Must-Read: ‘How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America’

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So much for making lemons out of lemonade. Sometimes, when you’re given lemons (i.e., you get fired), it just sucks, no two ways about it. And on a broader scale, layoffs and the long-term, perhaps permanent disappearance of jobs could cause more problems for families, neighborhoods, and society as a whole than you can possibly imagine.

Don Peck, in his opus in the Atlantic, reports that, even with the Great Recession behind us, high unemployment is expected for years to comeā€”and with it, high levels of depression (particularly among men), the unraveling of marriage as an institution, a generation just coming of age now that’s more likely to develop alcohol problems and earn meager wages, and more.

In short, Peck writes, “we are living through a slow-motion social catastrophe.”