When losing your job feels like losing your self

• Main Author: RAO, Aliya Hamid
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2020
• Subjects: Professionals; unemployment; gender; social status; self-worth; Gender and Sexuality; Sociology; Work, Economy and Organizations
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3192; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4449/viewcontent/When_Losing_Your_Job_Feels_Like_Losing_Self_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

I interviewed Todd, a marketing professional, in 2014 for my forthcoming book, Crunch Time: How Married Couples Confront Unemployment, which focuses on the unemployment experiences of highly educated, married professionals with children in the U.S. Like dozens of other professionals I interviewed, Todd’s employment is key to his sense of self, determining how he measures his social status and self-worth. Yet, this self-worth is constantly threatened, because professionals like Todd have become recent casualties of a pervasive labor market uncertainty that existed long before the coronavirus pandemic.