Coping With Unemployment

It seems that, no matter the angle from which it is observed, unemployment is in rarely charted waters.

Whether it's seen from the perspective of "new claims" filed or a "four-week moving average," things haven't been this bad since 1982, Reuters reports.

I guess things wouldn't have to be so bad if more employers lived by no-layoff policies. Don't think such a thing is possible in today's economy? Jessica Dickler writes, in CNNMoney.com, that some companies have long abided by a no-layoffs rule — and insist that they will continue to operate that way.

Certainly, the economy forces everyone to make some concessions. And these companies, Dickler says, sometimes ask their employees to make sacrifices.

But the employees themselves are not sacrificed.

Such an enlightened approach to the management-employee relationship might be part of the ultimate solution, although it seems unlikely that this recession will be regarded as milder than the one that confronted America in 1982.

What was the world like a quarter of a century ago?

Well, like today, the United States was in the grip of a recession — economic historians will tell you it was short but severe. I guess any recession seems severe when you're living through it.

We'll need to let more time pass before we know how long this recession is, but I think the consensus would be that it's going to be remembered as severe, whatever the duration may be.

In November of 1982, the Republicans managed to add slightly to the majority they gained in the Senate two years earlier, but Democrats picked up nearly 30 seats in the House — in spite of President Reagan's pleas to voters to "stay the course."

Unleaded gas was selling for around $1.28 a gallon in 1982. That's less than we pay today — but not nearly so sharp a decline as it is from what we were paying a few months ago.

So, if you're out of work, it doesn't cost as much to drive to interviews. But cash-strapped cities still charge outrageous fees for parking — and waste little time issuing tickets to violators when their meters expire.

First-class postage stamps cost about half what they cost today.

The popular songs Americans heard on their radios in 1982 were "Eye of the Tiger," "Ebony and Ivory," "Physical" and "I Love Rock 'n' Roll."

When they sought other forms of escapism, their favorite movies dealt with the supernatural ("E.T." and "Poltergeist"), sexual identity ("Tootsie" and "Victor/Victoria"), soldiers ("An Officer and a Gentleman"), sequels ("Rocky III" and "Star Trek II") and smut ("Porky's").

And Americans looked for inspiration wherever they could find it.

In 1982, a man named Larry Walters, who had been frustrated in his dream of being an Air Force pilot by poor eyesight, bought 45 weather balloons and some helium tanks. He and his girlfriend attached the balloons to his lawn chair and filled them with helium. Wearing a parachute and strapped into the chair, Walters also had beer, sandwiches, a CB radio, a camera and his pellet gun.

His friends cut the cord that tied the chair to his vehicle, and off he went. It is estimated that he reached an altitude of about 15,000 feet, ultimately sailing into federal airspace over Long Beach, Calif. Walters used the pellet gun to shoot a few of the balloons, and the chair began its descent. Some of the dangling lines got tangled in a power line, causing a 20-minute blackout, but Walters was able to get to the ground, where he was taken into custody.

Asked why he did it, the now (temporarily) famous Walters said, "A man can't just sit around."

Kind of reminds me of what Willie Sutton supposedly said when he was asked why he robbed banks: "Because that's where the money is."

Many Americans never heard of Oskar Schindler until Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning film "Schindler's List" in the early 1990s. But the book upon which it was based, Thomas Keneally's "Schindler's Ark," was published in 1982.

Schindler had to resort to creative techniques to save more than 1,000 people who almost certainly would have been casualties of the Nazi regime — yet his efforts were virtually unknown by much of the world until Spielberg made his movie nearly half a century later.

Unusual times require unusual measures. Perhaps that's the lesson to be applied to 2008.