The twenty-seventh week

One · What happened

Two million people in their seventh month of looking

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its employment report for October on Friday, 6 November. Payroll employment rose by one hundred sixty-five thousand, and the unemployment rate stood at four point one percent, which the bureau said has stayed between four point one and four point three percent since March. Average hourly earnings on private payrolls rose fourteen cents to $38.00, a gain of three point one percent over twelve months. The bureau also revised August upward to one hundred eighty-six thousand and September to sixty thousand, leaving those two months eighty-four thousand higher than first reported.

The same release carried a second set of figures, these about people who have waited a long time. The bureau counted seven point one million unemployed in October. Two million of them had been jobless for twenty-seven weeks or longer. The bureau said that number changed little over the month, and the group made up twenty-seven point six percent of everyone out of work. The number of people working part time because their hours were cut or they could not find full-time work rose by three hundred thirty-nine thousand to four point eight million. The release counts people in each category and offers no explanation for why any of them are there.

Two · What it is doing

What week twenty-seven does to a man

A man laid off in the spring reads the October report at his kitchen table. Payrolls grew by one hundred sixty-five thousand, yet the release has no line about him. Half a year of applications has taught him to hear each silence from an employer as a ruling on his age or his résumé. The release counts him once, inside the figure of two million, and the figure tells him nothing about the people in it.

Shame comes first in a man who has waited past the sixth month. He gives a vague answer when somebody at church asks about work, and he skips the Sunday the question is likely. Resentment follows the shame and settles on the neighbor who still draws a paycheck and on the company that never wrote back. A good report feeds the resentment, because the figure announces progress to everybody except him.

The reader who has a job meets the same figure from the other side. Two million people searching into a seventh month is a figure he can nod at without thinking of anyone he knows. The nod often carries a guess that the long-searching must be picky or slow. Nothing in the bureau’s release supports the guess, since the bureau counted who was waiting and did not ask why. A man who holds the guess may pass the neighbor in the next pew with a look he would not give a stranger with a cast on his arm.

Three · Where the ground is

The men Jesus pictured in the marketplace

Jesus told of a landowner who found men standing in the marketplace near the end of the working day. “Why do you stand here idle all day?” he asked, and they answered, “Because no one has hired us” (Matthew 20:6-7). The parable concerns the kingdom of heaven and promises no reader a job. Jesus let the men’s explanation of their idleness stand without comment. Neither the landowner nor the story calls their waiting a fault, and the landowner sends them into the vineyard.

Work comes before the fall in Genesis. “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). A man given tasks before there was any sin has reason to grieve when the tasks are taken away, and grief over lost work is no sign of weak faith. Jesus was known in Nazareth by his trade, since the neighbors asked, “Is not this the carpenter?” (Mark 6:3).

Naomi came back to Bethlehem after losing her husband and both sons in Moab. “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me,” she told the women of the town. “I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty” (Ruth 1:20-21). The book of Ruth does not scold her for the bitterness. The narrative follows her daughter-in-law into a barley field, where Ruth gleaned behind the reapers and happened to come to the part of the field that belonged to Boaz (Ruth 2:2-3).

“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God,” Paul wrote to the church in Colossae (Colossians 3:3). A believer’s standing rests on what Christ did on the cross and out of the tomb, so a seventh month of silence from employers has no authority to revise it. The passage promises no offer letter by any date. Paul named the hope as an appearing: “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4).

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Some of these belong to the man in the seventh month, and some belong to the people around him who still have a paycheck.

1. 01

   Find the date your benefits end.

   Call your state unemployment office or open its online account and read off two numbers, the weeks of benefits you have left and the date of the last payment. Put that date on a card on the refrigerator where the household can see it. If the date is close, ask the office which extension or hardship program applies to your claim.

2. 02

   Answer the next question about work with the number of weeks.

   When somebody at church asks how work is going, answer with the count, as in twenty-seven weeks and no offer yet. Give the same number to a pastor or an elder by the end of the week and ask him to put your name in front of the men of the church who hire. The shame lives on vague answers, and a number gives the church something to help with.

3. 03

   Ask three people for one name each.

   Message three people you have worked with and ask each to name someone who is hiring or who knows somebody who is. Ask for the name and an introduction, and leave the résumé out of the first message. Send all three today, then thank each of them by name when the replies come.

4. 04

   Take one weekly job that pays nothing.

   Genesis 2:15 puts a man in the garden to work it and keep it, and a month without a paycheck does not cancel the assignment. Ask your pastor for one standing job in the congregation, such as the lawn, the nursery doors or a widow’s gutters, and give it the same hour every week. The work pays no part of the mortgage, and it gives a man’s hands a task that comes due on schedule.

5. 05

   Phone the household that has searched longest.

   If you hold a job, call the person you know who has been out of work the longest and ask how many weeks it has been. Offer one introduction by name or one meal on a set day, and then keep the promise. Paul told the church in Ephesus to labor, “doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Ephesians 4:28).