Worklessness

[jen337]

Seen this political term coming up a few times recently in the media and elsewhere and I don’t like it. Worklessness seems suspiciously (deliberately?) close to “worthlessness”. As if it’s implying those who aren’t, or are unable to work are worthless? What’s wrong with “unemployed”.

But being less facetious 😁 I assume it's just a woke move to make the signifier/word more about the "situation" and less about the intrinsic quality of a person. Worklessness (what a stupid word) refers to a person, without work. In the same way that joylessness refers to a person without joy. It's not a reflection on the individual. "Unemployed" has unpleasant connotations about the person themselves (the word is often used as a synonym for lazy/workshy/benefits cheat). I assume it is an attempt to move the narrative away from the person, towards the situation they find themselves in. Still vomit inducingly woke and unnecessary though.

Also (and I will shut up in a minute)

You ARE unemployed. It is what you are. Your responsibility

You SUFFER FROM worklessness. Just another victim /not my fault / society made me do it depersonalisation. Not the fault of the individual.

I believe worklessness js being used over the term unemployed as has already been witnessed there is a ramping up of pressure towards retirees in addition to disabled. Economically inactive has also Bern used. The push is to get everyone in work and contributing otherwise they are a drain on resources regardless of status.

Including college and university aged people is ridiculous. If you're in full time education, you have a full time occupation. If you have to work throughout university, that's time and energy taken away from your studies. I had to work over 15 hours a week at university, sometimes over 20. It really impacted my studies, especially as it was a very time consuming course to do. This idea that students should work is unfair, and then we wonder why we have people entering the workforce with few qualifications. Maybe if they had the time and energy to actually learn something they'd be able to offer some bloody skills.

'Unemployed', 'economically inactive' and 'workless' all mean different things.

People may use particular terminology, whether correctly or incorrectly, for political means or as a form of sensationalism (because the worklessness total will always be the biggest number) or out of laziness or misunderstanding, but in official statistics the three terms are value-free, descriptive terms that have specific definitions that have been used for many years and refer to different groups of people. The actual term 'worklessness' primarily emerged when there was a shift from using job / jobless to work / workless to describe people's employment situation in recognition of the changing nature of what 'a job' is.

Unemployed people are people who are out of work but are actively looking for work and are available to start a job.
Economically inactive people are people who are not working and who are not actively looking for work and not available to start a job.
Workless people are all people who are not working for any reason, basically the total number of unemployed people plus economically inactive people plus some people in other categories.

you are currently experiencing worklessness ie, you are without work. As long as it encompasses all people without work, including retired people, SAHP etc rather than being used as a derogatory term for some 'workless' people, I'm ok with it. Though perhaps 'workfree' is better for those who are able to choose not to work.

So you're happy for it to be used as a derogatory word as long as it's used against ALL people who cannot, are not available to or choose not to work?

To me, it sounds straight out of a Daily Mail hate-piece, where they feature a 'feckless' mum with 6 young children and insist on describing her as 'jobless' in the headline. Whatever unwise choices she may or may not have made in her life, do people really expect her now to be able to hold a paid employment role as well as caring for half a dozen little ones?