Labor economists occasionally have a crisis of faith. After years of scrutinizing the unemployment rate, they suddenly remember… discouraged workers. Who are they? They’re people who want a job, but aren’t officially unemployed because they aren’t actively searching for work.
This is a serious problem – and a serious flaw with official unemployment rates. True, we should not forget the Prideful Worker Effect – the workers who say they want a job, but refuse to do any job for which they’re genuinely qualified. But if you take introspection half as seriously as I do, you can hardly deny that lots of people find job search extremely demoralizing. When your whole ego and sense of self are on the line, one needs Stoic determination to keep looking in the face of multiple rejections. Every parent has seen even the sweetest of children surrender to despair. Does anyone seriously believe that human beings cease to have these emotions by their eighteenth birthday?
Happily, there’s a silver lining: If you ever become a discouraged worker, strong social norms rise to your defense. Imagine you fail to find a job. If anyone mocks your failure, virtually everyone will take your side. The same applies if a bystander snarks, “I guess your very best just isn’t good enough, haha.” Until you finally land a job, parents, friends, and total strangers will share a bounty of comfort, hope, and friendly advice on how to do better.
Yes, you may prefer to brood alone. Social norms, however, insist that discouraged workers need to be encouraged even if they don’t want to be encouraged. If you say, “I can’t find a job,” you will hear a barrage of questions: “Where have you looked?” “Are you using social media?” “Maybe you’re aiming too high?” “Have you asked your friend, Jim?” Or even: “The economy’s picking up; have you tried re-applying anywhere?” You’ll also enjoy an abundant supply of truisms: “You’ve got to keep trying,” “We all fail, but you can’t give up hope,” and “There’s no harm in asking.” A tad annoying, but these questions are the expression of a valuable social norm: Encourage the discouraged.
Once you take the plight of the Discouraged Worker to heart, you might wonder, “Are there any major analogous social ills that I’ve also overlooked?” The first that comes to my mind is what I call the Discouraged Suitor. Lonely people normally search for a mate; they’re analogous to the conventional unemployed. Some lonely people, however, are analogous to Discouraged Workers. Such people want to find love, but the dating experience is so depressing they stop trying.
Denying the existence of Discouraged Suitors is as dogmatic as denying the existence of Discouraged Workers. In both cases, people face a challenge of epic proportions: convince an employer to hire you… or convince a stranger to love you. When the stakes are this high, failure is scary. Unsurprisingly, then, we commonly respond to failure with despair: “I’ll never find a job” or “I’ll never find love.” Discouraged Workers silently endure deep feelings of uselessness. Discouraged Suitors silently endure deep feelings of loneliness.
There is however one major difference: Social norms on the treatment of Discouraged Suitors are none-too-supportive. Parents and friends naturally urge the lonely to persist in the pursuit of true love: “There’s someone out there for everyone!” Yet social norms have also long allowed public mockery of the socially awkward and unattractive: “You’re 25 and never had a girlfriend, heh!” In recent years, moreover, norms against sexual harassment have become stricter and vaguer.* Is asking a co-worker out on a date sexual harassment? What about asking twice? Sure, the probability that you will be fired for one vague affront remains low. The typical Discouraged Suitor, however, is already petrified of rejection. When the norm shifts from “Let them down easy” to “Zero tolerance for sexual harassment,” many lonely people choose the safe route of silent sorrow.
Personally, none of this affects me. I met my wife when I was nineteen, and have never dated anyone else. Along the way, though, I have met many silently suffering lonely souls. If Discouraged Workers deserve sympathy, don’t Discouraged Suitors deserve the same? Needless to say, this doesn’t mean that Discouraged Suitors have a right to be loved or even liked. Like everyone else, however, they should be treated with good manners. Indeed, since Discouraged Suitors rarely speak up on their own behalf, should we not make an extra effort to consider their feelings?
* Morrissey, one of my favorite singers, has said made multiple inflammatory comments on sexual harassment, but there’s a kernel of truth here: “Anyone who has ever said to someone else, ‘I like you,’ is suddenly being charged with sexual harassment. You have to put these things into the right relations. If I can not tell anyone that I like him, how would they ever know?”
READER COMMENTS
Gary Lowe
Jul 22 2019 at 12:48pm
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” – Henry David Thoreau
Josh W
Jul 22 2019 at 12:59pm
Great post!
* Minor typo in para 6 affects meaning of the last two sentences
Cole Bennett
Jul 22 2019 at 1:26pm
I have to say, this makes a lot of sense to me. I am 52, never married, professor of English. Dating in 2019 is very confusing for the reasons you mention and more. What’s harassment? What’s normal? What does a “normal approach” to talk to a person look like?
Thank you for this post.
Philo
Jul 22 2019 at 3:17pm
Your analogy between romance and employment seems fine to me, but evidently it runs counter to normal people’s thinking. Stringent government regulation of employment seems mandatory to most people, but no one would think of imposing such regulations on romantic relationships in general (there are minor exceptions concerning marriage). For example, one cannot take a job that pays “too little,” though there is no limit on how unattractive one’s romantic partner is allowed to be.
Hazel Meade
Jul 22 2019 at 3:21pm
I agree with a couple of caveats. First, the agreement: It’s totally wrong to make fun of people who have been unsuccessful finding a mate, just as it’s wrong to make fun of people for their looks or for physical deformities. People should be encouraged to keep trying, and if necessary be given advice on how to overcome problems that night be holding them back.
Second, the Caveats: The current “incel” culture attracts derision, not (only) because it is made up of men that can’t get mates, but because of the extreme misogyny displayed by some of it’s self-identified members. If you read up on some of the stuff that “incels” supposedly believe, much of it treats women not as independent autonomous beings, but as sex objects and prizes to be fairly distributed. They systematically stereotype women into a limited number of “types” based on decile scale ratings in terms of looks. (i.e. A “Stacie” is a 10, at the top of the heap, a “Becky” is a 7, etc.) When you see a bunch of dateless guys expressing misogynistic ideas and blaming their datelessness on a bunch of wierd stereotypes they believe about women (along with their own refusal to consider dating “3’s”), their datelessness doesn’t seem to inexplicable. What they need is not encouragement to “keep trying”, but to be deprogrammed out of the “incel” community. Socialize with real people, including women, not a bunch of angry dateless men. Learn to see women as <i>people</i>, not prizes, so you can develop an actual relationship with one. They don’t exist just for sex you know! They have thoughts in their heads, just like you!
Second Caveat:I don’t think anyone is getting sued for sexual harassment for saying “I like you.” If only men would be so simple and direct. It’s the not taking “no” for an answer that gets you sued.
MarkW
Jul 23 2019 at 3:43pm
Second, the Caveats: The current “incel” culture attracts derision, not (only) because it is made up of men that can’t get mates, but because of the extreme misogyny displayed by some of it’s self-identified members
I’d recommend a Slatestarcodex post both as an extension of Bryan’s post and also as a response to your specific point):
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/
Scott points out that feminist derision for ‘nerdy losers who can’t get a date’ predates the incel ‘manosphere’, and so, if anything, the cause must be in the other direction (e.g. the manosphere is a refuge from the abuse and derision). And the derision seems every bit as strong for those lonely nerds who’ve never gone anywhere near the PUA community.
This follow-up is worthwhile as well (if you don’t mind his annoyingly-well written but novella length posts):
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/01/untitled/
Like Bryan, I met and married my wife at a young age and haven’t had a dog in this fight, but I’ve worked with some of these lonely guys over the years, and they really don’t deserve the mockery they get.
Hazel Meade
Jul 26 2019 at 1:30pm
Side point – it’s not just women that laugh at dateless men, it’s other men too. Everyone’s made fun of virgins for well on 50 years. In incel culture, they believe that people they label “Chads” are hoarding all the women. But who is their rage directed at? it’s not “Chad”, it’s not even “Stacy”, the 10 female they consider the top prize – it’s “Becky” the beta-female who they blame for being dateless. Probably the least likely people to be making fun of their datelessness.
Mark Z
Jul 24 2019 at 2:31am
Most if the costs are, I expect, social/psychological rather than legal, and rejection by an employer is in a highly formalized environment largely sterilized psychological risk (especially in the digital age). Discouraged suitors likely tend to have the inconvenient combination of poor perception of social cues and hypersensitivity to perceived social reprimand. (Or I suppose could just be hyper-risk averse, and even a modest probability of legal reprimand is a strong deterrent).
Dylan
Jul 22 2019 at 3:34pm
“There is however one major difference: Social norms on the treatment of Discouraged Suitors are none-too-supportive.”
I don’t think I can agree with this. I’ve seen no evidence that discouraged suitors are treated any worse than discouraged workers on average. If anything, I think the discouraged worker is generally more up for social mockery, say a kid living on a relative’s couch or in their mom’s basement. But to openly mock* someone because they’ve been unlucky in love, that’s the kind of thing that gets a person branded as a (word I probably can’t say on this site).
*I think this holds for most people most of the time. There are some exceptions though, like when the discouraged suitor is one that gives off a vibe of entitlement, where despite having failed to master basic social interactions, they appear to feel entitled to the romantic interest of others, just through sheer virtue of “putting themselves out there.” I personally think such people need better guidance and sympathy, but other people seem to feel that mockery is valid when the subject is being a twat.
Dylan
Jul 22 2019 at 3:36pm
And Hazel said it better (and more directly) above.
john hare
Jul 22 2019 at 5:39pm
I think I might strongly disagree with some of this sentiment. Some discouraged workers are like some discouraged suitors and need, not sympathy, but a metaphorical clout upside the head. As an employer trying to hire, I can tell you that there are a bunch out there that think they “deserve” a good job when they won’t put forth any effort to actually deserve it. Some of them need an acquaintance with the cluebat.
There are many that can do with encouragement, assistance, and guidance. They often distinguish themselves by not thinking you owe it to them.
I’ve made a lot of bad choices in the relationship field. I’m single again at the moment. That doesn’t mean that any woman owes me anything. Funny thing is that I have no trouble getting dates, while many men I know do.
Encouragement and entitlement are two very different animals.
Mark Z
Jul 24 2019 at 2:44am
Assuming this difference in attitudes is real, it makes a kind of sense from ‘society’s’ (or any human community) standpoint: getting discouraged workers back to work obviously benefits society by converting a liability into an asset; getting discouraged suitors to reproduce doesn’t necessarily have such value; in fact it undermines the mechanism by which sexual selection occurs. Organic social norms, not unlike markets, often have their own kind of rationale to them even if the people who implement them aren’t consciously aware of it.
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