Marge Piercy on Why Work Matters

I sometimes struggle, when teaching about unemployment, to explain just why work matters. It’s straightforward enough to note that elevated unemployment leads to loss of economic output, lower tax payments, and greater need for government welfare benefits. I can refer to evidence on how unemployment is connected to social ills like bankruptcy, divorce, depression, and even suicide. But this listing of consequences, while a necessary part of teaching the economics of unemployment, doesn’t quite touch the human heart of the issue. The poet Marge Piercy, in her 1973 poem “To be of use,” gives a more concise and powerful sense of why useful work matters so much. “To be of use” The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half submerged balls. I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who…