Harris had been without steady work for six months, and so robbed the Northwestern Bank in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I didn’t want him to do it,” his wife said. “It was something he felt he had to do for his family.”

Unemployment can have serious consequences. Last year shoplifting skyrocketed, costing United States merchants some $5,000,000,000! And James Eichler of Burns International Security Services concluded: “With double-digit inflation and high unemployment, the stealing impulse is almost certain to become overwhelming with many more people.”

How critical is unemployment? Just how great are the problems of those who cannot find work?

A Frightening Trend

Ominously, unemployment figures rise. In October, 6 percent of the U.S. work force was jobless; November, 6.5 percent; December, 7.1 percent; and January, 8.2 percent.

By early 1975, seven and a half million of the country’s workers were without jobs, an increase of two million jobless in three months! More people are now out of work than at any time since 1940, when the country was coming out of the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Sometimes layoffs by companies are wholesale and well publicized, such as in the auto industry.

However, unemployment is affecting most businesses, including personnel at all levels. Even executives with salaries of $20,000 and up are, by twos and threes in all parts of the country, losing their jobs.

Another significant factor is that the nation has never before experienced soaring inflation and, at the same time, high unemployment. So even persons with good jobs often have a hard time making ends meet. And, pointing to the dilemma, one of President Ford’s labor advisers noted: “The more successful we are in cooling inflation, the more likely we are to see unemployment moving higher.”

Rising unemployment has resulted in fierce competition for the jobs available. “It’s a startling, frightening picture, with the haves pitted against the have-nots,” lamented William F. Haddad of the New York Board of Trade. College graduates, it was explained, are now competing with school dropouts and welfare recipients for the shrinking number of beginning-level jobs.

While some who are unemployed may resort to stealing, there are other destructive effects. Often there is loss of confidence by the unemployed, as well as a feeling of helplessness and isolation. “Being out of work throws you,” noted a jobless New York city public-relations director. “I went through a couple of months of deep depression.” For fear of being laid off, a New York city worker on January 17 set himself ablaze at a busy street intersection. He had reportedly been despondent over the prospect of being unable to take care of his elderly mother.

Jobless men are commonly observed literally to deteriorate, both physically and mentally. These effects were well illustrated during the Great Depression, when about 25 percent of the American work force was jobless.

“The change in my father was heartbreaking,” recalls one man. “I saw him change from an optimistic, dynamic and proudly successful businessman to a shattered man overwhelmed by a sense of failure.” Another person, who grew up in North Dakota, painfully remembers: “The depression destroyed my father. . . . The strain broke his health. He died at an early age.”

Today there is widespread fear that another destructive depression could be starting. The U.S. Labor Department announced that during Christmas week 813,600 more persons filed initial claims for unemployment insurance, the highest weekly total since such assistance was started in the latter part of the Great Depression.

Society’s Efforts to Cope

Evidently recognizing the scope of the problem, Labor Secretary Peter J. Brennan in January urged compassion and understanding for the growing millions of unemployed. He noted that many of these have never before “endured the tragedy of joblessness.”

The tragedy, however, is considerably less than during the Great Depression, when many laid-off workers had fears of not having the next day’s food, or next month’s rent. Now a person can often obtain unemployment insurance, company benefits and, in cases of extreme need, welfare assistance. Last year, for example, an auto worker laid off by General Motors received 95 percent of his regular salary in company benefits and unemployment insurance for a period of eight months.

But these benefits do not last forever. True, in the United States unemployment insurance has been extended up to 52 weeks, and pays a maximum of $95 a week. Also, new legislation signed in January provides $2,500,000,000 for some 330,000 public jobs, making it the largest federally funded jobs program since the Great Depression. Yet, as with unemployment benefits, these jobs are only for a limited period, until January 9, 1976.