Berkeley Undergraduate Journal

Past research suggests that for middle class Americans facing economic decline, the cultural repertoire available to them offers few tools with which they can make sense of their experience. Thus, when executives who have made cautious decisions in their career choices and sound investments in their personal security are laid off in the wake of unforeseen structural economic changes far beyond their control, they look to personal failings to provide explanation and meaning to their struggles. Through interviews with sixteen men and women who have faced significant long-term unemployment since the onset of the Great Recession, this research looks at whether and how this pattern has changed today. In the midst of this very public, wide reaching, and much discussed economic decline, what does downward mobility mean for Americans? Ultimately, it finds that while people facing long-term unemployment today see their problems in more structural terms than did their predecessors, they still overwhelmingly think about solutions in a highly individualistic framework.