Quotes & Sayings About Unemployment

The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That's why we have to destroy the present politico-economy system. — Tim Kreider

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

Heckman discovered that when you consider all kinds of important future outcomes - annual income, unemployment rate, divorce rate, use of illegal drugs - GED recipients look exactly like high-school dropouts, despite the fact that they have earned this supposedly valuable extra credential, and despite the fact that they are, on average, considerably more intelligent than high-school dropouts. — Paul Tough

As long as there is unemployment, war, crime and all things that go to the infliction of man's inhumanity to man, regardless - there is much to be done, and people need to work together. — Rosa Parks

We don't have a major problem right now in our country, and life is normal. Things like unemployment, which the youth are suffering from, and the rate of inflation - these are chronic conditions and we have to solve them. — Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

No president has ever been elected with unemployment over 8 percent. — Bob McDonnell

Most of the people I meet who are on unemployment are people who have had jobs for 25 years, lost them; they've been knocking on doors every week. — Chuck Schumer

If you've got unemployment, low pay, that was just too bad. But that was the system. That was the sort of economy and philosophy against which I was fighting in the 1930s. — Barbara Castle

So you never really tried to solve the problem.
Oh, c'mon. Can you ever "solve" poverty? Can you ever "solve" crime? Can you ever "solve" disease, unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell no. All you can hope for is to make them manageable enough to allow people to get on with their lives. That's not cynicism, that's maturity. You can't stop the rain. All you can do is just build a roof that you hope won't leak, or at least won't leak on the people who are gonna vote for you.
What does that mean?
C'mon ...
Seriously. What does that mean?
Fine, whatever, "Mister Smith goes to motherfuckin' Washington," it means that, in politics, you focus on the needs of your power base. Keep them happy, and they keep you in office. — Max Brooks

I'm a political scientist and I study these things, and I know that economic problems, with the rising unemployment and inflation and low productivity and so forth, were a factor in that election, in that defeat of President Carter. — Jeane Kirkpatrick

We had the same kind of unemployment here as they had in the worst hit places in the North and you're meant to be on a cushy wicket in the South. If you go up to Newcastle, you can tell that the town's really had money, or Liverpool, you know, the northern towns have got grandeur, whereas Medway, being just a sort of garrison town and dockyard town, you don't have anything like Earl Grey Square or anything like that. — Billy Childish

I expect you are wondering why I had not considered the possibility of unemployment. The reason being that my mind had a very different recollection of what unemployed men looked like. The jobless man I remembered from the past went out onto the street with a placard around his neck that read "Looking for any type of work". When he'd had enough of drifting fruitlessly around in this manner, he would remove the placard, grab a red flag handed to him by a loitering Bolshevist, and return to the street. — Timur Vermes

Unemployment is like a headache or a high temperature - unpleasant and exhausting but not carrying in itself any explanation of its cause. — William Beveridge

We blacks were the first people embracing Obama, long before the people at expensive fundraisers were supporting him. We gave him his first love, 96 percent of blacks voted for him in 2008. Yet today we are the number one in unemployment, with 16 percent of American blacks out of work. — Jesse Jackson

My message is that the counterclaim - which is that if wages go up, employment will go down - is a scam. It's a con job. It's an intimidation tactic. There is absolutely no evidence anywhere that it's true. On the contrary, where you find high wages you usually find low unemployment. — Nick Hanauer

Unemployment, with its injustice for the man who seeks and thirsts for employment, who begs for labour and cannot get it, and who is punished for failure he is not responsible for by the starvation of his children
that torture is something that private enterprise ought to remedy for its own sake. — David Lloyd George

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 we're talking about is the price of goods, all goods, in terms of money. That has nothing to do with unemployment, except for the fact that you get fewer goods. And when you have more money and fewer goods, the amount of dollars per good goes up. It goes up because there are fewer goods and it goes up because there is more money. — Arthur Laffer

In the final analysis, poverty means death: lack of food and housing, the inability to attend properly to health and education needs, the exploitation of workers, permanent unemployment, the lack of respect for one's human dignity, and unjust limitations placed on personal freedom in the areas of self-expression, politics, and religion. — Gustavo Gutierrez

Slavery was endemic in the classical world and huge numbers of men, women and children, the captives of Rome's ceaseless wars, flooded into Italy. Slaves provided a cheap workforce, contributing significantly to unemployment among free-born citizens. — Anthony Everitt

The devotion that young Chinese feel to the Internet is driven by deep factors ranging from youth unemployment and income inequality to political repression and the demographic imbalance between men and women. — Evan Osnos

The most important lesson to take away from allowing the minimum wage and unemployment benefit data to talk is that abstract notions of what is right, good and just should be examined from a concrete, operational point of view. A dose of reality is most edifying. — Steve Hanke

What is required as we travel towards full unemployment is not new legislation but a gradual change of mental attitude, a shift in values. As our taste for idling grows, we will refuse to work for old-fashioned bosses who demand a five-day, 40-hour, nine-to-five type week, or worse. — Tom Hodgkinson

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

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

I think it's hard to know. Feeling fulfilled, because actors face periods of unemployment, there is nothing worse than being at the top of your game; you have so much to give but do not have the platform to do this. — Michael York

People aren't stupid. I mean, people remember in 1990, the unemployment rate was 10 percent. Now it's 4 _ percent. We've got 1/4 million jobs that we've created. — William Weld

I don't think we need to extend unemployment any further without paying for it, and without making some modifications such as turning it into a loan at some point. It then encourages people to go back to work. — Jim DeMint

A parallel to this system of punishment is the trauma caused by enforced unemployment in capitalist society. Add to this an inability for the unemployed to find any imaginable alternative occupation, and the extent of the effects of network exclusion becomes clear. — Alexander Bard

During Governor Jennifer Granholm's administration, Michigan has experienced job losses, declining personal incomes, diminishing home values, and the highest unemployment rate in the nation. — Tim Walberg

It has to be because unemployment problems in northwest Indiana are similar to those in southeast Chicago. — Richard M. Daley

Once the true relationship between inflation and unemployment is understood, with luck and skill, a free lunch is possible. — Paul Ormerod

Unfortunately, very few governments think about youth unemployment when they are drawing up their national plans. — Kofi Annan

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

How can we vote for a bill [S.744] that our own CBO says will reduce average wages in America for 12 years, increase unemployment for 7 years, and reduce per capita GNP growth over 25 years? A bill that will admit 30 million people to permanent legal status in the next 10 years? That will dramatically increase the annual immigration flow, and will double the guest worker flow? — Jeff Sessions

This crisis of long-term unemployment is having a profoundly damaging impact on the lives of those bearing the brunt of it. We know this thanks to a series of careful studies of the problem conducted in the depths of the 1930s Great Depression. — Barry Eichengreen

It takes about two and a half percent growth just to keep unemployment stable. — Ben Bernanke

A day unemployed is like a bagel- even when it's bad, it's still pretty good ... — CrimethInc.

The president wants more tax money in Washington. I want more money left in the communities, particularly poor communities, particularly communities that have high unemployment. — Rand Paul

By 1939, the Depression was back. Unemployment was huge. Roosevelt didn't have any quick fix. Remember, the New Deal, Works Progress Administration, and Civilian Conservation Corps - all that happened years before. Roosevelt was riding a storm. — Gore Vidal

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

choose not to buy into a negative belief system. How does this work in everyday life? Let's take a common example. The newspapers report unemployment is at a record high. The television news commentator states: "No jobs are available." At this point, we are free to refuse to buy into the negative thought form. We can say instead, "Unemployment does not apply to me." By refusing to accept the negative belief, it now has no hold over our own life. — David R. Hawkins

The war photographer's most fervent wish is for unemployment — Robert Capa

No Arab country produces graduates who can compete with their East Asian counterparts; the only Muslim country whose graduates meet world standards is Turkey. University graduates throughout the Arab world have miserable prospects. "The average unemployment rate for the age group 15-24 years in the Group of Arab Countries reaches to 30%, compared with an average rate of world 14.4%," according to the Arab Labor Organization. "Problem [sic] of high unemployment rates among the educated graduates from universities and colleges, which reaches to 26.8% in Morocco and 19.3% in Algeria, 17.7 % in Jordan. It was noted that 94% of the unemployed in the Arab Republic of Egypt are in the age group 15-29 years, reflecting a lack of consistency of education plans to the needs of the Labor market."9 — David Goldman

Unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcy - the cure is not more government spending, but helping businesses create jobs. — Brian Sandoval

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

In Greece, the unemployment rate has risen to 22%. The solution to the problem was to raise taxes on the rich, according to the Greek president Barack Obama-opolis. — Jay Leno

I couldn't live without work. That's what makes me so sympathetic towards those people who are unemployed. I don't know how they live without working. — Margaret Thatcher

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

Is not 'casual' labour the very secret and safety-valve of a safe and sound labour system generally?...In a complicated and commercial state constant employment at regular wages is impossible; while dole-supported unemployment, at anything like the wages of employment, is demoralizing to begin with and ruinous at its more or less quickly arriving end. — George Saintsbury

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

Until a job is outsourced or streamlined through an innovation, an employee is trained to operate robotically. This is what a brand is. — John-Talmage Mathis

However, inflation and unemployment have affected the shopping centers at least as much as the rest of the economy, so that here and there among the brave enticements stood a storefront dark, silent, its windows black, its forehead nameless, its prospects bleak. The survivors seemed to beam the more brightly in their efforts to distract attention from their fallen comrades, but Dortmunder could see them. Dortmunder and a failed enterprise could always recognize one another. — Donald E. Westlake

Starving whilst schooled is like a man's finding out that his wife is on her periods ... a few seconds after he took Viagra. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Too many Americans now believe that the checks they receive every month from the unemployment office - like the checks they get from the welfare office, from Medicare, from Social Security - are inalienable rights. They are not. — Ben Shapiro

No politician can praise unemployment or inflation, and there is no way of combining high employment with stable prices that does not involve some control of income and prices. Otherwise the struggle for more consumption and more income to sustain it-a struggle that modern corporations, modern unions and modern democracy all facilitate and encourage-will drive up prices. Only heavy unemployment will then temper this upward thrust. Not many wish to confront the truth that the modern economy gives a choice only between inflation, unemployment, or controls. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Maybe the greatest anger and frustration come not from unemployment or poverty or the lack of a future but from the feeling that you have no culture, because you've been torn between cultures, between incompatible symbols. How can you exist when you don't know where you are? — Muriel Barbery

There are stories - legends, really - of the "steady job." Old-timers gather graduates around the flickering light of a computer monitor and tell stories of how the company used to be, back when a job was for life, not just for the business cycle. ... The graduates snicker. A steady job! They've never heard of such a thing. — Max Barry

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions
poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed
which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.
It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. — Howard Zinn

If Australia finds it has a strong Australian dollar, and it has higher unemployment, then it would have to respond, and that would either be by increasing domestic demand or by weakening its own currency. — Ben Bernanke

I always tell actors, "Don't think of it as unemployment when you don't have a job. You have to think of it as being in preparation for your next job." You have to be always preparing for success. — Virginia Madsen

It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.
Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible. — Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

In response to a suggestion that total free trade would end in cheaper foreign products flooding the market and causing unemployment. — Milton Friedman

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

So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment. — Paul Krugman

I am overwhelmed by the rigmarole of bureaucratic paperwork. I can't keep it all straight - the unemployment forms, the food-stamp applications, the drastically increasing number of ID cards that I am being forced to carry around with me. Being poor is a full-time job. Every minute, the government demands that you prove your current economic status, leaving absolutely no time to improve it. I have to schedule job interviews between all my other red-tape appointments. — Cassie Peterson

Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn't sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the Depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets. — Paul Krugman

People internalize, from the jail to student loan debt, to credit card debt, to unemployment to the whole collective. It manifests itself in many ways, in people's home lives, domestic stuff. — Jesse Jackson

I can't possibly predict precisely what the unemployment rate will be at the end of one year. I can tell you that over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we'd put in place, we'd get the unemployment rate down to 6%, and perhaps a little lower. It depends in part upon the rate of growth of the globe, as well as what we're seeing here in the United States, but we'd get the rate down quite substantially, and frankly, the key is we're going to show such job growth that there will be competition for employees again. — Mitt Romney

We have too large a disparity in the world; we need more inclusiveness ... If we continue to have uninclusive growth and we continue with the unemployment situation, particularly youth unemployment, our global society is not sustainable. — Klaus Schwab

In the long run, the right answer to unemployment is to create more jobs. — George W. Bush

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

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

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

As massive numbers of homeless, hungry, unemployed, drug-addicted, illiterate, and mentally ill people vanish behind its walls, the social problems of extreme poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, drug addiction, illiteracy, and mental illness become more ignorable, too. — Maya Schenwar

Change comes, when every person is adequately benefited.
We keep hearing about "change." Change will never come to all of society. Change can only come when the market system adequately provide all of the needs for all people. Millions are living in poverty in the United States and throughout the world, due to "change" passed them by, are struggling: Among them are high unemployment, the mentally challenged, poor education, many of them are homeless and hungry, sick and tired; such individuals, look for ways to move beyond their prison walls that hold them back from moving forward: Through the corridors of their prison, they observe the wealthy getting wealthier. They see the market system passing them at a fast rate of speed. Hope has long left the majority of them. There is a price that must be paid for the sins of those who have built these prisons. — Ellen J. Barrier

In modern society, fear of unemployment remains the darkest of the shadows thrown by the past. In an industrial order, a man out of work is almost a man out of life. — Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson Of Lodsworth

With a strong domestic economy, low national unemployment at 5 percent, and increasing retail sales, the picture should look rosy. But one look at the trade deficit changes all of that. — Jo Ann Emerson

Perceptions of black criminality aren't likely to change until black behavior changes. Rather than address that challenge, however, too many liberal policy makers change the subject. Instead of talking about black behavior, they want to talk about racism or poverty or unemployment or gun control. — Jason L. Riley

When Jesus is truly our Lord, He directs our lives and we gladly obey Him. Indeed, we bring every part of our lives under His lordship - our home and family, our sexuality and marriage, our job or unemployment, our money and possessions, our ambitions and recreations. — John Stott

Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare. — William Vickrey

There are certain people in whom you can detect the seeds of madness - seeds that have remained dormant only because the people in question have lived relatively comfortable, middle class lives. They function perfectly well in the world, but you can imagine, given a nasty parent, or a prolonged bout of unemployment, how their potential for craziness might have been realized. — Zoe Heller

As in Northern Ireland, children, shoppers, ordinary working men were all suitable targets. Bombs in department stores and pubs would have even more impact in the context of the widely anticipated social breakdown brought on by industrial decline, high unemployment, rising inflation and an energy crisis. — Ian McEwan

Young people have limited choices, but they are also useful human resources. — Santosh Kalwar

So did yours. Joseph's pit came in the form of a cistern. Maybe yours came in the form of a diagnosis, a foster home, or a traumatic injury. Joseph was thrown in a hole and despised. And you? Thrown in an unemployment line and forgotten. Thrown into a divorce and abandoned, into a bed and abused. The pit. A kind of death, waterless and austere. Some people never recover. Life is reduced to one quest: get out and never be hurt again. Not simply done. Pits have no easy exits. — Max Lucado

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

At a time when our country is waging two wars, approval ratings for Congress are at historic lows, unemployment is at a 70-year high and financial institutions have collapsed around us, I can't imagine anyone seriously opposing a National Day of Prayer. — Franklin Graham

The longer our graduation lines are today, the shorter our unemployment lines will be tomorrow. — George H. W. Bush

A city suffering from chronic poverty, out-of-control crime, a $76 million budget deficit and a 15 percent unemployment rate (nearly 50 percent for Oakland's youth) can hardly afford such social justice follies. But a pushover Democratic mayor and an overwhelmed police force have left what's left of gainfully employed Oakland taxpayers at the mercy of professional freeloaders and anti-capitalism saboteurs. — Michelle Malkin

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

Inflation is the parent of unemployment and the unseen robber of those who have saved. — Margaret Thatcher

When they become slaves to thoughts that pull them down they fall into another kind of slavery and no one can emancipate them from such bondage as that except themselves - not even a Lincoln.
I say this because there is an increasing tendency among the youth of both races to assume that a system of government will unload them of all responsibilities for the care of aged parents, for sicknesses and accidents - often due to their own carelessness and neglect - and for their periods of unemployment, no matter how much their condition is due to laziness or failure to co-operate with others. I see this every day. 'Let the government do it,' they say, ignoring the fact that, in a democracy, they themselves help pay for the government's disbursements. It looks to me at this time as if they wish to declare not their independence, but their dependence upon the government from the cradle to the grave. — Thomas Calhoun Walker

Unemployment is due to the large import of goods from Britain and other countries. The Government haven't used the powers which they have for the benefit of the country. — Eamon De Valera

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

I care about a lot of issues. I care about libraries, I care about healthcare, I care about homelessness and unemployment. I care about net neutrality and the steady erosion of our liberties both online and off. I care about the rich/poor divide and the rise of corporate business. — Sara Sheridan

Germany and South Korea were able to lower unemployment through success in export industries. — Stef Wertheimer

If we can have record high unemployment, record job loss, and just an absolutely anemic economic recovery because of Obama's policies, and he's not blamed for it, what makes anybody think he's gonna get blamed when an insurance company starts doubling their premiums? — Rush Limbaugh

I've never believed unemployment numbers because the way that they calculate unemployment makes no sense whatsoever. It's not how many people are unemployed. It's how many people are actively looking for a job. — Suze Orman

You've had many ordeals in the past. During these ordeals, life seemed unbearable. You may have collapsed from the exhaustion of hopelessness and curled into a fetal position. Regardless of how difficult this new ordeal may be, as with the others, this too will be overcome. It will make you stronger. — John-Talmage Mathis

The stimulus legislation, technically known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was a mixture of tax cuts for families and businesses; increased transfer payments, like unemployment insurance; and increased direct government spending, like infrastructure investment. — Christina Romer