The Stigma Trap: College-Educated, Experienced, and Long-Term Unemployed

An eye-opening look at how all American workers, even the highly educated and experienced, are vulnerable to the stigma of unemployment. After receiving a PhD in mathematics from MIT, Larry spent three decades working at prestigious companies in the tech industry. Initially he was not worried when he lost his job as part of a large layoff, but the prolonged unemployment that followed decimated his finances and nearly ended his marriage. Larry's story is not an anomaly. The majority of American workers experience unemployment, and millions get trapped in devastating long-term unemployment, including experienced workers with advanced degrees from top universities. How is it possible for even highly successful careers to suddenly go off the rails? In The Stigma Trap, Ofer Sharone explains how the stigma of unemployment can render past educational and professional achievements irrelevant, and how it leaves all American workers vulnerable to becoming trapped in unemployment. Drawing on interviews with unemployed workers, job recruiters, and career coaches, Sharone brings to light the subtle ways that stigmatization prevents even the most educated and experienced workers from gaining middle-class jobs. Stigma also means that an American worker risks more than financial calamity from a protracted period of unemployment. One's closest relationships and sense of self are also on the line. Eye-opening and clearly written, The Stigma Trap is essential reading for anyone who has experienced unemployment, has a family member or friend who is unemployed, or who wants to understand the forces that underlie the anxiety-filled lives of contemporary American workers. The book offers a unique approach to supporting unemployed jobseekers. At a broader level it exposes the precarious condition of American workers and sparks a conversation about much-needed policies to assure that we are not all one layoff away from being trapped by stigma.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: The Trap: Advanced Degree from Harvard, Experienced, and Long-Term Unemployed? Chapter 3: Networking and Feeling like Beggars and Used Car Salesmen Chapter 4: The Stigma Inside Chapter 5: Our Closest Relations: Marriage and Friendships Chapter 6: Countering Internalized Stigma and Sociological Coaching Chapter 7: Confronting Stigma: Activism and Policy Methodological Appendix Notes References Index

About the Author :
Ofer Sharone is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is a nationally recognized expert on unemployment and the author of the award-winning book Flawed System/Flawed Self: Job Searching and Unemployment Experiences (University of Chicago Press). His work has received wide attention from national media outlets, including The New York Times and PBS NewsHour, and he has been invited to participate in policy discussions at the White House and the U.S. Department of Labor. Sharone is also the founder of the Institute for Career Transitions, a non-profit organization focused on supporting long-term unemployed workers.

Review :
The Stigma Trap reveals that the problem of not being able to get a job unless you have a job extends well into the white collar workforce where it perpetuates misery. A profoundly important story in a world with perpetual layoffs. What if the ultimate insurance policy against unemployment no longer works? Some 12 percent of long-term unemployed jobseekers hold professional degrees. And the older they get, the harder it gets, as company officials reason, 'Oh that guy wouldn't be happy here; he's overqualified.' With a minimal safety net to compensate for lost income, and a missing safety net against lost dignity, some of our best and brightest face a hidden crisis. As Ofer Sharone argues, this is a crisis for its unemployed victims and it also casts a giant question mark over the core belief that we can all make it if we really try. Brilliant, surprising, important. A deeply moving, analytically rigorous account of the human damage so often suffered by the long term unemployed-a fate that can befall any of us at any time. The Stigma Trap offers a powerful critique of the myth of meritocracy. Ofer Sharone has written a landmark book that exudes heartfelt empathy and deep insights into the stigma of long-term unemployment in the United States. This deeply researched book is both scholarly and powerfully moving as it describes the painful stigma that has such a corrosive impact on the lives of unemployed adults and their families. The book includes much needed advice about how unemployed people (and their support systems) can counteract the insidious nature of internalized stigma and how society can change the vicious cycle that creates unemployment and internalized stigma. I enthusiastically recommend this book-it will change how you think about work, unemployment, and affirm the importance of treating everyone with decency and dignity. Through engrossing in-depth interviews, Sharone demonstrates the unnecessary suffering that comes with unemployment, not just material deprivation but the cultural stigma that makes searching for a job not only hard work but self-defeating-shameful, humiliating, isolating, corroding relations within the family and among friends and destroying self-esteem. Self-help therapies for the unemployed presume a mythical meritocracy and misrecognize stigma as a sign of weakness. Sharone practices a radical alternative treatment that calls for confronting the stigma through an emancipatory social movement. In demystifying the misery of unemployment, The Stigma Trap is itself transformative. A piercing critique of American ideology! Ofer Sharone's deeply researched book on the devastating stigma suffered by unemployed American workers shines a bright light on a dark corner of the American economy. His in-depth interviews reveal that even the most well-prepared job seekers struggle to find good jobs after they are laid off. Ofer Sharone's deeply researched book on the devastating stigma suffered by unemployed American workers shines a bright light on a dark corner of the American economy. His in-depth interviews reveal that even the most well-prepared job seekers struggle to find good jobs after they are laid off. Sharone strives to dispel the myth of meritocracy and blend research with support, offering "sociologically informed practices" by conveying how personal problems are embedded in social forces. Recommended. In The Stigma Trap, Ofer Sharone turns his analytical lens to how the long-term unemployed-those who have been unemployed for six months or more-experience stigma in different facets of their life. Sharone focuses on college-educated workers boasting pedigreed educational degrees from storied U.S. institutions like Harvard and MIT.