Posted on 09/16/2011 1:33:01 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
After 30 months of unemployment, 400 applications, and only three in-person interviews, I stood looking at my last unemployment benefit without a job in sight.
The temptation was to frame it, since it marks one of those transitions in life that merits being remembered. But I needed the money more than a memento, so I took my last unemployment check to the bank and deposited it -- $367 for some necessities. Food, rent, gas. My last unemployment check was $160 less than my usual weekly benefit, but still a welcome boost to my sagging finances. How I will miss those Tuesday trips to the mailbox and then the bank, one of the few regular events in my upended, irregular life!
I had always thought the unemployed were society's unfortunates, people unlike me lacking in education or training or experience or skills. Then in March of 2009, the Hearst Corporation quit publishing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I suddenly became a labor statistic, one of millions without work in the worst economic implosion since the Depression. I was more fortunate than many unemployed people since the Newspaper Guild negotiated a decent severance that yielded two weeks' pay for every year of employment. Since I had spent more than a quarter century underneath the P-I's landmark globe, my severance was a year's salary, although that lump sum check as I left the building forever had a tax bite from a Great White Shark.
Now my severance is exhausted, as is my unemployment, and I am scrambling every day for work. I had been a columnist, then the book critic for the P-I, enviable newspaper jobs even among my colleagues. Now I seek any writing or editing work that I discover,
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
When all else fails lower your standards-bumper sticker
My thought exactly. There are bunches of opportunities for folks that can use the English language and interpret a style guide. They exist in the consulting field where I am as well as in the training space.
I understand, I really do. I’ve been looking for a writing job for years. But having no actual writing skills makes potential employers very hesitant to hire me. They keep saying, “No skills? Go work for a newspaper!!”.
What to do, what to do.
CYC: “What to do, what to do.”
Well, I’m an unemployed buggy whip craftsman who sends out hundreds of resumes a month. Employers refuse to hire me in my chosen profession and won’t even invite me in for an interview. What to do, what to do?
Great story, good man.
Work goes to the workers, as a colleague who was always busy told me.
By the way, welcome to FR, you’ve made some nice contributions in your brief time here.
If the work available is delivering pizza,and you are capable of delivering pizza,then you should not receive unemployment just because you don’t want to deliver pizza.
Buncha people that think they are too good to actually EARN their pay is what is destroying America.
Entitlements go entirely against the laws of nature.There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch!Somebody HAS to pay.
Why do you persist in defending this? Did your State tax anyone based upon the expectation paying them "benefits" for two and a half YEARS? Were these taxes based upon 10% or more unemployment rates? Nearly ALL of this is being funded by the Federal government which just prints the money. The Feds collect no unemployment taxes so far as I know.
ML/NJ
A clue that he was seeking positions that no one would hire him for, either because he was over qualified, overpriced, or, possibly worse, because times have changed.
ML/NJ
“Wonder if the author has considered technical writing? Not as creative or glamorous, but nevertheless a pay check.”
What a coincidence. I collected my last unemployment check last week, too. Of course, it was also the fourth check since I got let go, and I found a new job starting 32 days after leaving my old one.
What is an even bigger coincidence is that I am a writer, too — with twelve published books (at least by the end of this year). Of course writing wasn’t the day job. Writing was a sideline weekends and evenings.
The old day job was as an engineer in the Shuttle program. The new day job is as a technical writer in the oil industry. (And the pay is essentially the same.) And yeah — writing for the day job is as creative as writing for publication in the popular press. And anyone that thinks that the writing business is glamorous needs to look up the meaning (and origins) of the word glamor. It is fun, but real fun is meaningful work.
My sister-in-law graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BS in Engineering from a great public engineering school and has had 1 interview in 2 years.
She doesn’t get an unemployment check because she was in school. Only 1 of 50 of her cohort has gotten a job in engineering since graduation.
So boo-hoo for the writer.
hahahaha yeah right buddy
Based on that question don't ever think about being self employed. You don't have the proper work ethic. While building my business, I have probably made hundreds of interviews, thousands of phone calls and tens of thousands of mailings over the past 10 years.
Yeah, it’s no picnic, that’s for sure. Esp the accounting and tax part. Esp if you are taking care of kids and a house too.
My brother... had been unemployed for a very very long time. I’ve bailed him out for about 8k already. Single, no savings. He just got a position with a local college in admissions and had to have some strings pulled for that. He said he tried grocery stores, retail, anything...he was college educated and over qualified.
I am not sticking up for him because he created his situation and he knows it. (he’s had 6 jobs in 14 yrs) BUT it is tough.
Yeah I understand where you’re coming from.
The Baraqqi Depression has not only created a huge number of unemployed, but also a huge number of underemployed eager to find better opportunities.
And from what I hear from folks (I’m recently retired myself) a lot of those with jobs are being worked like rented mules because employers have all the leverage right now.
Persist???? Hell man. You’ve got some tough argumentative standards!
One factual post based actual experience and you go off the deep end. Back away from the caffeine, Red Bull, or whatever you’re on.
I agree 2.5 years is too long. Bit eventually the experienced rates will catch up and make you holler, too, along with the rest of the taxpayers.
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