ABSTRACT
In a penetrating analysis of employment and unemployment, Jahoda (1979, 1981, 1982) argues that employment provides five categories of psychological experience which are vital for well-being, and that to the extent that the unemployed are deprived of these experiences this contributes to the decline in their well-being. These experiences are time structure, social contact, collective effort or purpose, social identity or status and regular activity. The wage relationship present in employment, its manifest function, is considered to impel people into situations which provide these categories of experience, or latent functions, as an unintended by-product of purposeful action. While the quality of experience within these latent functions of employment can vary from the pleasant to the unpleasant, some experience in each of these must occur. It is this which Jahoda considers distinguishes sharply between employment and unemployment. Jahoda recognizes that the consequences of unemployment are intricately interwoven with the consequences of poverty, but considers that there are other consequences, including the lack of enforcement of these categories of experience, where the connection with poverty is less strong or, at least, less obvious. Although the detrimental effects of poverty are acknowledged, Jahoda is concerned to bring into visibility the supportive effect social institutions can have on behaviour.
