Ofer Sharone
Associate Professor of Sociology University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Amherst MA
Ofer Sharone is a nationally recognized expert on unemployment, work and career transitions.
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Expertise
Biography
In his latest book "The Stigma Trap," Ofer Sharone explains how the stigma of unemployment can render past educational and professional achievements irrelevant, and how it leaves all American workers vulnerable to becoming trapped in unemployment.
His current research with the Institute for Career Transitions focuses on strategies for supporting long-term unemployed job seekers. This research has received wide attention from national media and led to an invitation from the White House and the Department of Labor to participate in policy discussions on addressing long-term unemployment.
Sharone's teaching interests include the sociology of aspirations, American society, negotiations and social theory.
Social Media
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Education
University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D.
Sociology
Harvard Law School
J.D.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
B.A.
Economics
Select Recent Media Coverage
To banner or not to banner
Business Insider online
2024-09-03
Sociology professor Ofer Sharone discusses the effects of long-term unemployment in an article about LinkedIn’s “Open to Work” banner. “Everybody in our society has this unconscious bias against someone unemployed,” he says.
A CEO’s post praising older workers goes viral
Minnesota Star Tribune online
2024-06-17
Ofer Sharone comments in an article about a CEO’s viral LinkedIn post about his positive experience hiring someone over age 55. Sharone says a common sentiment among job recruiters is that older employees may be overqualified and therefore unhappy in a new job and quickly leave.
Over 50 and out of work: Abandoned by recruiters, spouses and friends
MarketWatch online
2024-03-16
Ofer Sharone is interviewed about his new book, “The Stigma Trap: College-Educated, Experienced, and Long-Term Unemployed,” exploring the challenges faced by educated midcareer professionals who have been unemployed for an extended period. “In this book, as I interviewed people, I became much more attuned to the way that the self-blame is an internalization of an external stigma that is everywhere,” he says.
Getting laid off is not your fault. Here’s why it’s crucial to believe that
Fast Company online
2023-02-15
Ofer Sharone, a sociologist at UMass Amherst, is one of the leading experts on the social, cultural, and psychological aspects of unemployment. Research he conducted after the dot-com bubble burst found that people who blamed themselves for their layoff had a much harder time mentally and emotionally versus people who blamed the system for the loss of their job.
How to find work after a lengthy unemployment
New York Post online
2022-10-09
“Flawed understandings of long-term unemployment held by employers and former colleagues is one of the biggest barriers out-of-work people can face,” wrote University of Massachusetts Amherst Professor Ofer Sharone in Harvard Business Review last year.
For the long-term unemployed, jobs report is not so upbeat
Marketplace online
2021-03-05
“It’s not just employers,” said sociologist Ofer Sharone at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “That stigma is also often held by colleagues, former colleagues, friends. Even a spouse. Even people close to you can start to view the long-term unemployed with some suspicion.”
Select Publications
The Stigma Trap
Book: Oxford University PressOfer Sharone
2024-01-30
In "The Stigma Trap," Ofer Sharone explains how the stigma of unemployment can render past educational and professional achievements irrelevant, and how it leaves all American workers vulnerable to becoming trapped in unemployment. Drawing on interviews with unemployed workers, job recruiters, and career coaches, Sharone brings to light the subtle ways that stigmatization prevents even the most educated and experienced workers from gaining middle-class jobs.
Undoing the Stigma of Unemployment
TIME MagazineOfer Sharone
2024-01-26
Ofer Sharone writes about what it will take to undo the stigma of unemployment, a topic he also explores in his new book. He provides examples that “show how tenaciously we want to hold on to the belief in meritocratic predictability, that if you do the ‘right’ things, study hard, go to a good college, and get a good job, you’ll do okay. Ironically, while we cling to the myth of a predictable meritocracy as a way of coping with our anxiety, the myth leaves in place institutions and employer practices that guarantee our perpetual anxiety… And ultimately, it means we remain trapped in an economic system in which we are all one layoff away from potential disaster,” he says.
An Evaluation of an Integrative Intervention for Work and Mental Health: The WIN Program
Journal of Career Assessment2023
The purpose of this study was to describe the development of a new intervention for jobseekers and to assess its efficacy using a naturalistic, pre-post intervention design. In contrast to existing work-based interventions, the Work Intervention Network (WIN) intervention targets multiple intersecting domains through four modules and via six group sessions: deepening and sustaining relationships; fostering social awareness and reducing self-blame; building emotional resilience and self-care; and planning, exploring, and engaging in the job search.
The Work Intervention Network (WIN): Foundations of a Holistic Vocational Intervention
Journal of Career Assessment2022
The aim of the current study was to examine whether the key constructs targeted in the Work Intervention Network (WIN) intervention uniquely predicted well-being outcomes and mediated relations between un/underemployment and these outcomes. Using data from a sample of 462 adults in the U.S., we positioned employment status as a predictor of life satisfaction, well-being, and psychological distress. We also tested four mediators of these relations that operationalized targets in the WIN intervention – career engagement, social support, self-care, and self-blame. Employment status indirectly predicted life satisfaction, life meaning, and psychological distress via self-care and self-blame.
The Second Phase of Unemployment Will Be Harsher
The AtlanticVictor Tan Chen and Ofer Sharone
2020-04-19
For American workers displaced by recession, widespread public sympathy soon gives way to moralizing anger.
