Responses to unemployment vary from depression, through stoic acceptance to celebration. The primary aim and original contribution of this book is to provide a sociological explanation for these variations. This study focuses on the experience of unemployment as a consequence of losing a job. The different effects of unemployment are analyzed as a product of the different types of stories people tell. Drawing on the traditions of symbolic interactionism and hermeneutics, this text uses a narrative conception of self-identity to analyze people's stories about unemployment. This book examines the processes that allow some people to tell stories of hope and confidence about their unemployment, and lead others to tell stories of pain, loss and despair.