Happy Out-of-Labor Day, 1992 : Holiday: This year, a day honoring those unemployed who want to work seems a more appropriate celebration.

I was already planning a Labor Day barbecue when my friend’s call changed my mind.

My friend is a journalist, a good, hard-working one, and she was calling to say she had lost her job.

She was a relatively new hire at the Midwestern newspaper, having been there just a year. She had uprooted her family to take this job and, with visions of a secure future dancing in front of her, she plopped down her money on a new house.

Then the bubble burst.

She spoke stoically through gritted teeth and explained:

Last hired, first fired, they had said. (Although no one in businessland uses that F-word. Instead, they said she was a “victim of downsizing,” corporatespeak for “fired.”)

The newspaper chain she worked for had been making less money, and the owners decided to reduce their payroll. It wasn’t personal, they said, it was business. For what it was worth, they told her they were very sorry.

My friend’s initial reaction was anger.

“Very sorry?” she mimicked. “I have house payments to make and bills to pay and they are very sorry? “

Anger gave way to frustration.

“It’s just so unfair,” she said. “I worked hard. I did everything I was supposed to. So why?”

Then came the fear.

“Am I ever going to find another job?” she whispered into the phone. “And what will happen if I don’t?”

I couldn’t offer too much encouragement. I assured her she did good work and expressed remorse over what had befallen her. I agreed that she didn’t deserve to have this happen. I promised to keep her in mind for job openings that crossed my path.

I also promised I would sit out this Labor Day, in her honor and in the honor of everyone else who is out of work.

Like a lot of holidays, Labor Day’s real meaning has been lost to dilution. While most of us see the day as nothing more than summer’s informal end, Labor Day is supposed to be a day to honor working people. But this year, there are just too many of us who aren’t.

The idea of celebrating with 9.3% of our state unemployed seems inappropriate.

My friend isn’t the first person I know to take this recession on the chin. I started counting all the people I’ve known or heard of who lost their jobs.

Is there anyone who doesn’t know someone who lost their job this year?

We listen to the stories of our out-of-work friends. The words are different--the company folded, it merged, there was a consolidation--but the results are always the same. People lost their jobs.

Their out-of-work status is called by many names: buyouts, voluntary layoffs, temporary unpaid leaves. But whatever it’s called, it’s the same. One day they had a place to go; the next they didn’t. One day they had business cards; the next they had unemployment claim forms. One day they saw endless possibilities, the next they sat staring at the Donahue show and wondering what people who don’t go to work each day do.

So how can we have a party to cheer having a job while our neighbor pays his bills with promises? How can we march in a Labor Day parade knowing that so many who are watching from the sidelines are really watching from the sidelines?

While the so-called hard-core unemployed used to be the untrained, the uneducated or the unwilling, today they are outnumbered by the unlucky.

The San Diego Consortium and Private Industry Council, which provides job-search assistance to laid-off San Diegans, reports that the average out-of-worker who came into the program three years ago came from a job that paid $6.45 an hour. Now, the average hourly wage among the incoming unemployed is $13.16.

If Labor Day is the holiday on which we recognize labor’s contributions to the nation, perhaps this year we ought to recognize the impact of the out-of-work. They have the rest of us paralyzed with fear that what happened to them could happen to us.

Wherever I look, I see people rewriting the blueprints of their lives. Life choices that once seemed so certain are now fraught with indecision. Should you buy that house, or will it be worth less in a year? Should you take that new job, especially if it means losing seniority?

Uncertainty seems to have struck its own numbing chord. Don’t risk buying today what you may not be able to afford tomorrow. No action is the preferred course of action.

Each new “lost-my-job-today” call reminds us just how short the distance is between the top of the heap and the bottom of the pile.

Is there a bright side to the bleak economy? Perhaps Labor Day, 1992, will be remembered as the day we learned that we are more than what we do for a living; that we are a resourceful lot who can still have compassion and lend a listening ear, if not a helping hand.