Men Battle Great Depression

While it may be true that women are at higher risk for depression than men, the pendulum may be swinging the other way, especially when seen through the prism of the Great Recession.

Men, especially those in middle age, got clobbered. Some found themselves without work for the first time in their adult lives. It was a shock to the system, from which many have yet to recover (and, sadly, some may never recover).

Men who worked hard for two or three decades, with no break in employment in their chosen profession, were tossed aside as the recession deepened and its lingering pain widened.

Employers, fighting for survival, dumped loyal and veteran male employees who found themselves suddenly unemployed and ill-prepared for the financial and emotional fallout. They were sucker-punched and saddled with piles of debt.

In some homes, women, for the first time, became the primary breadwinners for their families in a stark reversal of traditional gender roles.

Inside Your Head

With serious social and cultural changes, men appear to be at increasingly higher risk of developing depression, notes Dr. Boadie Dunlop of Emory University in Atlanta, in an editorial in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

When the psychiatrist began recruiting subjects for a depression study, he enlisted the help of local sports radio shows, and was surprised by the tremendous response he received — from men, reports Alice Park for Time.com.

“We were really impressed with the number of men coming in with depression related to employment or marital conflict,” Dunlop says.

Where Jobs Went

The Great Recession of recent years brought some of those issues to a head, he says, as downsizing and high unemployment highlighted the death of manufacturing and labor-intensive jobs, which have traditionally been held by men.

About 75 percent of the jobs lost in the downturn belonged to men.

Innovations in technology (think online news instead of print news), as well as outsourcing (think overseas TV set manufacturing) to countries where manual labor is less expensive, are compressing this sector, forcing more men than women out of work.

With men culturally shouldering the role of primary breadwinner for their families, unemployment hits men particularly hard, as their self-esteem, an important factor in depression risk, is often contingent on their role as provider.

Socially, Boadie says, despite many high profile cases of men admitting to depression, such as veteran broadcast journalist Mike Wallace (left) and actor, comedian, writer and film producer John Cleese, it's still difficult for most men to acknowledge feeling overwhelmed and out of control.

“To be depressed, to feel overwhelmed and not motivated to do things, are signs that have had the stigma attached to them of mental weakness,” Dunlop says. “And men traditionally have felt that they should just overcome them and snap out of it.”

Close To Home

It’s not reassuring to think the world has passed you by, especially if your career of three decades required you stay focused on breaking news.

As a veteran print journalist, my job was to report and edit the news, to be the eyes and ears for the public and provide an unbiased daily account of relevant and timely information.

But with the Great Recession, I found myself on the other side of the story and caught an economic riptide as the some of biggest newspapers in America, including my own, downsized practically overnight.

Journalism careers, mine included, ended abruptly and without any meaningful closure. I became a modern Rip Van Winkle, though I never slept. I merely blinked and suddenly what I did as a print journalist was no longer valued or wanted.

Did I take it personally? Yes, at first. But I later came to realize it’s all part of a natural order of things, regardless of your job or profession.

From My Notes

For the more fortunate among us, big trouble never really lands on the doorstep; it’s always the other guy who gets nailed. But for many of us, it never quite works that way.

My new attitude is simply this: Be prepared, flexible, and the best you can be at whatever you do – whether that’s mopping floors or signing big clients.

And, most important of all, never let your work define who you really are, what you bring to the table. That’s your call!

Ken Cocuzzo

Underemployment Is Growing

The job numbers just released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show the national unemployment rate holding steady at 9.7 percent, but it's not reason to celebrate if you look deeper.

The emerging trend is that more people are accepting part-time and temporary work in a desperate effort to get off assistance. Some economists will say the generation of part-time and temporary jobs is a sign of economic recovery which could lead to permanent job growth.

Notice the word "could" because there are no guarantees the United States will boldly emerge from the worst economic decline since the Great Depression.

What we have now is growing underemployment that represents a crossroads -- one way leads toward recovery, the other to further decline. The underemployment rate, as of February, stood at 16.8 percent.

The bureau’s definition of underemployment includes three categories: the unemployed who are still looking for work, the unemployed who have stopped looking for work, and those who are employed part time but would like to be employed full time.


For the history buffs among us, the Depression of the 1930s was a long, slow and painful climb back, speeded up only by our entry into World War II in December 1941. And, like today, the U.S. government propped up many failing institutions, from banks to manufacturing, and created public works jobs.


The U.S. unemployment rate for February 2010 remained at 9.7 percent (same as January) as only 36,000 jobs were shed in the month, according to the bureau. A healthy job market in America means an unemployment rate of about 3.5 percent to 4 percent, economists say.

The number of Americans working part time because they were unable to find full-time jobs increased by 500,000 -- to 8.8 million, a discouraging sign to many, but jobs continued to increase in the temporary help sector, which added nearly 50,000 jobs, according to MediaJobsDaily reporter Rachel Kaufman.

One only needs to scan the Help Wanted classified ads online or in print to see an abundance of part-time and temp jobs across many sectors. The same holds true for many of the larger job board Web sites, such as Indeed and Simply Hired.

Does this portend a slow economic recovery, or does it indicate a more ominous trend with employers filling gaps with second-class workers? Think about this: If employers survived the Great Recession with reduced staffs and expenditures, what incentives do they have to hire new full-time workers?

Perhaps the answer -- no laughs or eye rolling, please -- rests with congressional action to make job creation more enticing to employers.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a $35 billion jobs bill Thursday night that will exempt employers from Social Security taxes if they hire unemployed workers. The bill already cleared the Senate but since the House modified the measure, it goes back to the Senate.

The Big Questions: Will it be enough for employers, especially those in the hard-hit sectors such as housing, automotive and publishing, to rethink their staffing requirements? Or will lingering economic anxieties prevent companies from gambling on an uncertain future?

The answers may await in the second quarter of this year (April, May, June). If the pace of economic recovery has not picked up, and it looks like more of February's indicators, the rest of 2010 could be in serious doubt.

As for me, I practice what I preach at writenowworks.com.