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 ...
Nope. Pizzas don’t pay well enough. On call package delivery. Anything that will fit in my van.
I suddenly found myself with three jobs the SAME WEEK my unemployment ran out! I was retired and had only been working part time when I became unemployed because of the business closing down. I suppose you would say that I found three jobs at once because I had not been trying before but one of them was a place where I had applied multiple times and had gotten nowhere but suddenly they were eager to offer me a weekend job. One suddenly appeared when I got a call from a temp agency on Friday afternoon and was asked to report for work at eight on Monday! It was a full time job that a child could do and less than two dollars an hour over minimum wage but I took it for a couple of weeks before I started the other two for which I had already been given a starting date. I quit that one when the other two started up and I worked Monday through Friday on one and then worked Friday evening and eight hours Saturday and eight hours Sunday on the weekend job for a month before I had to quit the weekend job because my feet simply would no longer take being on concrete for eight straight hours. I still work the Monday through Friday job which is telephone sales so it doesn’t kill my feet, I actually enjoy it and with hourly plus commission the pay is not bad. I am sixty seven years old. I worked the weekend job with a guy several years older who is still working that job in spite of having a well-paid full time job during the week.
How did I wind up with three jobs suddenly? How did the other guy even older than me wind up with a full time twenty dollar an hour job plus a weekend job. I honestly don’t have the foggiest notion. All I know is that I did make an effort to find something when I was drawing unemployment but nothing was offered until I got that last check and suddenly everything changed. Some will say that the lord provided but I can guarantee that there are plenty of people more deserving than I am who have not been so well provided for. So why would I, a most unworthy servant, be rewarded with a job I look forward to while so many others go without?
In a town of 8000 there was only one barber? I admit I haven’t been in a shop for years because I have family members who cut my hair at home but I didn’t know things were that bad, a town that size used to have several barber shops.
Other than how it affects their own careers I can't imagine any politician caring about whether I or anyone else had a job.
It was a severance package negotiated by the union with his employer.
RE: 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.
1) What part of the country do you live in?
2) What Engineering degree does she have?
3) Is she willing to relocate?
WTF?
If you can stand reading the comments there, poster “Dr. Steve” will give you second thoughts about ever seeking Medical Attention. The guy is either a fraud or he writes his own Prescriptions.
Now I'll be jumping in the shower to get the “Atlantic” off.
Age is a big, big factor. Probably the biggest impediment. And pulling up roots is never easy, even for younger people. Lots of people just wither away when they HAVE to do it. “Grapes of Wrath” is a movie that covers all the bases, even for non-farm folks. You are being forced to give up a life-style, all you know and all the habits and all the expectations. In a sense, you are being asked to become someone else.
Trouble is you do that but the pushback whether they say so or not, is that you’re overqualified and will be gone once things improve. Plus if you’re over fifty or so that’s another huge hurdle to clear. I’ve even read of companies that refuse to consider applications from the unemployed.
Unlike some here I won’t judge this guy, just sympathize with him, it’s a terrible scene right now and if things don’t improve soon the future looks truly ugly.
There's still jobs out there for good editors.
;)
UI is taxable as ordinary income.
So please clarify something for us.
You say that “if a person is willing to work they will find a job.” Now, there are about fifteen million people out of work in this country, but only one million jobs open at any time. Even assuming that half the people who are out of work are lazy bastards who won’t try hard to get a job, I’d be fascinated to know how you shoehorn the seven-and-a-half million non-lazy unemployed people into the one million available jobs. How do you figure that? How can “a person [who] is willing to work” find a job when there are six to 15 times more unemployed people than there are jobs? The math doesn’t add up, John.
I’d honestly love to have this explained.
If only it was so simple !
I was a courier for a while, not a bad job at all. I was in a small town and didn’t make great money- but made a living.
Dang that is a good idea. How do you make your service available
I contract with a local company. They provide the work for me and about 80 other guys.
You could do it on your own and get your own clients but it’s worth the 35% I give them to have them do all that work. They also pay me even if the client never does. I split the fee for the delivery with them 65/35. Also since I am my own business every mile on the van is deductible.
I bought a late model, high mile service van from Sears at a salvage auction. When they have 240K + on them they total them for a broken grill and bent fender. Paid 600 or so for the van, and 50 bucks for the parts to make it look new.
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