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“There are only two things a jobseeker should be concentrating on: Can I beat out my competition and get this job and will it pay me just enough to support myself at a minimal level. That’s it.”

You are exactly right.

And that has been my philosophy since I joined the unemployed masses back in September. Unemployment insurance is about to run out for me, and still I have found nothing.

Try finding employment once you pass 50. It’s a bitch. Age discrimination is rampant and in your face. But all I can do is keep looking. Sooner or later something has to work out.

Meanwhile I will pick up freelance work when I can. Underground economy if necessary. Savings have been pretty well wiped out...after I pay taxes I won’t have much left.

Damn near had my house payed off, too.

Oh well. I had a good run. Worked full time since I was 17 and had never before been out of work for more than a few days - this is not normal.

In a deep, long recession like this one, all the old rules go flying out the window.

Exacatickly. We are in a slow-motion apocalypse. The crash of 2008 was a very big bump, but there will be many bumps on the way downhill. We have run out of credit--of all kinds.

One little gem of comfort from my church: Your only job through all of this is to continue to be kind, no matter what. Depressing in a way, but burden-lightening in another.

I pray for all freepers trying to make ends meet or looking for work. May God provide for His own.

“...will it pay me just enough to support myself at a minimal level...”

This, I think, is the stumbling block

It’s all well and good to say: take any job.

That can work when you are young, etc. OK, or even really desperate.

And one stat I’d be interested to see is the North Carolina (for example) bankruptcy filings.

But, just in my own example, I probably could have gotten several jobs that would have NOT paid me enough to pay my mortgage, etc. and transportation to the job.

How can you take a job like that?

I’d be perfectly willing to work at Dunkin Donuts, but my mortgage lender wouldn’t be too happy about it.

All I can say is I never thought I’d be in this position, never in my darkest nightmares.

And yes, I blame Obama, but in all reality I must concede I think there may be other forces at work here.

Not diabolical forces but global economic forces.

But, it could be better than it is (North Korea/South Korea, East Germany/West Germany) and Obama is a HUGE part of that.

I know a lot of us had problems with Romney, but I still think it will prove a great tragedy that Obama was re-elected.

Here is an iron rule of reality: you can’t get blood from a stone.

Exactly. I know someone—a highly-educated attorney—who is now long-termed unemployed. He complained for years about how unfair it all was because he was having to cut into his retirement savings. He couldn’t take a lesser-paying job because it wouldn’t support his ‘bills’, which reflected an upper-middle-class standard of living.

Then he eventually sold, then even stopped renting, his own apartment and has moved back in with family. After years like this he’s not only a dubious job prospect as an attorney, but in other lines of work as well. Still, he won’t take just a menial job or two to actually support himself.

His rage with the world has become huge, which can’t help his hiring either.