‘Unemployment was the best thing that happened to me’: significance of paid work and its relationship with wellbeing among middle age unemployed men

Abstract

In occidental societies, working classes are prone to economical and psychosocial dependency of paid work. Losing one’s job can then endanger livelihood of the working classes and compromise self-concept, time structure and social integration and cause ill-being. In fact, unemployment has been described by several authors as precursor of depressive feelings, anxiety, and low self-esteem. For older actives unemployment can be a particular stressful event as they might find it too difficult to regain access to the labour market. Economic contraction, labour market reconfiguration, and age discrimination may pull to a premature end of professional activity. In this sense a non-desired exclusion from the labour market that cuts off vital resources is surely disempowering. However, precarious working conditions, unadjusted functions to changing physical capacities, overload, or even just tediousness may feed a desire for early retirement. In this case, redundancy can be relieving if other forms of livelihood are ensured. From this framework the following questions emerge: will less-qualified unemployed men, at the end of a long professional career, understand work as the key element for a positive self-concept therefore unemployment a menace to identity and wellbeing? Or could it be that the hardships of work brought discontent and unemployment could represent an early relief? Will unemployment cause distress solely because of the financial deprivation it can bring? From the discussion of life histories and representations of unemployed blue collar men between 50 and 65 years old, it will be shown that paid work is not only relevant for its financial aspects, but also because it represents the fulfilment of an adulthood mandatory role, hence inclusion. Some of the coping strategies identified were: 1) adoption of an “aged” identity and incorporation job loss as end of active life; or 2) stressing the perspective that paid work impedes free will