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 ...
I thought we didn’t have to worry about this anymore, like Peggy Joseph said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI
I guess the “hope and change” meant “hoping for some small change.”
I was unemployed once, with 26 weeks of benefits, I am looking for my little violin you as others have chose not to work.
Sad story.
Wonder if the author has considered technical writing? Not as creative or glamorous, but nevertheless a pay check.
Maybe the 50th unsuccessful application should have been a clue? I, for one, am sorry to have supported you for the last two and a half years.
ML/NJ
No more writing jobs, has he/she thought of trying a different field. The government is still hiring gropers.
There's his problem right there. Limit yourself to "writing" and you are unemployed. Even then, he could try self-publising a book, teaching as an adjunct English prof (I know there are jobs teaching immigrants English), or something other than whinging screeds about how unfair life is. No one wants to read that stuff!
Oh, and last I heard UPS is hiring. Of course he may have to actually lift something other than a pencil.
Notice, he did not scramble for work while the unemployment checks rolled in. We are subsidizing our high unemployment rate.
Its sad for some people - my daughter is 29 and has been out of work for a year. She is a medical coder and Dr’s certification clerk. She is not even looking for a great job. Just anything. Couldn’t even get into Costco here due to the number of applications. Amazing stuff.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Seattle journalists who are finding the Obama economy to be hostile. My guess is that he would like more taxes, more regulation, more unions, and more Obama. Yeah, that’ll fix ya right up.
I’ll be more sympathetic when he says that he’s not looking for writing or editing work but is applying at the local Home Depot, like me. I apply for writing and editing jobs, but I also apply for jobs stocking shelves at Staples, cleaning rooms at the Holiday Inn, or shoveling horse manure. So far, nothing.
There are plenty of those.
Did you apply at Boeing? I hear they are hiring in South Carolina.
There is really no need for flunked out English majors who ended up in J school. Perhaps a simple application to Walmart or Target will see you through the next 4 years while you learn to work
That is three applications per week. One on Monday, one on Wednesday and one on Friday. So he clicked send on his computer 3 times per week and I'm supposed to feel sorry for him?
Where’s that stat that shows - on average - an unemployed worker somehow finds a job within TWO WEEKS after that last unemployment check is received?
SELL A KIDNEY AND QUIT YOUR WHINING, LEECH.
Hey John, did you try McDonald's or Taco Bell?
By now (30 months later) you could have advanced to general manager.
>> How I will miss those Tuesday trips to the mailbox and then the bank
The thought of it is sickening.
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