Unemployment in Perception and Interpretation of the Unemployed

The article presents some results of the research on the unemployed in Lodz, done in the middle of 1993. On the base of respondents answers, there has been made an attempt to reconstruct and typologise the perceptional and interpretational patterns of the unemployment, used by the respondents. The predominant attitutde in the situation of being unemployed is a strong frustration and making claims for special benefits, and the lower level of objectivity and constructionism. Respondents’ answers also proves that there are few interpretative stereotypes of unemployment in unemployed consciousness. Some of them see the causes of unemployment as badwill or incompetence of authorities or withdrawal from the idea of socialism. Such a stereotyping is typical from respondents with lower educational level. Other interpretational stereotypes, usually from respondents with high school or university education, criticise slow progress in the building of the free market economy and unsalisfactionary support of the unemployed activity