Unemployment Quotes: Inspiration and Wisdom for Challenging Times

"The shock of unemployment becomes a pathology in its own right"

"What we're talking about is the price of goods, all goods, in terms of money. That has nothing to do with unemployment, except for the fact that you get fewer goods. And when you have more money and fewer goods, the amount of dollars per good goes up. It goes up because there are fewer goods and it goes up because there is more money"

Arthur Laffer, Economist

"I have just explained my idea of how a constructive period of reflection, one that would send a clear message to the citizens of Europe: You should now what our priorities are. For Germany this means: Unemployment is one of one of our biggest problems"

Angela Merkel, Statesman

"The automatic stabilizer is unemployment insurance, food stamps, additional coverage of Medicaid"

Franklin Raines, Businessman

"Really, the potential for, first of all, any college graduate today is enormously good. These are good times for anyone with a college degree today, particularly African Americans. With a college degree today, you really breach the unemployment rate"

Alexis Herman, Public Servant

"The internal conditions in Iran are worsening in all aspects. Poverty and unemployment are becoming more severe, despite the fact that Iran has turned into a developed and industrialized country"

Moshe Katsav, Statesman

"Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare"

William Vickrey, Educator

"In my right-wing politics of the time, I held that unemployment was usually the fault of the unemployed"

Luke Ford, Writer

"Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders"

Ronald Reagan, President

"We are a people trying not only to solve the problems of the present: unemployment, inflation... but we are attempting on a larger scale to fulfill the promise of America"

Barbara Jordan, Politician

"It is a fact that, if I single out Germany, our rate of growth is too low and we have very high unemployment"

Angela Merkel, Statesman

"The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy"

Milton Friedman, Economist

"I think the gains to be achieved by a combination of reforms and labor market adjustments are going to be more permanent and will provide a basis for reducing unemployment and improving export performance, and sustaining growth, in a way that is more sound and permanent"

Lucas Papademos, Politician

"As legal slavery passed, we entered into a permanent period of unemployment and underemployment from which we have yet to emerge"

Julian Bond, Activist

"Qualified software engineers, managers, marketers and salespeople in Silicon Valley can rack up dozens of high-paying, high-upside job offers any time they want, while national unemployment and underemployment is sky high"

Marc Andreessen, Businessman

"Our tax policies, the tax relief and reform we passed in 2003 and 2005, helped get government out of the way of America's entrepreneurs, and our unemployment rate is now lower than it was in the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s"

Marsha Blackburn, Politician

"Let me just try to give you sort of the intuitive one here on the stimulus funds. If you have a two-person economy - let's imagine we have two farms, and that's the whole world, just two farms. If one of those farmers gets unemployment benefits, who do you think pays for him? Am I going way over your heads today?"

Arthur Laffer, Economist

"The unemployment rate is still twice as high for blacks as for whites"

William Weld, Politician

"There's no unemployment in squatter cities. Everyone works. One-sixth of humanity is there. It's soon going to be more than that"

Stewart Brand, Author

"This majority is working for America, and one of those ways is we have tremendously low unemployment. This economy has created millions of new jobs, and we are expecting growth this first quarter of somewhere higher than 4 percent"

Marsha Blackburn, Politician

"The minimum wage is the black teenage unemployment act. It is the guaranteed way of holding the poor, the minorities and the disenfranchised out of the mainstream is if you price their original services too high"

Arthur Laffer, Economist

"Despite our high rate of unemployment, 300,000 jobs go unfilled largely because many of the unemployed lack the skills needed today as a result of technological progress"

Kim Campbell, Statesman

"Outsourcing and globalization of manufacturing allows companies to reduce costs, benefits consumers with lower cost goods and services, causes economic expansion that reduces unemployment, and increases productivity and job creation"

Larry Elder, Journalist

"Well, our economy is very strong and growing. We have created 5.4 million new jobs in the last 3 years. Our unemployment rate is better than the average unemployment rate of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s"

Ric Keller, Politician

"Enterprise Washington is economic development in areas of high unemployment around the state of Washington"

Mike Lowry, Politician

"Hundreds of millions of human beings on our planet increasingly suffer from unemployment, poverty, hunger, and the destruction of their families"

Hans Kung, Theologian

"Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row"

Danny Glover, Actor

"All those predictions about how much economic growth will be created by this, all of those new jobs, would be created by the things we wanted - the extension of unemployment insurance and middle class tax cuts. An estate tax for millionaires adds exactly zero jobs. A tax cut for billionaires - virtually none"

Anthony Weiner, Politician

"For me, unemployment and poverty in the Greater Montreal area is not mainly a problem of structure, or design, or statistics. It is a profoundly human situation"

Kim Campbell, Statesman

"Unemployment is due to the large import of goods from Britain and other countries. The Government haven't used the powers which they have for the benefit of the country"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"Today's misery is real unemployment, home foreclosures and bankruptcies. This is the Obama Misery Index and its at a record high. Its going to take more than new rhetoric to put Americans back to work - its going to take a new president"

Mitt Romney, Politician

"Prices are going up. Unemployment is continue to go up. And we have not had the necessary correction for the financial bubble created by our Federal Reserve system"

Ron Paul, Politician

"Certainly, the poverty, the discrimination, the episodic unemployment could not but strike an inquiring youngster: why did these exist, and what could we do about them"

Joseph Stiglitz, Economist

"If you increase taxes now on - at any level, it's going to make it harder to create jobs And we've lost 2 1/2 million jobs since the stimulus package passed. We're at 9.6 unemployment. So I don't think we tax too little, I think we spend too much"

Lindsey Graham, Politician

"No matter what's happening in the Middle East - the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment - the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one"

King Abdullah II, Statesman

"If unemployment could be brought down to say 2 percent at the cost of an assured steady rate of inflation of 10 percent per year, or even 20 percent, this would be a good bargain"

William Vickrey, Educator

"I define genuine full employment as a situation where there are at least as many job openings as there are persons seeking employment, probably calling for a rate of unemployment, as currently measured, of between 1 and 2 percent"

William Vickrey, Educator

"I think it's hard to know. Feeling fulfilled, because actors face periods of unemployment, there is nothing worse than being at the top of your game; you have so much to give but do not have the platform to do this"

Michael York, Actor

"Currently a level of unemployment of 7 percent or more seems to be required to keep inflation from accelerating, a level quite unacceptable as a permanent situation"

William Vickrey, Educator

"Because what happens is, as the economy suffers, tax revenues go down. But unlike businesses, where at least your variable costs go down, in government your variable costs go up: unemployment insurance, workmen's compensation, health care benefits, welfare, you name it"

Meg Whitman, Businessman

Page 1 of 2