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In my right-wing politics of the time, I held that unemployment was usually the fault of the unemployed.

Being unemployed has so many real and palpable ramifications but there are also psychological side effects which you can only understand if you've truly lived through it.

Being out of a job can erode people's confidence and their sense of possibility; and employers, often unfairly, tend to take long-term unemployment as a signal that something is wrong.

You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job, but it doesn't pay as much. And so, that's what's happened to us is that we have put in so much entitlement into our government, that we really have spoiled our citizenry and said you don't want the jobs that are available.

I graduated law school nine months pregnant and didn't take a job.

I went from buying my own condominium and a car for myself when I was 17 on 'The Facts of Life' to not being able to pay my rent. I was at the unemployment office all the time. I had to sell my record collection just to make ends meet. And then I started getting these voice-over jobs.

We are being tough in saying it is a duty on the unemployed in future not only to be available for work - and not to shirk work - but also to get the skills for work. That is a new duty we are introducing.

Discrimination due to age is one of the great tragedies of modern life. The desire to work and be useful is what makes life worth living, and to be told your efforts are not needed because you are the wrong age is a crime.