These threads are always emotional because there are people out there who are hard workers who haven’t found work.
Speaking from my personal experience, I just know way too many people who are long-term unemployed who are simply sitting on their back-sides waiting for a job like their old job to magically materialize—without having to move to a new area too, of course. The unemployment is enough for them to get by and they absolutely refuse to look for lowering paying work due to their pride.
I also know people who lost jobs who you’d think would not be employable—like people who lost jobs due to drinking—who nevertheless swallowed their pride and had new jobs (lower paying) within a couple months.
The bottom line is that if you are willing to move and take less pay and a lesser job, you should be able to find something.
You are so right. I myself got laid off in January 2003. Despite all I did all the groups and seminars, professional groups I was lucky to get one interview every couple of months. I got a few temp and contract jobs during this time and between that and our savings I barely kept us going. As far as lesser paying jobs, well sometimes that may work for some, but during my experience I found that even though I had twenty years of warehouse/inventory control/materials management and expediting I couldn't even get an interview for a job as a stocker.
In January of 2005 I sat down and did the bills for the month (We were not behind on anything) and told my wife that's it after I paid everything it would leave us with grocery/gas/prescription money for the remainder of the month and then we was broke. God smiled on us and a guy I had met months before at a professional group got me a contract job setting up a new warehouse for a small manufacturing company that he had just started working for as it's Operations Manager.
About the time that ended I got another contract job which led to a permanent position with the client, but we had to move took a beating on our house and we are just now getting out from the moving cost.
So I really mean it when I say: There but by the grace of God go I.
One the one hand the jobless are too proud to take a lower paying job and on the other hand employers don’t want to hire the overqualified because they won’t be good wage slaves. It’s always something...
Not everyone can pack up, pick up and move... far too many people live paycheck to paycheck and the loss of the job is devastating. They will be worried about where the money will be coming from to put dinner on the table the next day, let alone where the money comes from to move.
So true.