Towards Permanent Insecurity: The Social Impact of Unemployment
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abstract
Numerous studies have revealed a relationship between unemployment and various other social ills. These include poverty, negative shifts in self-esteem for affected individuals and their families, increased anxiety, stress, and associated increases in physical and mental illness, alcoholism, drug abuse, child abuse and family breakdown. Others have linked unemployment to increased racism and discrimination, suicide rates and crime rates. For much of the post-war period the stresses associated with unemployment were mitigated by a social policy net and a programme of unemployment insurance that, by 1971, covered the great majority of the workforce and provided a significant cushion against the immediate effect of job loss. Since the mid-1970s the social supports available to the unemployed have been eroded by government and, in the mid-1990s, major alterations were made to the programmes. The Employment Insurance reforms of 1996, the replacement of the Canadian Assistance Plan by a Canada Health and Social Transfer that permits workfare as a condition of social assistance, and the devolution of training and active employment measures to the provincial level receive detailed analysis. In a context where a world of work is undergoing rapid change and partial attachments to the labour force - part-time, temporary and individual self-employment - are more common, the effect of Unemployment Insurance and social reforms, combined with an overall economic strategy that privileges inflation and deficit control over employment creation, means that permanent insecurity is replacing the relative social security of an earlier era. The social impact of this situation will be traced.
