Soc. Sci. Med. Vok 24, No. [, pp. 13-21, 1987 0277-9536,87 53.00+0.00 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved Copyright ~ 1987 Pergamon Journals Ltd

MODELS OF STRESS A N D MEANINGS OF UNEMPLOYMENT: REACTIONS TO JOB LOSS

AMONG TECHNICAL PROFESSIONALS

DAVID JACOB$ON

Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University, Waltham. MA 02254, U.S.A.

Abstract--The same potentially stressful event may have different meanings to different individuals. Such variation may be explained by reference to different models of stress. Two such models, one based on the concept of person-environment 'transactions' and the other on that of a "psychosocial transition,' are applied to studies of reactions to job loss among technical professionals.

Key words--stress, context, meaning, unemployment, technical professionals

It is now commonly acknowledged that psychosocial stress undermines health and well-being (see [1] and [2] for recent reviews), yet several studies indicate variations in response to stressful events (see, for example, [3] and [4]). This variation has given rise to research on factors which moderate the relationship between psychosocial stressors and health outcomes. The research is proceeding along two distinct but closely related paths. On the one hand, researchers are examining variables, such as social support, which buffer the impact of stressful events. On the other, attention is being paid to the meanings of events and to the conditions under which they are perceived as stressful. This paper is a contribution to the latter line of inquiry: its aim is to analyze the meanings of a potentially stressful event, job loss among engineers, scientists, and technical managers who constitute a category of ' technical professionals,' and the contexts within which the loss is or is not perceived as stressful.*

In research on psychosocial stressors, studying the meanings which stressful events have for those ex- posed to them reflects a shift in analytical emphasis. Much of the early research on stressful life events focused on describing the properties of such events

*The emphasis in this paper on examining the meaning of an event, such as job loss, as it is influenced by the context in which it occurs is a topic of central im- portance in the field of stress research, as indicated by Kessler et al. [I] in a recent review assay. They write that, in efforts to extend our understanding of life events, an "important direction of [current] work is to improve measurement by obtaining contextually specific information about events" (p. 534). Furthermore, they hypothesize that the "emotional effects of a job loss, for example, will probably differ considerably depending on the financial resources that are available to cushion the income loss, and the meaning work had for the person during the time of employment" (p. 534). This paper provides evidence for that proposition. It also develops the latter point, i.e. that the meaning of work during employment constitutes a framework for understanding the significance of unemployment.

and measuring their correlation with rates of mor- bidity and mortality [5, 6]. This work was based on the assumption that the stressfulness of an event was intrinsic to it and that the meaning of an event as a stressor is the same, or at least similar, for every one exposed to it. Other researchers have been critical of this presupposition [3, 4, 7-10]. They argue that there is variability in the meaning of such events, and that the 'same' event may have different meanings to different individuals and to the same individual in different situations and at different times. That is, the stressfulness of an event is not an attribute of the event, but rather reflects an individual's appraisal of it, an assessment which is context dependent.

Within this meaning-centered approach, however, the context of an event has been conceptualized in two different but complementary ways. In one re- search tradition, corresponding to a ' t ransactional ' model of stress, the meaning of an event is defined in terms of its impact on the balance between an individual 's demands and resources. This approach focuses primarily on the immediate consequences of an event and typically on its significance within a framework of ideas, beliefs, and values. In the other research tradition, corresponding to a ' transitional ' model of stress, the meaning of an event is related to changes which it precipitates in the framework of ideas, beliefs, and values within which an individual evaluates himself and his relation to his world. This approach focuses primarily on the long-term impli- cations of an event and typically on its role in fostering cognitive restructuring within the individ- ual.

The different meanings associated with these mod- els can be illustrated in the example of divorce. On the one hand, an individual who is divorced and who is responsible for maintaining a household and pro- viding for children may be stressed by a discrepancy between such demands and a decrease in the re- sources available to meet them. This would reflect adjustments which occur within a set of ideas, beliefs, and values which remains intact despite existential changes affecting the individual. On the other, stresses associated with developments in the individ- ual 's thinking about himself or herself as a single

13

14 DAVID JACOBSON

person and how he or she will relate to o thers- - typically issues of social identity--reflect trans- formations of a cognitive framework.

This paper utilizes both models to analyze the reactions to job loss among technical professionals. Within this category, as the data will indicate, the meaning of unemployment is seen primarily as a transactional stress. To the extent that technical professionals suffer stresses of a transitional type, these appear to be related not to unemployment per se, but to their experiences within the world of their work. The paper proceeds first by describing the models of stress utilized in analyzing the meanings of unemployment, then by applying them to studies of technical professionals, and, finally, in a concluding section, by drawing implications for the study of psychosocial stressors.

MODELS OF STRESS AND MEANINGS OF UNEMPLOYMENT

There are two major models of stress which focus on the meanings of stressful events. In the ' trans- actional' model, stress is defined in terms of the relationship between demands and resources [3, 11, 12]. Stress occurs when demands tax or exceed the adaptive resources of an individual and the consequences of this imbalance are perceived to negatively affect the individual 's sense of well-being. Adaptive resources, according tO Lazarus and Laun- ier [12], "consist of any properties that have the potential to help meet demands and hence to prevent the negative consequences that failure of suitable action would entail" (!0. 297). According to this model, an event which creates or imposes demands which do not exceed an individual's resources will not be experienced as stressful. Correspondingly, an event will have one meaning for the individual who has resources sufficient to meet demands and will have another meaning for the person who does not command such resources.

In the ' transit ional ' model, stress is seen as stem- ming from a 'psychosocial transition, ' a relatively abrupt change in a person or in the environment which affects the individual's assumptions about the world and his or her place in it [7-9, 13-20]. These assumptions, Or 'structures of meaning' [19, p. 191],

*Actually, both the transactional and the transitional models of stress consider the attribution of meaning in defining stressors, although it is more salient in the latter analytical framework. In the transactional model an individual's "beliefs' are said to determine the significance of an event, including its stressfulness. Lazarus and Folkman [3] write that beliefs " . . . are preexisting notions about reality which serve as a perceptual lens, or a 'set , ' . . . determine what is fact, that is, 'how things are' in the environment, and they shape the understanding of its meaning" (p. 63). Such 'beliefs' are analogous to the 'assumptions' which con- stitute the 'assumptive world' of the transitionalists.

*Fieldwork in 1971-1972 was supported by a grant (MH- 20222-01) from the National Institute of Mental Health, to which I express my appreciation. I also appreciate the co-operation of those individuals who were willing to discuss with me their experiences and their views of their careers and of their encounter with unemployment.

enable individuals to understand the world and to interpret their experiences in it; they give meaning to events. Central to this view is the idea that these assumptions shape behavior [21], and that events which challenge or change them, which undermine the individual's sense of meaning, are experienced as stressful.* Correspondingly, an event which does not engender a change in an individual 's assumptions will not be meaningful as a stressor. As Parkes [7] notes, changes are " important or unimportant depending upon their influence upon assumptions we make about the world" (p.103). Parkes [7] uses the follow- ing example to illustrate this point: "sudden loss of vision involves a c h a n g e . . , which is important or unimportant depending upon whether the individual believes himself to have gone blind or to have volun- tarily closed his eyes" (p. 103). In terms of this model, in order to understand the significance of un- employment to technical professionals, it is necessary to examine the assumptions they have about their work and about themselves as workers.

Although these models of stress are analytically distinct, they are not mutually exclusive and both may be applicable to the same event. That is, an event may have meaning within either or both models, separately or simultaneously. Unemployment, for example, may precipitate a deficit, a situation of imbalance in an individual's resources and demands. This deficit may be temporary or persistent, and it may be independent of a transition. Furthermore, unemployment may precipitate a transition, with or without a corresponding imbalance in resources and demands. Even looking at unemployment only as loss of income does not necessarily indicate whether or not it will be experienced as a stressor, or, if so, to what degree. For those with few demands on them and/or for those with other sources of income, loss of income will not have the same meaning as it has for those who have many demands and no other sources of income.

In short, the meaning of unemployment for the individual depends in large part on whether it is experienced as a transactional deficit, as a transitional restructuring of the ways in which one perceives oneself and the world, as neither, or as both. This view of the meanings of unemployment will be illus- trated by research on reactions to job loss among technical professionals.

UNEMPLOYMENT AMONG TECHNICAL PROFESSIONALS

In the early 1970s, with the ending of the Vietnam war and a cut-back in the aerospace and defense industries, large numbers of technical professionals, primarily engineers, scientists, and technical manag- ers, lost their jobs. In Massachusetts, a center of those industries, such lay-offs constituted a significant re- cession, in which an estimated 10,000 people became unemployed. As part of a research project aimed at understanding the impact of unemployment on these individuals, I interviewed technical professionals who had lost their jobs as well as others who continued working.* I talked with the unemployed about their experiences and how they were attempting to cope with them. The interviews were both formal and

Models of stress and meanings of unemployment 15

informal, the discussions covering a range of topics, including what their jobs, careers, and lives had been like before they were laid-off, how they were manag- ing at the moment, how they were going about finding new jobs, and, when they became re- employed, what unemployment had meant to them, seen retrospectively. Furthermore, at the time of my fieldwork, other researchers were looking at the same or similar populations. I will refer to their findings as well as to my own. In addition, I will draw on studies of the work and careers of technical professionals which are relevant to understanding the meanings of unemployment.

JOB LOSS AS A TRANSACTIONAL STRESSOR

The ways in which unemployed individuals talk about that experience provide a useful starting point for understanding the significance which they attri- bute to unemployment. Take the example, drawn from an interview reported in the New York Times [22], of a man out of work for nine months who said that he had not yet felt what he described as the 'crunch' of unemployment. Noting that he had re- ceived several months' severance pay, had substantial savings, and was receiving unemployment benefits, he commented:

"You hate to think that you're living off your capital and living off your savings, which are being reduced each week, but I'm thankful that I don't have two kids who are 12 years old and who will have to be put through college in four years. By not having those immediate financial obligations, I tend to be less panicky than I would if I did have them" (p. 29).

The crucial time, he implies, will come when financial demands begin to outweigh the resources available to meet them.

That same theme is also reflected in newspaper reports, based on interviews with people in the Bos- ton area during the recession of the early 1970s, about unemployed technical professionals and their families. In one account of a jobless man's wife [23], the decline of her emotional state and that of their marriage is related to the exhaustion of their financial resources. When the husband first lost his job, the wife was supportive ("After all, they were getting by on his severance and unemployment checks"); six months later, she is in a quiet rage ("They had begun to borrow from their future by dipping into their past: first on their savings, then on their stocks, the ones for college for the kids"); nine months later, he gets some brief freelance work and she has taken a job, but their resources are dwindling and their marriage is in trouble; a year later, they are nearly broke and the marriage falls apart. In still another account [24], unemployment is n o t experienced by a physicist as a shattering blow because his "financial situation is not grave. . . His wife works part- t ime. . . his daughters are still a long way from the expenses of college.., his severance pay will carry him through the rest of the year. He has also filed for unemployment benefits" (p. 95).

For engineers, scientists, and technical managers laid off in that recession, as these stories indicate, the ratio,between resources and demands is related to the

meaning and the stressfulness which they attribute to unemployment. When financial assets were available, when loss of job did not create a budgetary imbal- ance, they did not experience unemployment as par- ticularly stressful and their emotional well-being did not suffer. This relationship is apparent when the 'emotional states' of the unemployed are correlated with their 'financial resources.'

Data on these variables were collected from 35 unemployed engineers and scientists interviewed at the Professional Service Center, an office established by the Massachusetts Division of Employment Secu- rity to deal with unemployment among technical professionals. Emotional states are based on self- reports: individuals described their feelings and their predominant moods in terms of three categories which were commonly mentioned by them. Four individuals described themselves as being in 'good shape,' 24 said that they were "managing,' and seven claimed that they were in 'trouble.' Those who de- scribed themselves as being 'in good shape' also said that they were 'confident' and 'comfortable.' Those who were "managing' also said that they were 'con- cerned, but not panicky,' that they were "coping,' and that they were neither 'up' nor 'down,' but some- where in between. Those who described themselves as 'in trouble' also said that they felt "depressed,' 'down,' 'panicky,' and 'very worried.' Financial re- sources were measured as the difference between monthly income and expenditures, that is, as a sur- plus or a deficit in a monthly budget. For the unemployed, a positive balance was the result of a number of different factors, singly or in combination. Demands did not exceed resources when the individ- ual had other sources of income (savings, interest, dividends, a spouse's salary, unemplownent benefits, severance pay, loans and/or gifts from family or friends) and/or reduced expenditures.

Using these measures, there is a direct relationship between financial resources and emotional states. All those with resources sufficient to meet their monthly expenses described themselves as 'in good shape' or as 'managing' and those without such resources described themselves as 'in trouble' (Fig. 1).

The relationship between financial assets and emo- tional states becomes even more pronounced when current income is differentiated from capital con- sumption. For example, all those who described themselves as 'in good shape' had a surplus simply in terms of income and expenditures: they had not dipped into savings or other reserves to maintain a positive balance. On the other hand, all those who described themselves as 'in trouble' had a negative balance and little or no savings or other resources. Those who described themselves as 'managing' pro- vide a case study of the dynamics of financial and emotional decline. One third of them spent more each month than they brought in, but met their needs from savings and other reserves. It seems, therefore, that those who were 'managing' but who had negative monthly balances and who were consuming their savings to meet current expenses (exemplified by the man, cited above, who said that "You hate to think that you're living off your capital and li~,ing off your savings, which are being reduced each week") were on their way to becoming like those in 'trouble,' in

16 DAVID JACOBSON

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terms of their resources and perhaps in terms of their emotional states.

Other research on responses to job loss among technical professionals confirms the view that the balance between resources and demands conditions the meaning and the perceived stressfulness of un- employment. First, there is evidence from two addi- tional studies conducted at the same Massachusetts employment center at approximately the same time. Little's analysis [25] indicates that the unemployed person's financial situation is directly and significantly correlated with his 'attitudes toward job loss.' Little's measure of 'attitude to job loss' refers to an individual's assessment of becoming un- employed, including characteristics such as his confidence and optimism. Little measured 'financial situation' in two ways: as "the individual's subjective rating of his own present financial situation on a ten point scale from poor to excellent," and, objectively, as the "weekly difference between the respondent's present family income and that needed to meet expenses" (pp. 269-270). On both measures, there was a strong relationship between a favorable financial situation and a positive attitude. Little concluded: "It appears that factors directly related to the un- employed man's financial situation are most im- portant predictors of his reactions to unemployment" (p. 271). A similar point was made by two psycho- logists working at the same site. Powell and Driscoll [26] found that 'financial security' was an important factor in accounting for variation in the 'feelings and attitudes' of unemployed professionals; their confidence and optimism were sustained by having "savings or other money to tide the family over . . . " Lo. 20).

Research conducted among both employed and unemployed professionals in the early 1970s in the San Francisco area tends to corroborate the meaning and stressfulness of unemployment observed in the Boston studies. Estes and Wilensky [27] compared a ratio of financial resources and demands with per-

sonal morale and found a direct relationship between them. They conclude that

"among unemployed professionals experiencing financial distress, the scarcity of economic resources to meet personal and family needs has an enormous impact of their general attitudes towards self. community, and society. The greater the economic strain experienced, the more prone these workers are to feelings of self-blame and internalized stress. Conversely, the greater the resources available to them... the more optimistic the unemployed individuals remain about their future and the less they engage in self blame" (p. 286).

Another finding in their study underscores the importance of an imbalance between resources and demands in shaping responses to unemployment. Estes and Wilensky compared employed profession- als, unemployed professionals without financial stress, and unemployed professionals with financial stress. Morale among the unemployed professionals with financial stress parallels that of low-income non-professional workers (reported in other research) and contrasts with the morale of unemployed profes- sionals without financial stress and that of employed professionals, which are similar to one another. This suggests that, given adequate financial resources, job loss in itself may not be a significant factor influencing 'emotional states,' a point to be discussed at greater length when considering, from the point of view of a transitional model of stress, the meaning of work and of unemployment for technical profession- als.

Estes and Wilensky's comparison between em- ployed and unemployed professionals is particularly striking since those data resemble the results of research among employed and unemployed engineers conducted 40 years earlier. Research among en- gineers during the Great Depression prefigured the view, manifest in these later researches, that the meaning and stressfulness of unemployment is a function of its impact on a balance between resources and demands. Hall [28] gathered data from un- employed engineers on their financial circumstances and their 'occupational morale.' He measured 'oc- cupational morale' by an attitude scale consisting of items which tested for what would now be called 'locus of control' [29, 30], but which also implied different degrees of "discouragement, resignation, apathy, and sense of failure" (p. 53), elements found in studies of 'emotional states.' Hall described financial circumstances in terms of a continuum ranging from "in no immediate need of financial help" at one end to "in desperate straits" at the other end; in between these endpoints were those individu- als described as getting financial assistance from families, friends, or formal institutions. Hall found a direct relationship between level of financial security and level of 'occupational morale.' Moreover, as in the research of Estes and Wilensky, Hall found that the 'occupational morale' level of the unemployed without financial stress (those "in no immediate need of financial help") was similar to those of employed engineers, yet again indicating that the significant factor influencing morale was not employment status per se, but access to or control over resources which

Models of stress and meanings of unemployment 17

enabled individuals to meet their financial re- sponsibilities.*

Summarizing these studies, it appears that one meaning of unemployment is related to the matter of balancing resources and demands. This is consistent ~5th a transactional model of stress, but it is only half

of the story. It is also necessary to ask about the meaning of unemployment from the perspective of a transitional model of stress. Accordingly, I will now consider in what ways, if any, job loss among tech- nical professionals precipitates changes in the ways in which they think about themselves as workers and/or about their careers.

"Research among 'blue-collar' workers, both in the 1930s and a generation later in the 1950s, also supports the transactional interpretation of the meaning of un- employment. Jaboda et al. [31] examined the re- lationship between a family's economic situation, mea- sured in monthly income, and its attitude towards and responses to unemployment. They found that as income declined, there was a corresponding deterioration in 'prevailing mood' from the 'subjective well-being' of "unbroken' families to the 'despair, depression, and hopelessness of 'broken' families [31, pp. 53-54, 81-82; 32, pp. 153-182]. A similar pattern was evident in a 1956 study [33] of men who lost their jobs due to a plant closing. These researchers constructed an 'Index of Economic Deprivation,' measuring the 'depletion of savings," an 'increase in debts,' and 'cutbacks on ex- penditure in two or more essentials (pp. 52-54). They compared this instrument with an 'Index of Anomia,' which measured feelings of helplessness and hope- lessness (pp. 62, 72). They found that "economic deprivation.., leads to strong feelings of anomia" (p. 72).

tMany technical professionals who were out of work did not consider themselves unemployed. Rather, they de- scribed themselves as being 'between jobs.' Although this may have been a denial and a rationalization, it is not inconsistent with the career patterns of engineers, scientists, and technical managers in the aerospace and defense companies of the pre-reeession period, At that time, as several individuals indicated, it was not unusual for an individual to be hired by a company for a specific project for which it was planning to submit a bid or for which it had won a government contract. At the completion of the contract, the individual's employment would be terminated. However, 'in the good days' of steady employment, when a company had several pro- posals pending or several contracts in force, an individ- ual would be retained by the company and re-employed or re-assigned to another job, either immediately or after a relatively brief interlude. Thus, unemployed men could view their unemployment as a temporary set- back, to be overcome as soon as their companies were able to secure new projects.

**Parkes [7] used job loss as an example of a psychosocial transition. He suggested that when it influenced an individual's assumptive world there would likely follow a sequence of phases (described as a process of 'grief- work'), characterized by varying cognitive and affective states, during which the individual would relinquish one set of ideas about the world and adopt another. Several studies have utilized this type of analytical framework to interpret the meaning of unemployment {26, 34, 35]. Their conclusions may be problematic for several rea- sons. They do not differentiate between nor control for responses related to transitional stressors and those related to transactional stressors. Moreover, they as- sume rather than demonstrate that it is the experience of job loss that influences the individual's assumptive world. Without comparing the ideas, beliefs, and values held by the individual, or by similar individuals, when working (or in reference to work) and when un- employed, it is inappropriate to conclude that it is job loss which has influenced an individual's assumptive world.

JOB LOSS AS A TRANSITIONAL STRESSOR

The meaning of an event may also be understood in terms of changes induced in the ideas, beliefs, and values of those exposed to it. F rom that perspective, it appears that unemployment for technical profes- sionals during the recession of the early 1970s did not lead them to review or revise their assumptive worlds.* According to a transitional model of stress, individuals faced with a relatively abrupt change in themselves and/or in their environment which re- quires adjustments in the ways in which they view themselves and think about the world are likely to exhibit particular patterns of behavior.++ Typically they may be expected to be uncertain about their identities, about the direction of their behavior, and about the meaning of their lives. Some observers [26] of unemployed technical professionals claim that they had these characteristics and attribute them to job loss. My own fieldwork and that of others, however, suggests another view.

An alternative interpretation is that these feelings and attitudes, where they occurred, were not a func- tion of job loss, but rather reflect the work experi- ences of technical professionals. I propose this alter- native because studies which look at technical professionals only when they are unemployed, exam- ining their views when out of work but not com- paring them with their views about work andlor when employed, are incomplete and misleading. Without placing their findings within a wider context of the ways in which technical professionals view their jobs and careers, such studies are liable to misconstrue the meaning of unemployment. Studies of the careers of engineers and scientists support this alternative interpretation.

Where unemployment among technical profession- als is seen as a transitional stressor, it is said to produce three major and related changes in individu- als' ideas about themselves and their work. These may be described as a vocational identity crisis, an occupational inferiority complex, and a sense of fatalism about and dissatisfaction with work. Ac- cording to Powell and Driscoll [26, pp. 21-23], who hold this view of unemployed technical professionals, the identity crisis consists of a "tendency to lose a sense of who they are vocationally, allowing the market to define their abilities," the inferiority com- plex manifests itself in an "increasing sense of being past their prime," and the fatalism and dissatisfaction are associated with a lost sense that " they are in control of their own vocational lives and futures." I will examine each of these characterizations, drawing on studies of working engineers to evaluate them.

Identity 'problems' are not uncommon among working engineers and they usually occur in two forms. First, there is the question of who is an engineer. This is problematic for both those who

S.SM 24~ I - -B

18 DAvu) JACOBSO.~

work as engineers and those who work with them. There are, for example, no unambiguous or com- monly accepted criteria for defining who counts as an engineer. Is an engineer someone with a degree in engineering? According to one survey of engineers [36, p. 75] published a few years before the recession of the early 1970s, disciplinary education is not a useful measure: of those receiving a B.S. degree in engineering, only 58% worked as engineers, and more than 60% of those who obtained a B.S. degree in physics were employed as engineers. Then there is the question of whether formal training and certification itself constitutes a relevant standard. Many individuals working as engineers at that time were non-graduate technicians who had been desig- nated as engineers by the companies which employed them, despite their lack of academic credentials.*

The distinction, or lack of it, between degree and non-degree engineers can cause confusion. It influenced, for example, calculations of un- employment rates. During the early 1970s, there were widely divergent reports, particularly in the popular press, of the rate of unemployment among engineers. In the Boston area, the number was commonly reported as 10,000 or 20% of the technical profes- sional labor force ([24, 39]; cf. Little [25], who cites Massachusetts officials' estimates of about 15,000 unemployed technical professionals in the Boston area). The National Science Foundation, however, claimed that the figure was more like 3%. This discrepancy is attributable largely to the fact that most of those whom the National Science Founda- tion counted as engineers had at least a B.S. degree, whereas others included in their enumerations all those identified as engineers, either by themselves or by others, without regard to level of education. At the Massachusetts Professional Service Center, for exam- ple, 42% of the registered 'engineers and scientists' had less than a bachelor's degree.

Another factor which causes vocational uncer- tainty is to be found in the nature of engineering careers. Here the question involves the kinds of work undertaken by engineers. Many degree engineers

*Penfield [37], writing in 1971, suggests that "perhaps as few as 50% [of between I and 2 million engineers] have engineering college degrees" and that the others are "'persons without engineering degrees who, for one reason or another, assume the duties of an engineer, are regarded as engineers by their employers, and regard themselves as engineers. Most of these are probably technicians or engineering associates who through the years have educated themselves to take over roles that formerly were performed by engineers" [37, pp. 760-761; 38, pp. 83--84].

"l'Perrucci and Gerstl [36] reported that 43% of engineers with B.S. degrees felt that 'to move into management' is a 'very important' professional value [36, pp. 102, 128; 40, p. 34]. Among some 200 technical professionals I interviewed in 1971, 40% expected to move into (gen- eral) management positions and another 10% expected to become technical or first-level managers, and 40% expected to remain in technical positions. Of those who expected to move into management positions, 84% were 35 or older. Of those who expected to remain in technical positions, there was an even distribution between those younger than and older than 35.

describe themselves as 'leaving the field.' This refers to the fact that they stop working as technologists. that is, as design or production engineers or others who work primarily on technical problems. They do not, however, leave the field entirely: many remain in 'engineering' but as managers, salesmen, or in other positions not directly involving technological func- tions but in which a technical background is useful, if not necessary. Indeed, a 'move into management' is often cited as a primary professional goal, and engineering may be one of few careers in which success is often marked by progression into another line of work.t

For those who remain in technological roles, there is a different but related source of'identity crisis.' The main issue here is whether the work they do is sufficiently complex and challenging to warrant its description as engineering or so simple and routine as to be thought of as a technician's task. For many engineers this sort of underutilization was the cause not only of identity problems, but also of much dissatisfaction, and appears to motivate at least some of them to leave engineering altogether. It is not, then, as a reaction to job loss, but as an adaptation to continuing employment, that engineers may be said to 'lose a sense of themselves vocationally' and to 'allow the market to define their abilities.'

Not only does an 'identity crisis' appear to be intrinsic to the engineer's profession, but it may also be argued that an 'inferiority complex' characterizes a particular phase of the technical professional's career path. The feeling among unemployed technical professionals, for example, which Powell and Driscoll described as a "sense of being past their prime" is also seen among working engineers in their concern with technical or professional obsolescence. Al- though there is not complete agreement on a definition of obsolescence, one common measure of it is the difference in technical knowledge possessed by a new graduate of a modern engineering curricu- lum and one who has finished his or her formal education less recently. The difference is attributable to rapid changes in technology. One estimate, for example, is that in the early 1970s an engineer's technical knowledge had a 'half-life' of between 7 and 10 years: that is, after being out of school for that length of time, half an engineer's expertise would have been out of date [36, p. 62; 41, p. 35].

Hence, an engineer might begin to feel 'past his prime' at some point in his early 30s, even when he was working. The view of Powell and Driscoll that the 'majority' of 'unemployed engineers over 35 have a sense of not being the men they once were' may have been accurate, but it may also be interpreted as a function of the kinds of work engineers do rather than being due, as they suggest, to unemployment. Furthermore, technical obsolescence, actual or immi- nent, would account for other observations made by Powell and Driscoll. For example, for those who felt threatened by it, and that would probably include many engineers 35 or older, technical obsolescence may very well have been an important factor in leading them to consider making a career change. This would, however, be true of both employed and unemployed engineers. It would also explain the observation by Powell and Driscoll [26, p. 21] that

Models of stress and meanings of unemplo)anent 19

unemployed technological specialists appeared to re- sist changing fields, while those on a management ladder seemed more willing to shift: the technologists were less likely and the managers were more likely to be technologically obsolete.

The case of these committed technological special- ists provides another example of the ways in which unemployment failed to cause an assumptive world shift. Of those engineers and scientists whom I inter- viewed at the Professional Service Center, several had been unemployed for a relatively long period of time (in some cases for as long as 18 months). These individuals described themselves as 'technical types,' by which they meant that they had worked primarily in technological roles and that they thought of them- selves as continuing to do so, not wanting to assume managerial responsibilities. They often maintained that they were waiting for a job offer which would allow them to do the kind of work in which they had been engaged before being 'let go.' When asked if they were concerned about becoming 'technologically obsolete,' each explained that he had been working on tasks which were on the 'cutting edge' of the technology in his field and therefore had a 'lead time' (not yet reached at the point at which they were interviewed) before which he would begin to feel threatened by unemployment. For these individuals, their views of themselves had not been challenged by job loss and they did not experience unemployment as stressful, as long as they were also able to maintain a balance between their financial resources and de- mands.

The last point I want to develop is that the career dissatisfaction observed among many unemployed technical professionals also characterizes the feelings and attitudes of working engineers. Little [25] found that an overwhelming majority of the unemployed technical professionals whom he interviewed and who had a positive attitude towards their job loss de- scribed their pre-unemployment work as 'stressful' and 'dissatisfying.' A study of Massachusetts Insti- tute of Technology alumni [40] indicates that of its graduates from various schools and in different oc- cupational groups, engineers expressed the most dis- satisfaction with their field and with their jobs. Furthermore, Ritti 's account [42] of a high tech- nology company clearly demonstrates a pervasive discontent among engineers.*

These studies, among others, not only establish that engineering is a source of negative sentiments, but also suggest what it is about the profession and the work it entails which produces them. The M.I.T. research indicates that the low evaluation of the field correlates with its relatively low income levels, at least for those who work as technologists. The researchers report that managers with a B.S. degree earned more than even doctoral-level engineers, and they conclude

*Ritti [42] found "engineers to be less satisfied with their work than any other group except those directly in- volved in production work--blue-collar workers" (p. 3). His finding is consistent with the results of a study [43] published some 15 years earlier in which engineers were found to be slightly more satisfied with their work than production workers but less satisfied than skilled work- ers, foreman, salesmen, and management.

that it would seem that the way for an engineer to 'get ahead,' at least as measured by income, is to go into management. Another interpretation [44] suggests that the dissatisfaction is the outcome of a conflict between the professional aspirations of engineers and the organizational constraints of the companies which employ them. Ritti [42] presents still another point of view: he argues that in actuality most engineers are 'locals,' not 'cosmopolitans," and that their problems stem largely from the factory-like organization of their work which inhibits the con- tribution which they expect to make to the cor- poration's goals. Whichever factor or combination of factors most adequately explains the engineer's dis- satisfaction, it is clear that it is associated as much with work as it is with unemployment.

In short, job loss among technical professionals in the recession of the early 1970s does not appear to be the sort of 'crisis' which was followed by a reor- ganization of people's ideas about themselves or about their work lives. To the extent that there were signs of identity confusion and a questioning of the meaning of the world of work, these seem to derive not from an encounter with unemployment, but rather from work experiences. For these individuals, job loss did not precipitate a psychosocial transition, and it did not have the meaning or the stressfulness typically associated with such changes.

CONCLUSIONS

These studies of unemployed technical profession- als and of the characteristics of their careers when employed suggest that job loss may have several different meanings and that these may be differentiated with respect to different models of psychosocial stress. Moreover, they suggest that the meaning of an event as well as its stressfulnesss are not adequately understood when taken out of con- text. Transactional and transitional models of stress define two such contexts. In the case of the un- employed engineers, scientists, and technical manag- ers, there is evidence of transactional stress but not of transitional stress. They cope with unemployment when they have the resources to meet their needs and suffer anxiety and disturbed emotional states when they do not have adequate supplies. This finding prompts the following question: is the apathy and alienation attributed to the poor and to a 'culture of poverty' comparable to that whicff characterizes some of these middle-class men? If solvency sustains the confidence of unemployed technical profession- als, then one might expect no less of the poor, given adequate financial support, as several researchers have argued [45, 46].

Another implication is that for an adequate appre- ciation of unemployment and other potential psycho- social stressors, researchers must pay attention to cultural factors which shape the meaning of these events. Although this is particularly evident in the case of psychosocial transitions which entail changes in an individual's assumptive world, it is also relevant to the study of transactional stressors. With reference to that analytical framework, it must be noted that demands or needs are not simply 'given,' but are culturally defined and socially constructed. For

20 DAVID JACOBSON

middle-class engineers, scientists, and technical man- agers, loss of income becomes problematic when, in the face of decreased resources, they have to meet various demands, including those of supporting a household and providing for dependents. They could have redressed the imbalance by discounting or evad- ing such obligations, but they did not follow that strategy, largely because they had other sources of financial support and/or they expected to become employed again. By contrast, studies of the chroni- cally unemployed [45] suggest that without access to such resources and without hope of getting a job through which they can earn enough income to successfully discharge such duties, men who hold or aspire to 'mainstream' values are forced to deny or avoid domestic and parental responsibilities rather than be seen, by themselves and by society, as inadequate and unable to meet them.

Reactions to job loss among technical profession- a•s also raise a question about certain methodological aspects of transitional models o f stressful events. Researchers who use such an interpretive framework do not attribute stressfulness to an event, but to the meaning it has for the individual experiencing it. For them, the analytical problem is how to determine that meaning. Brown and his associates [8, 9] have pro- vided one solution: from an analysis of the general circumstances of an individual, they attempt to infer the probable meaning of an event, a procedure which they describe in terms of its 'contextual threat. ' Although this procedure has several advantages over approaches which presume that an event has an 'objective' meaning, the case of unemployed technical professionals suggests that it may be necessary to examine in more detail an individual 's specific cir- cumstances. For an engineer, for example, it would be insufficient to infer the meaning of unemployment simply from a statement of that individual 's oc- cupational role, including a Iisting o f the individual 's past and/or present job responsibilities. Rather, be- cause an engineer may want to pursue either a technological or a managerial track, it would be necessary to determine his future preferences, his particular expectations, and his assessment of his career trajectory in order to calculate the likely impact o f job loss. Analysis of the ways in which unemployment among technical professionals fails to constitute a psychosocial transition suggests that it is crucial to retain a concept like that of 'contextural threat, ' but that it is also critical to further refine it.

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