Being a person who has been at least partially self-employed since I graduated from college, unemployment creates a conundrum for me.  If one of my businesses is not generating enough income, I start brain-storming resolutions and find a way to solve the problem.  However, not everyone in society is necessarily going to be able to turn unemployment into self-employement. 

In any society, there is a lot of mission-critical work that must be done.  Just to start, let's use healthcare -- a hospital.  A hospital is necessary, and employes hundreds or thousands of people, and helps many more to resolve medical problems and often then return to their usual productive occupation.  There are all sorts of support services -- IT, vehicle sales and service, chaplains and counsellors, food preparers, grocery deliverers, farms to grow the food, factories to make cloth for uniforms and seamstresses to sew them.  The list is nearly endless. 

There is also work that it would be very nice to have done -- a capable adult to help any child learn a concept he or she may be struggling with, a friendly ear to listen to an elderly woman, someone to patrol the trails of the county wilderness preserve and give help to anyone who needs a hand. 

Most likely, there are plenty of tasks to go around.  And for most tasks there is a pleasant way to do the task, or, at least, it may be pleasant enough when a life is balanced by other enjoyable things. 

At the end of the day, unemployment is not a grim spector -- it is an opportunity to realign people to both mission-critical tasks and tasks that round out a society and make it better for all.  The person who is unemployed has two tightly intertwined goals -- to obtain employment again that will (1) provide needed financial support, and (2) be a pleasant way to spend time, or afford a balanced life. 

Unemployement support provided by social services should resolve both of those issues, for both the short term and the long term.  For the short term, the unemployed person needs to have his or her financial needs met, as well as the financial needs of the people he or she supports.  Our current system of unemployment insurance coupled with social services does that relatively well.  However, it leaves out a key component -- the unemployed individual needs to given a task to perform, a way to earn the financial reward.  The task should not be distasteful.  Ideally, any unemployed individual seeking aid could be immediately involved in the Citizen's Corps, and be presented with several options of things that can be done to earn unemployment benefits.  This work should not take up 40 hours a week, but leave the unemployed person time to still pursue employment.  The moneys received from unemployment should be adequate, but not be as generous as that which is available by employement. 

For the long term, Social services should then also have access to a comprehensive job bank, and help the unemployed individual find suitable new employment.  Training programs should also be available -- at no direct cost to the unemployed individual.  In fact, an unemployed individual should be able to attend programs to train for all sorts of occupations that are in high demand in the marketplace, and this learning could be the effort that is required in order to receive unemployment benefits. 

In summation -- any individual in a society should have the right to work as much as he or she is able or cares to work.  There should always be tasks available to individuals that they can do and in return receive food, shelter, healthcare, and their other needs and basic wants.  What we don't have is room for people who are capable of putting into society not contributing -- whether it is because they have been displaced from their usual employment for their own fault or not.  If an individual is not able to obtain employment on their own or thru self-employment, social services should be available to remedy the situation.  This is what our society needs in order to function well and thrive.