A different sort of Labor Day
With Labor Day approaching amid persistently high unemployment rates, this seems like a good time to honor two categories of recession-hardened Americans.
First, those who have taken on the duties of former co-workers who were laid off in economically driven purges of the past year. For many of the "lucky ones," the work is harder, the hours longer.
Second, the laid-off workers themselves -- specifically, those who to continue to look for new opportunities in the job market. Opportunities that might be outside their preferred field. Working for salaries that aren't quite up to their hopes and expectations. Searching for work is itself hard work, made all the more challenging by that missing sense of a "job well done" that normally comes at day's end.
So, for those two classes of U.S. worker, we say, "Good job." May next year's Labor Day be more fruitful than the one immediately ahead.
