demanded victims. By lashing out at their opponents and vilifying the Jews, they gave expression and direction to fierce primal passions. ~ Albert Speer

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice, to employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protectior against unemployment. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

A jester unemployed is nobody's fool! ~ Danny Kaye

The Middle East has the highest unemployment percentage of any region in the world we have the largest youth cohort of history coming into the market place that frustration does translate into the political sphere when people are hungry and without jobs. ~ Abdallah II Of Jordan

All of the progress that the US has made over the last couple of centuries has come from unemployment. It has come from figuring out how to produce more goods with fewer workers, thereby releasing labor to be more productive in other areas. It has never come about through permanent unemployment, but temporary unemployment, in the process of shifting people from one area to another. ~ Milton Friedman

The cool thing about unemployment is every day is Saturday. ~ Jarod Kintz

What are the things that make adults depressed? The master list is too comprehensive to quantify (plane crashes, unemployment, killer bees, impotence, Stringer Bell's murder, gambling addictions, crib death, the music of Bon Iver, et al.) But whenever people talk about their personal bouts of depression in the abstract, there are two obstructions I hear more than any other. The possibility that one's life is not important, and the mundane predictability of day-to-day existence. Talk to a depressed person (particularly one who's nearing midlife), and one (or both) of these problems will inevitably be described. Since the end of World War II, every generation of American children has been endlessly conditioned to believe that their lives are supposed to be great -- a meaningful life is not just possible, but required. Part of the reason forward-thinking media networks like Twitter succeed is because people want to believe that every immaterial thing they do is pertinent by default; it's interesting because it happened to them, which translates as interesting to all. At the same time, we concede that a compelling life is supposed to be spontaneous and unpredictable-- any artistic depiction of someone who does the same thing every day portrays that character as tragically imprisoned (January Jones on Mad Men, Ron Livingston in Office Space, the lyrics to "Eleanor Rigby," all novels set in affluent suburbs, pretty much every project Sam Mendes has ever conceived, etc.) If you know ~ Chuck Klosterman

I am not a capitalist in the simplistic left/right sense. But I do believe in the power of the global free-market economy and in using capitalist tools. I believe in the power of teh free market and the power of capital in the marketplace. I also believe that providing unemployment benefits is not the best way to address poverty. The able-bodied poor don't wan tor need charity. The dole only increases their misery, robs them of incentive and, more important, of self-respect. ~ Muhammad Yunus

The new black conservatives claim that transfer payments to the black needy engender a mentality of dependence which undercuts the value of self-reliance and of the solidity of the black poor family. They fail to see that the welfare state was a historic compromise between progressive forces seeking broad subsistence rights and conservative forces arguing for unregulated markets. Therefore it should come as no surprise that the welfare state possesses many flaws. The reinforcing of 'dependent mentalities' and the unsettling of the family are two such flaws. But simply to point out these rather obvious shortcomings does not justify cutbacks in the welfare state. In the face of high black unemployment, these cutbacks will not promote self-reliance or strong black families but will only produce even more black cultural disorientation and more devastated black households. This is so because without jobs or incentives to be productive citizens the black poor become even more prone toward criminality, drugs, and alcoholism- the major immediate symptoms of the pervasive black communal and cultural chaos. ~ Cornel West

Looking to the future I see in the further acceleration of science continuous jobs for our workers. Science will cure unemployment. ~ Charles M. Schwab

The skills and productivity of American Workers, not to mention the taxes they pay, are the greatest economic resource our country has. To condemn large numbers of them to unemployment, to deprive the Treasury of their tax contributions and to force them to live on unemployment at public expense is the most expensive luxury any society ever chose to buy. ~ Lane Kirkland

The second thing that tore at my heart was the sight of educated yet jobless Baluch youngsters addicted to drugs. The landscape changed non-stop, but the story of deprivation and misery remained the same throughout the belt. NA-260 (Quetta-cum-Chagai-cum-Mastung) was considered the largest electoral constituency of Pakistan, spread over 700 kilometres and bordering Iran and Afghanistan. It was not only an administrative impossibility to govern, but had the additional challenges of stretching from a Pashtun stronghold in Quetta into a mainly Baluch belt. Cross-border smuggling and infiltration was a huge additional complication. ~ Reham Khan

Typically, during recessionary times, particular groups suffer higher rates of unemployment -African Americans, and Latinos, and in some cases other minority groups. If you don't have a high level of training or education you're going to fall into that category. ~ Hilda Solis

In 2012 President Obama didn't go anywhere near African-American communities. Why? Because unemployment was so high there, he didn't want to address it. ~ Rudy Giuliani

For those unfortunate enough to experience it, long-term unemployment - now, as in the 1930s - is a tragedy. And, for society as a whole, there is the danger that the productive capacity of a significant portion of the labour force will be impaired. ~ Barry Eichengreen

There is no such thing as an acceptable level of unemployment, because hunger is not acceptable, poverty is not acceptable, poor health is not acceptable, and a ruined life is not acceptable. ~ Hubert H. Humphrey

If I were a lesbian and had a thing for narcissistic ex-sorority girls? I'd totally do me.
Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office: A Memoir ~ Jen Lancaster

There will not be an automatic increase in interest rate when unemployment hits 6.5%. ~ Ben Bernanke

In socialist society certain inequalities in property still exist. But in socialist society there is no longer unemployment, no exploitation, no oppression of nationalities. In socialist society everyone is obliged to work, although he does not, in return for his labour receive according to his requirements, but according to the quantity and quality of the work he has performed. ~ J. Stalin

If you subsidize apples, you get more apples; if you subsidize unemployment, you get more of it. ~ Charles Krauthammer

Our economy continues to struggle with slow economic growth, high unemployment and stagnant wages. "Obama care's" raising costs. That's making it harder for small businesses to hire. In short, it's a train wreck. ~ John Boehner

Hunger is not the worst feature of unemployment; idleness is. ~ William Barrett

I had a period of unemployment for about nine months after my first big break, and it's the greatest lesson I ever could have learned, never to believe you're home and dry. ~ Natalie Dormer

I hear all the time that 'unemployment is greatly reduced, but the people aren't feeling it.' When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth - the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs that are full time and real - then we will quit wondering why Americans aren't 'feeling' something that doesn't remotely reflect the reality in their lives. And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class. ~ Jim Clifton

Gun control? My wife had a job for three years before she found out that her boss was a convicted sex offender - a child molester. She used to take our son to work with her. When we found out, she quit her job and filed for unemployment, but was denied because she didn't have to quit. That's a true story. I wonder what would happen if a young child walked into a room full of child molesters and executed them with an AR-15? What would congress have to say about gun control then? ~ Aaron B. Powell

Poor people wait a lot. Welfare, unemployment lines, laundromats, phone booths, emergency rooms, jails, etc. ~ Lucia Berlin

Our tax policies, the tax relief and reform we passed in 2003 and 2005, helped get government out of the way of America's entrepreneurs, and our unemployment rate is now lower than it was in the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s. ~ Marsha Blackburn

All unemployment compensation should be tied to a job training requirement. Now the fact is, 99 weeks is an associate degree. ~ Newt Gingrich

Long-term unemployment is particularly costly to those directly affected, of course. But in addition, because of its negative effects on workers' skills and attachment to the labor force, long-term unemployment may ultimately reduce the productive capacity of our economy. ~ Ben Bernanke

As long as there are ways we can serve, then we have a job to do. ~ Marianne Williamson

Hundreds of millions of human beings on our planet increasingly suffer from unemployment, poverty, hunger, and the destruction of their families. ~ Hans Kung

The minimum wage is the black teenage unemployment act. It is the guaranteed way of holding the poor, the minorities and the disenfranchised out of the mainstream is if you price their original services too high. ~ Arthur Laffer

More people on unemployment benefits is not success in America, fewer people on not because we kicked them off but because they have been able to get a job in the private sector, because government got out of the way. ~ Scott Walker

Minimum wage laws tragically generate unemployment, especially among the poorest and least skilled or educated workers ... Because a minimum wage, of course, does not guarantee any worker's employment; it only prohibits, by force of law, anyone from being hired at the wage which would pay his employer to hire him. ~ Murray Rothbard

It had been held that the economic system, any capitalist system, found its equilibrium at full employment. Left to itself, it was thus that it came to rest. Idle men and idle plant were an aberration, a wholly temporary failing. Keynes showed that the modern economy could as well find its equilibrium with continuing, serious unemployment. Its perfectly normal tendency was to what economists have since come to call an underemployment equilibrium. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

It's Obama's bad luck that he got elected just as the mayhem of the foreclosures, the banking collapse, and the General Motors disaster was accelerating the surge in unemployment to warp speed. ~ Tina Brown

My father was a civil servant, fairly sort of middle ranking, low to middle ranking. He worked almost entirely in what was then called Administrative Labour, dealing with employment and unemployment issues. ~ John Hume

I think it's a little insulting, a bit insulting to American workers when Rand Paul says that unemployment insurance is a disservice. ~ Chuck Schumer

In choosing to be a Psychology major, I decided to learn for the joy of learning for the first time in my life. I'd always been fascinated by human nature. What makes us act the way we do? Why do we make the same mistakes over and over? But I guess my interest is purely theoretical. I'm a Psychology major
who has no desire to work with people. This was poor planning on my part, I suppose. My parents definitely think so. But choosing passion over practicality seemed so honorable when I was a first-year student and graduation seemed so very, very far away . . .

But now, a semester away from unemployment, I realize how much better off those Engineering students really are. Sure, they're boring conversationalists that make you want to kill yourself because every story begins, "The other day? In the lab?" But people become a whole helluva lot more interesting when they're pulling down six figures, don't they? If I'm going to drag my friends out to my cardboard box, the pressure's on to provide some pretty goddamned sparkling conversation once they get there. And even with all my noble knowledge for knowledge's sake, I'm not sure I can. ~ Megan McCafferty

I have just explained my idea of how a constructive period of reflection, one that would send a clear message to the citizens of Europe: You should now what our priorities are. For Germany this means: Unemployment is one of one of our biggest problems. ~ Angela Merkel

I ask to be judged on the issue of unemployment. ~ Francois Hollande

We will not play with inflation. We are living a delicate moment. President Obama spoke to me today about the high unemployment affecting the United States. In this crisis period, when the developed nations are not recovering, it's prudent to maintain the established inflation target. ~ Dilma Rousseff

My writing routine is this: 1) Have a job. I can't do shit if I don't know where the rent is coming from--I tried the thing where you just declare yourself a writer and live on unemployment/savings/the kindness of strangers but that resulted in clinical depression. (interview with Amy Guth, Bigmouth Indeed Strikes Again) ~ Rachel Cline

Giving evidence against one's employers was the first step to unemployment. ~ Eoin Colfer

Insecurity cuts deeper and extends more widely than bare unemployment. Fear of loss of work, dread of the oncoming of old age, create anxiety and eat into self-respect in a way that impairs personal dignity. ~ John Dewey

Let's hope the institution of marriage survives its detractors, for without it there would be no more adultery and without adultery two thirds of our novelists would stand in line for unemployment checks. ~ Peter S. Prescott

Who says there's an unemployment problem in this country? Just take the five percent unemployed and give them a baseball stat to follow. ~ Andy Van Slyke

When large numbers of men are unable to find work, unemployment results. ~ Calvin Coolidge

In America, you can segregate the people, but the problems will travel. From slavery to equal rights, from state suppression of dissent to crime, drugs and unemployment, I can't think of a supposedly Black issue that hasn't wasted the original Black target group and then spread like measles to outlying white experience. ~ June Jordan

When we pray for God to illumine our path, we are saying, 'Dear God, please show me the way. What thoughts do I need to think, to be able to navigate my life at this point? What perceptions do I need; what insights will guide me? Who do I need to forgive? What parts of my personality do I need to look at; what changes do I need to make? Please come upon me and heal my life. Amen. ~ Marianne Williamson

Cessation of work is not accompanied by cessation of expenses ~ Cato The Elder

If you had to have a diploma or a GED to collect unemployment, you'd see a lot more kids staying in school. ~ Wayne Knight

The Great Recession was now entering its third decade, and unemployment was still at a record high. Even the fast-food joints in my neighborhood had a two-year waiting list for job applicants. ~ Ernest Cline

If poverty is a disease that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can't just treat those symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community. And we have to focus on what actually works ~ Barack Obama

The percentage of people qualifying for federal disability benefits because they are unable to work rose from 0.7 percent of the size of the labor force in 1960 to 5.3% in 2010. ~ Charles Murray

Being unemployed, Kurt set in motion a routine that he would follow for the rest of his life. He would rise at around noon and eat a brunch of sorts. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese was his favorite food. After eating, he would spend the rest of the day doing one of three things: watching television, which he did unceasingly; practicing his guitar, which he did for hours a day, usually while watching TV; or creating some kind of art project, be it a painting, collage, or three-dimensional installation. This last activity was never formal - he rarely identified himself as an artist - yet he spent hours in this manner. ~ Charles R. Cross

I never went too long without a job. The problem was a lot of the early jobs are almost more demoralizing than unemployment. ~ Nick Offerman

Our nation stands at the crossroads of liberty. Crushing national debt, rampant illegal immigration, insane business regulations and staggering national unemployment are pushing our nation into unchartered territory. ~ James Lankford

Rising unemployment and the recession have been the price that we have had to pay to get inflation down. That price is well worth paying. ~ Norman Lamont

In a very weak economy, when you say 'cut government spending,' what you mean is you're laying off school teachers and you're de-funding various programs that put money into the economy. This means you have more unemployed people that then draw unemployment benefits and don't pay taxes. ~ Fareed Zakaria

In short, avoiding the scourge of unemployment may have less to do with chasing after growth and more to do with building an economy of care, craft and culture. And in doing so, restoring the value of decent work to its rightful place at the heart of society. ~ Tim Jackson

You have tremendous gifts to give; God sent them with you when you came to this earth. And while you might forget them, or doubt they exist, God does not forget and He will show them to you. As soon as your gifts are dedicated to His work, they will blossom. Chains that might have held you back for years will dissolve. And you will feel free. You will learn that your spirit is bigger than your circumstances, as soon as you put your spirit first. ~ Marianne Williamson

You would think that if any group in America had 20% to 25% unemployment, it would generate all kinds of attention. The Labor Department would understandably and necessarily begin to concentrate on what can we do to reduce this level of unemployment. Congress would give great time on the floor for debate on what can be done. ~ Emanuel Cleaver

Today's misery is real unemployment, home foreclosures and bankruptcies. This is the Obama Misery Index and its at a record high. Its going to take more than new rhetoric to put Americans back to work - its going to take a new president. ~ Mitt Romney

I'm suggesting that, until America takes care of its debt, untangles the housing mess and gets unemployment under control, we all commit to working six days a week. Yep, move the standard 35-40 hour work week right up to 48 hours. ~ Jason Calacanis

Sometimes I even now feel like a stranger in my country. But I knew there would be problems because I had seen the world as a skater. And now? A lot of people in eastern Germany have lost jobs, rents went up, food costs went up, unemployment went to 20 percent. Freedom is good, but it is not easy. ~ Katarina Witt

In life, as in war, there are many ways to stay alive. But not all of them are right and honourable. The difficult part is not to stay alive but to live in the right way. We spend our lives running away from death or other frightful things like unemployment. But we should remember that there are faster runners than either death or destitution that can catch us much more quickly, especially if we cannot see them, such as wickedness and lack of integrity. I am leaving you today having lost my job, but wickedness also leaves here today empty-handed; it did not catch me because truth, honesty, and goodness chased them away. I am happy to report that my spine and moral fibre are all intact. I consider this result acceptable and if not just, just enough. ~ Aviezer Tucker

Ahh, Otunga. I hope you keep depending on your wife. I hope she keeps making movies because while she's walking the red carpet, you're gonna be walking the unemployment line. ~ Edge

Heavy Metal fans are buying Heavy Metal records, taking the records home, listening to the records and then blowing their heads off with shotguns? Where's the problem? That's an unemployment solution right there, folks! It's called natural selection. ~ Denis Leary

Well, all across the country, this is kind of sad, unemployment offices are swamped with people waiting to file for unemployment insurance. It's gotten so bad that the offices are overwhelmed and can't function. I got an idea. Why don't you hire more people? They're right there in line. Speed this whole thing up! ~ Jay Leno

We're always flexible and pragmatic ... It's always important to watch the unemployment rate and to make sure that we can keep most Canadians working. We were successful in that back in 2008-09. ~ Jim Flaherty

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing. ~ John Maynard Keynes

Since the dawn of the twentieth century, we have been told that
the federal government has the answers to solve all of society's problems.
We have been promised, by supposedly serious men who have
sworn an oath before God and man, that if we just give Washington,
D.C., more of our money and more of our personal freedom, the
problems of poverty, illiteracy, racism, unemployment, crime, and
corruption will all be solved. Today, each and every one of these
problems is worse than it has ever been. The federal government and
its blood-sucking bureaucracies do not have a solution to the problem,
they are the problem. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Credit expansion results in the recurrence of economic crisis and periods of depression. Inflation makes the prices of all commodities and services soar. The attempts to enforce wage rates higher than those the unhampered market would have determined produce mass unemployment prolonged year after year. Price ceilings result in a drop in the supply of commodities affected. The economists have proved these theorems in an irrefutable way. No ~ Ludwig Von Mises

You cannot win a war if you cannot talk honestly about the enemy Since the 9/11 attacks, political correctness and ideological prejudice - under both Republican and Democratic presidents - have distorted our analysis of the enemy, preventing us from drawing an effective plan to defeat the likes of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The Obama administration, blinded by its own preconceived ideas of why terrorism occurs, is influenced by malevolent actors who have an interest in censoring any talk of the religious aspects of the enemy's ideology. At the highest level of the U.S. government, terrorism is deemed to be the result of poverty, unemployment, and lack of political enfranchisement. This fallacy must be jettisoned. We are not at war with Islam. The people most immanently in danger, in fact, are the nonviolent and non-extremist Muslims of the Middle East, such as our allies in Jordan and the modern Muslims of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. They are on the most important front of this war, and they understand just how much religion truly matters. We do a great disservice to those brave Muslims when we try to convince the world that the threat will disappear if enough people have good jobs and sound educations. ~ Sebastian Gorka

Unemployment is bigger than a political party. It is a national danger and a national scandal. ~ Ellen Wilkinson

Everyone gets laid off and everyone in Hollywood gets unemployment for six months while they're looking for a new job. So I would just do stand-up for six months and think I was really making it, and when my unemployment ran out, I had to get another job immediately. ~ Anthony Jeselnik

And if you like 14.4 percent unemployment, if you like the fact that 70 percent of home mortgages in Nevada are underwater, then stay the course. Vote for Harry Reid. ~ John Cornyn

More broadly, we are going to have to examine the safety net programs to make sure they are poised to catch the families before they fall even more, especially in the areas of unemployment benefits, child care assistance, and foster care. ~ Richard Neal

What the mayors care about is, 'How can I get money to invest in the infrastructure in my city? How do we put people back to work, lower the unemployment rate, provide for job training programs? How do we make class sizes smaller and make investments in our children from an education standpoint?' ~ Michael Nutter

Democrats have an answer to the unemployment problem. They're all running for the Presidency. ~ Bob Hope

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden. ~ Orson Scott Card

Understand, this is unemployment insurance. It's not welfare, as a lot of my Republican colleagues like to suggest it is. You pay into it when you're working. You get help when you're not. ~ Sherrod Brown

Most televangelists, popular Christian preacher icons, and heads of those corporations that we call megachurches share an unreflective modern view of Jesus--that he translates easily and almost automatically into a modern idiom. The fact is, however, that Jesus was not a person of the twenty-first century who spoke the language of contemporary Christian America (or England or Germany or anywhere else). Jesus was inescapably and ineluctably a Jew living in first-century Palestine. He was not like us, and if we make him like us we transform the historical Jesus into a creature that we have invented for ourselves and for our own purposes.

Jesus would not recognize himself in the preaching of most of his followers today. He knew nothing of our world. He was not a capitalist. He did not believe in free enterprise. He did not support the acquisition of wealth or the good things in life. He did not believe in massive education. He had never heard of democracy. He had nothing to do with going to church on Sunday. He knew nothing of social security, food stamps, welfare, American exceptionalism, unemployment numbers, or immigration. He had no views on tax reform, health care (apart from wanting to heal leprosy), or the welfare state. So far as we know, he expressed no opinion on the ethical issues that plague us today: abortion and reproductive rights, gay marriage, euthanasia, or bombing Iraq. His world was not ours, his concerns were not ours, and--most striking of all-- ~ Bart D. Ehrman

To drive a woman away, tell her that you are unemployed. To bore her, tell her that you are single. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I think, you know, when you're an actor who's had periods of unemployment, it makes you feel really good to have a job - to say that you're expected somewhere, do you know what I mean? ~ Gillian Jacobs

China has no income tax, no unemployment and not a single soldier outside its borders. ~ Zhou Enlai

I am convinced that ... we have reestablished confidence. Wages should remain stable. A very large degree of industrial unemployment and suffering which would otherwise have occurred has been prevented. ~ Herbert Hoover

Going on unemployment was a total low point for me, but it was also the point when I promised myself I'd write every day from 9 to 5. ~ Paul Downs Colaizzo

In an advanced industrial society it becomes almost impossible to seek, even to imagine, unemployment as a condition for autonomous, useful work. The infrastructure of society is arranged so that only the job gives access to the tools of production...Housework, handicrafts, subsistence agriculture, radical technology, learning exchanges, and the like are degraded into activities for the idle, the unproductive, the very poor, or the very rich. A society that fosters intense dependence on commodities thus turns its unemployed into either its poor or its dependents. ~ Ivan Illich

The Great Recession and its continuing aftermath have left many twenty-somethings feeling naïve, even devastated.Twenty-somethings are more educated than ever before, but a smaller percentage find work after college. Many entry-level jobs have gone overseas, making it more difficult for twenty-somethings to gain a foothold at home. With a contracting economy and a growing population, unemployment is at its highest in decades. An unpaid internship is the new starter job. About a quarter of twenty-somethings are out of work and another quarter work only part-time. Twenty-somethings who do have paying jobs earn less than their 1970s counterparts when adjusted for inflation. ~ Meg Jay