Americans blame themselves for unemployment, Israelis blame the system

For a study published in the journal Social Forces (ungated version), Ofer Sharone of MIT’s Sloan School of Management interviewed white collar job seekers in two centers of high-tech industry — San Francisco and Tel Aviv — and noticed some interesting differences in how the subjects described the reasons for their unemployment:

Israeli job seekers consistently attribute their difficulties to external factors, and most commonly, as in the case of Eldad, to the "system." The "system"–by which Israelis are usually referring to private employment agencies and testing institutes described below– is described as a "meat market" or a "conveyor belt." Job seekers experience is that they are not evaluated on their true merits but screened-out using arbitrary proxies, or as Eldad put it, "buzzwords." Over time Israeli job seekers report feeling increasingly like they are "invisible" and "at a loss" vis-à-vis a blind and arbitrary system. In addition, Israeli job seekers also explain their difficulties as arising due to the tight labor market conditions for someone with their level of skills and experiences, and to the actions or inactions of the State, which is seen as standing behind both the market and the dominant labor market institutions that form the "system."

By contrast, American white-collar job seekers typically come to feel that there is something wrong with them. American expressions of self-blame vary with respect to what aspect of the self is to blame. Explanations of the most significant obstacle to their getting a job included: "lack of self-confidence," "low self esteem," an absence of "self-discipline," not being "good at interviews," being a "bad networker," or not knowing "what I really want to do." In some cases the self-blame is simply expressed as: "I didn’t get the job so I must have done something wrong." Over time, the nature of the self-blame tends to become less focused on one’s job searching capacities and more focused on one’s inner self. American job seekers, after several months of job searching, often report believing that they are not finding work because they are somehow "flawed" or "defective." Becky, a thirty six year old translator, expressed it thus: "I feel more like an orphan. No one wants me, and I don’t want to impose myself on anyone."

Sharone writes that in contrast to Israel, where hiring is often done through the intermediary of private testing agencies and there’s a greater emphasis on tangible skills, in the United States "getting a job requires establishing your "fit" with a particular employer….Ultimately what matters most are intangible inner qualities that come through in your presentation-of-self. The focus is on the person behind the skills." While Israelis compare job interviews to oral exams, U.S. workers tend to describe them as "first dates." 

Sharone believes this culture of individual accountability is at the heart of the American self-help industry represented by books like What Color Is Your Parachute, and is also the reason why there’s comparatively little political organization around the issue of unemployment in the United States. 

The finding fits with the common stereotype of Americans as inherently individualistic, even to a fault, but I’d be interested to know if there are other countries that look more like the United States in this regard. 

Via National Affairs