ABSTRACT
There is a way in which the unemployed worker’s private troubles are drawn into the public sphere. Displaced workers still live in communities and are involved in social life just as they did when they had a job. They still have to pay the rent or mortgage, buy groceries, take their kids to Little League games, talk to neighbors, and meet people in public as they carry out the daily routines of living. Unemployed people often suffer a loss of social standing in the eyes of others with whom they have contact. To be unemployed means to be located at the lower end of society’s system of social stratification. Those in the lower strata of society have limited income, little social influence, and minimal prestige. Those who have lost jobs because of layoffs, displacement, or demotion are often said to have experienced a “slide” down the social ladder, or to be “downwardly mobile” or “skidders”.
