Joblessness affects families, communities, governments, and the world–and we are more interconnected than ever before. Unemployed adults experience twice as much depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and drug abuse (Bolger, 2009). Homicides and suicides increase as do the number of foreclosed homes. Increased social tension and a growing sense of unfairness stem from escalating rates of physical, emotional, social, and political disorder that are fundamentally linked to unemployment and inequality in advanced economies (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009).
The University of Cincinnati’s Economics Center tracked the relationship of crime to unemployment within a specific community over several periods, including years with low unemployment and years with high unemployment. They found that the crime rate for the same 100,000 people closely mirrored the economic factors, specifically unemployment. (Pitzer, 2009).