I am unemployed. As of today, it will have been exactly 210 days since I last worked. This is my story. There are many like it, but this one is mine. Continue reading
unemployment
13 posts
Aside from setting unnecessary and extraordinarily costly requirements for legal education and opposing key, cost-saving reforms, the American Bar Association found a new way to prove that it is woefully out of touch with the current legal market and ensure that many members of the new generation of lawyers won’t become dues paying members to an organization that remains crushingly out of touch with the reality of today’s legal job market. Continue reading
Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce took a look at unemployment rates and college degrees and came up with a list of degrees that have a good chance of getting you a job and list that have a bad chance. Continue reading
We’re two weeks past Thanksgiving, but I am still puzzling over the dinner conversation. As four 20-something guests talked about hopes and worries, I began to wonder if the pressures they feel reflect a generational terror.
The cast of characters, besides me, was my adorable 23 y/o crypto-nephew and three young women, none of whom I’d met before. You know how it is: crypto-nephew wants to invite his favorite roommate. A couple of days later she asks if we can include one of her friends and then a few days after that, how about another friend at loose ends? Boom! You’ve agreed to feed one person you know and three you don’t.
Despite my apprehensions (who are they? will they throw up on my couch?) they were great. A wonderful time, as the saying goes, had by all—especially by me. Their conversation about ambitions, expectations and fears was as fascinating as it was startling.
They are preparing for, striving towards, in search of nothing less than the perfect job. Continue reading
Michael O’Shaughnessy, president and owner of Element Electronics, recently announced that his company is teaming with Lotus International, a manufacturing company in Canton, Michigan. Element plans to hire 100 workers, and will also open a call center in Michigan to field customer questions.
Last year, the Boston Consulting Group predicted that in the next five years more companies will shift manufacturing work back to the States, or choose to locate new production in the U.S. because of China’s shrinking cost advantage. This is known as re-shoring or on-shoring, a reversal of the offshoring trend which shipped so many jobs to Mexico, China, and other countries where labor costs are much lower than they are in the States. Continue reading
Hey kids, is the work day getting you down? Well, some facts and figures on the state of employment in America have been released recently, and they are sobering. Keep squirreling away something for a rainy day, because the storm clouds are still hanging over our collective heads. Continue reading
I started my career on July 1, 1995, with a big multinational company. On July 1, 2009, I was given the old heave-ho. What had started out as a very promising upward trajectory landed with a thud, and the reason I was being shown the door had nothing to do with me or how well I did my work.
The circumstances of my job’s demise were simple: I was only working on one account, and that customer had been sold to a company that in-sourced their IT functions. While my group was in the process of transitioning our work to our customer’s new owner, my employer was in the process of laying off tens of thousands of Americans and shipping their jobs to various Asian countries. Even though my work record had been exemplary, and I had received the highest possible rating on my annual review more than once, there was no room at the inn for me. I tried to find a new position with the company starting in mid 2008 up until my last day, but there were none to be had. Continue reading
The State of Employment: Too bad suckers! If you don’t have a job already, you’re never going to get one because employers only want the employable and the employable are already employed (but, like, they’ll settle for someone who got laid off on, like, Thursday at the earliest).
“I feel like I am being shunned by our entire society,” said Kelly Wiedemer, 45, an information technology operations analyst who said a recruiter had told her that despite her skill set she would be a “hard sell” because she had been out of work for more than six months.
I am thousands upon thousands of dollars in debt, thanks to five years of a private university education dedicated to a degree in elementary education. I graduated last May and, with the nature of hiring in elementary schools being what it is around here, I was not lucky enough to land a job right away. We’re still holding our breath for this upcoming year, but in the meantime I’ve been babysitting like crazy — it allows me to pay what’s required on my loans for now, puts gas in my car and I even have a little spending money sometimes. Continue reading
Two Thursdays ago James Richard Verone of Gaston County, NC woke up with sole intention of robbing a bank. Is Verone just another nefarious malcontent thumbing his nose at the hardworking men and women of America as he tries to cheat his way to wealth? No, rather he is something of a poster boy for the connection between poverty and crime. He only attempted to rob the bank of $1 and all he actualy wanted was to be able to see a doctor about his many physical ailments.