Face Of Unemployment

2021reaction imageclassic

Published July 30, 2026

Face Of Unemployment is a reaction image and running joke built around a selfie of Tyler Johnson that CNN used in a January 2021 article about long-term joblessness. The image took off after a Twitter user claimed the photo was his and asked CNN to delete it, kicking off two years of memes where the face stands in for being broke or unemployed.

reaction memesaccidental fame memeseconomic anxiety memesunwilling celebrity memes2021 memes

Overview

Face Of Unemployment is a reaction image built around a selfie of a man named Tyler Johnson, whose photo appeared in a January 2021 CNN story about Americans stuck out of work for six months or more1. The joke started when a Twitter user posted a reply insisting the picture was his and asking CNN to take it down, which people took at face value and ran with2.

The format is simple. Users drop the CNN-cropped selfie into any tweet, screenshot, or image macro where the punchline is being broke, jobless, or generally down bad3. The face itself does the work, no caption template required.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (CNN post) / Twitter (viral spread)
Date
2021

On January 10th, 2021, CNN's official Twitter account posted a story headlined 'Nearly 4 million Americans have been out of work for at least six months,' illustrated with a selfie of interview subject Tyler Johnson1. Within hours, a Twitter user going by Lorenzo, handle @Lifekillable, replied under the tweet, 'Why are yall using my pic? Pls delete this'2.

That reply pulled in more than 80,000 likes over the following month2. Whether or not Lorenzo was actually the man in the photo, the collision of a serious CNN unemployment report with a casual 'delete this' plea from a random account is what set the joke up3.

How It Spread

Later on January 10th, Twitter user @JasmineLWatkins quote-tweeted the exchange with, 'Imagine logging on twitter and you the face of unemployment,' which cleared 480,000 likes over the next three years and gave the meme its name4. From there, the CNN crop of Johnson's selfie started showing up as a stand-alone reaction image3.

On January 12th, 2021, @rubbaband_grant used the picture as a punchline in a tweet that pulled in about 7,000 likes5. A day later, on January 13th, @robfrfr posted another version of the same setup and hit roughly 96,000 likes, cementing the image as shorthand for being unemployed or broke on Twitter3.

The story got a coda on December 23rd, 2021, when the Instagram account Rap TV posted an update saying Tyler Johnson had landed a full-time job as an Autopsy Lab Assistant, a post that pulled in over 250,000 likes3. The meme still gets pulled out whenever a tweet needs a visual for being unemployed, though most of its heavy usage sits in 2021.

How to Use This Meme

The typical use is to paste the CNN-cropped selfie of Tyler Johnson into a tweet or image reply as the punchline for being broke, jobless, or having no money for something specific3. A common convention is to set up a scenario in text ('me trying to buy groceries this week') and drop the image with no caption underneath. Some versions Photoshop the face into logos, group photos, or fake CVs, but the plain CNN crop is what people usually reach for4.

Frequently Asked Questions