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To the employer(s) that made my unemployment possible, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. By sending me to the unemployment line, I no longer have to spend two hours a day in my car to commute to a place of work. I get to save the ten dollars a day I used to spend on buying overpriced lunches and sodas. Now that I am unemployed, I don’t have to pay income taxes or pay for overpriced co-pays at my physicians office. I would like to thank you for showing me that being a dedicated employee doesn’t pay off in the long run and for helping me realize that I could have been doing something else more productive with the overtime hours that I blindly gave to you. Thanks to your wonderful management and guidance, I no longer have to pay attention to the new car commercials because it will be years before I will be able to afford a new car, let alone be credit worthy enough to get one. The confidence that you showed in me, by letting me go, will help me stay away from malls this upcoming holiday season.

Having time to reflect, now that I am unemployed I feel fortunate to have worked for your company. I now realize that although I should not take being shown the unemployment line personal, it is very personal to me because I am the primary person that was affected by your thoughtful decision. The path that my life will take moving forward has been permanently altered thanks to you, so I hope you don’t take offense when I tell you that you are no longer on Christmas card list this year.

There is a reason why time machines haven’t been invented yet. A time machine in the wrong hands would totally throw off the time continuum. I have a top ten list of places I would visit folded in my wallet just in case I get my hands on one. Number three on my list would be to find and muzzle the person or persons who decided on a five day work week, and then I would change it to a four day work week. Imagine having a three day weekend every weekend — that would be sweet, if I had a job. Wait a minute, by my not having a job, everyday is a weekend day for me.

One of the hurdles of being a member of the jobless nation, is that it takes a disciplined soul to keep your idle mind in check. It is a daily struggle filled with many highs and lows. Motivation to learn a new skill is burning up inside you one day, and then is totally cold the next. A week of walking or biking on trails, enjoying the simpler things in the life, is quickly replaced by a TV remote in one hand and a bag of Doritos in the other. It takes a lot of discipline to remain grounded and focused. Having a lot of free time on your hands is a lot of hard work which is why having a job is necessary.

Having a job saves us from ourselves. A job occupies that space in which our personal demons would eagerly fill with bad intentions, given the opportunity. Having a job keeps your social skills honest. I will be the first to admit, the longer I am out of the work environment, the more my social skills are declining at a rapid rate. I don’t feel the need to interact with the other animals, and to be quite honest, I am beginning not to miss it. I certainly don’t miss commuting to work, driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic wondering how in the hell did that moron in the gray SUV flip his vehicle over. There is one thing that I am missing while I spend my mornings eating Kashi cereal and watching reruns of Family Guy — I am missing a sense of purpose. I had one this time last year, however as of November 10, 2009 at 4:17 pm eastern standard time, I no longer have one. I am not sure exactly when I lost it. I do know, at this point it’s missing. Like a ship drifting in the sea, rudderless, I have no sense of purpose. In my rudderless world, my orange isn’t as orange anymore, and my Kashi cereal doesn’t thrill me the same anymore. Where is Tyler Durden when I need him? I could use some of his tough love to get me back on the path to finding my sense of purpose.

Does this mean I am doomed to spend the rest of my days on this planet being a non-productive, unmotivated, and uncaring individual? Do I need Jesus, Allah, Jehovah or Buddha in my life as many of my religious buds would suggest? I am truly walking in a hot desert having a deep conversation with Jim Morrison while trying to find that gravel of sand that will help keep me connected with the human race. I have had a front row seat watching my emotional state evolve since the day I joined the jobless nation. I have watched my anger turn to bitterness and my bitterness turn to darkness. Darkness as the void in space, with no atmosphere, no temperature, and no concern for it’s surroundings. I never realized that having a sense of purpose is so important and its effect on the human mind when you don’t have one. As much as I am starting to not miss the daily nuisances of going to work, the painful truth is that I need a job, which is the point of having a job.

I will be the first to admit that I probably need therapy. I could use several bitching and whining sessions on a comfy couch to a stranger who claims that he/she can unlock the mysteries of my mind. However, since I am unemployed, with no health insurance, paying for therapy isn’t an option at the moment. I am not sure how our new digital leader health care reform bill helps the unemployed. It appears that although his intentions are noble, the government will find a way to screw us or screw it up if the bill is signed into law.

As you can imagine, bad management is a pet peeve of mind because it has unfortunately impacted my life negatively. I have seen enough bad management in my professional lifetime, that I could write a book on how to manage. All I would need to do is take what I have seen and put into words the opposite. I have encountered managers who were either bi-polar, insecure, untrustworthy, or just down right bad. I was fortunate to avoid most of the land mines in the toxic environment created by these individuals by being sociable, working hard and covering my assets. However, despite all of my dedication to being a good employee in the face of ineptitude, I found myself on the wrong side of management decisions. If it sounds like I have an axe to grind about some of my work experiences, you are correct. I was the type of employee that showed up for work everyday, rarely complained, kept my head down and tried to do my best under the most adverse situations. I was a company man, drone, worker bee who was to scared to rock the boat.

The key word is “was” because I am no longer afraid to rock the boat. All political correctness went out the door the day I was laid off from my last job. In retrospect, I now realize that having worked for several bad managers probably has done irreversible damage to my career. I am a by-product of career suicide, even though I had little or no control over the events that led to me being in this jobless situation. The decision of a faceless individual has caused my life to come to a stand-still, it sucks and I truly hope that person doesn’t sleep well at night. Despite my somewhat cynical and negative connotations, I do have a positive outlook on moving forward.

For the first time in my life I have a sense of freedom of not being one of the worker bees anymore. I am jobless, however I am no longer stressed out worrying that my boss has a bad perception about me because they can’t relate to my quirky ways. I no longer have to bite my tongue out of fear of losing my job because I disagree or have several questions about a project that is doomed to fail no matter how many hours I put in. Also, I am not the biggest loser in the office anymore and I am no longer a pawn in the popularity contest to sit on the right hand of my boss. Since it appears that God has chosen to look after bad managers, it’s only fair that I take control of my jobless situation and do what is necessary moving forward to create my own path.

As you have probably already heard by now, the big news about unemployment is that the UR “Unemployment Rate” is hovering around 10.2 percent nationwide. I remember the good ole days when I felt much better about my job prospects and the rate hovered around 8 or 9 percent. I guess single digit “UR” is more soothing than a double digit unemployment rate. How can this be happening, I ask myself. The stimulus money is being distributed “wink wink”, confidence in the stock market is growing, companies are….well pretty much doing what they have been doing for the past two years….cutting costs wherever they see fit. As I stated earlier, most economists agree that historical data dictates that job recovery is usually 6 months to a year behind the initial recovery of the economy. All of this leads me to disclose a dirty little secret about the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate has been double digit for a long time. One of things that I fondly remember, while studying Statistical Research Methods “for my now useless BS degree in Mathematics,” is that numbers can be easily manipulated to serve an agenda.

The unemployment rate “10.2%”, that you hear about on your favorite local news show, only accounts for those individuals who are submitting job claims on a weekly basis. According to the USBLS (I am an acronym fanatic) “US Bureau of Labor and Statistics”, the jobless nation is 15.7 million people and growing. There are 2.4 million jobs available at the moment. Crunching the numbers, if you are seeking employment, you have a 15.2% chance of landing a job according to the data. As great as these numbers may sound, (excuse my sarcasm) the real unemployment rate is around 19%, with 30 million people looking for full time employment. Before you accuse me of pulling numbers out of thin air, allow me to explain.

As stated earlier, the unemployment rate of 10.2% only accounts for those individuals who are filing weekly unemployment claims. The unemployment rate does not take into account those individuals (5.6 million) who have exhausted their unemployment benefits or have stopped looking, discouraged, and those individuals (9.3 million) working part-time in hopes of finding a full time job. Crunching the numbers once again, realistically the jobless nation is 30 million and growing. The true unemployment rate is around 19.2%. This means that nearly one fifth of all employable individuals are either unemployed, under-employed or have given up entirely.

According to a recent survey by Human Capital Institute and The Ladders, more than half of employers said “quality of candidates” or “availability of candidates” are their greatest challenges — despite the recession. continue reading

Then something totally unexpected happened — as I skipped across a golden field of corn, a unicorn holding a shiny new Mac Book Pro appeared to me and told me that I needed to get my head back in the game. He stressed that I need to write content for my blog and stop sitting around in a daze. Actually, the truth is that my motivation game back to me out of the blue. I don’t know what caused it, but I am glad that it happened. I think this has the makings of being an excellent blog someday. Moving forward, I pledge that I will make it a priority to add new content to this blog on a daily basis, as if this is a real paying job.

I tend to spend a portion of my day, scraping the internet for news items that pertain to the state of the economy, unemployment news, and other related stories of interest. One particular news item that caught my interest was about the State of Maryland and the problems it has with its dwindling unemployment insurance fund. The state’s unemployment fund has dwindled down to $341 million. A year ago the state unemployment fund was around $900 million. In order for the State of Maryland unemployment fund to stay solvent, the state will have to triple the unemployment tax on its businesses. As you can imagine, many business owners are upset about this, claiming that they will have to lay off more individuals because of the unfair increase. The article also mentioned that 21 states have already exhausted their unemployment insurance funds and are now borrowing from the federal government to maintain them.

This chain reaction of unfortunate events is what I would call “unemployment irony”. Many business owners’ decision to purge payroll, dumping many hard working individuals into the realm of joblessness is coming back to bite them in the butt. They are faced with paying higher unemployment insurance taxes, due to the unprecedented number of individuals who are unemployed. According to US Labor stats, it is taking a unemployed individual six months on average to land a new job.  The increase in unemployment insurance tax affects all businesses across the board.  The companies that have managed not to lay off workers will feel the pinch as well.

I often wonder why, when times are tough for businesses, their first plan of action is to purge payroll.  I can somewhat understand purging payroll if you have some fat to trim.  However, I suspect some companies are doing it because if there was ever a time to dump salary for the hell of it, this would be the time.  The aftershock of the current economic crisis will be felt by many of us for years to come.  Consumer confidence is at an all time low and from the look of things, it is not getting better anytime soon.  If you are out of a job or worried about your current job, spending money unnecessarily is a luxury.  Business owners who depend on consumers to buy their goods and services will continue to see a decrease in their profit margins, causing them to lay off more individuals.  This is a vicious cycle that needs to be broken sooner rather than later.

If you do a quick search on a job board like Careerbuilder.com, you find many job listings requiring some type of security clearance.  You may say to yourself, if I am qualified to do the job, a contracting company will have no issues with helping me get a security clearance. Unfortunately, many contracting companies are reluctant to arbitrarily sponsor a perspective employee for a security clearance.  Sponsoring an individual for a security clearance is a long and expensive process. For those few companies that do sponsor individuals for security clearances, the individual usually ends up having to sign an indentured servant document stating if you decide to leave for another contractor, your current company can take legal action against you.

There are three general levels of security clearances: Confidential, Secret and Top Secret.

Confidential refers to material which, if improperly disclosed, could be reasonably expected to cause some measurable damage to the national security. The vast majority of military personnel are given this very basic level of clearance. This level needs to be re-investigated every fifteen years.

Secret pertains to the unauthorized disclosure of secret information could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security. This level is reinvestigated every ten years.

Top Secret pertains to individuals with this clearance who have access to information or material that could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security if it was released without authorization. This level needs to be reinvestigated every five years.

If you are an IT professional who has one of these clearances, especially Secret and Top Secret, you are sitting in a pretty sweet spot.  I remember a few years back, I worked at a federal agency with this recently retired Army Ranger who happened to have a Top Secret Poly clearance. He liked working at this federal agency because the job was low maintenance. During one of our breaks he mentioned that this recruiter had been bugging him to interview at another federal agency because they needed a system administrator with his clearance.  The former Army Ranger wasn’t interested in being a system administrator because of the demands of the job and knew he wasn’t qualified.  He told us that he would go to the interview just to get the recruiter to leave him alone, and to make sure he didn’t get the job he would show up to the interview wearing shorts.  You can imagine our surprise when the former Army Ranger told us that they made him a six figure job offer on the spot, and offered to send him to MCSE training at no cost.  He had a change of heart and decided to take the job because the salary was too good to pass up.

If you are one of those individuals like myself without any security clearances, you are pretty much screwed as a contractor for many government agencies.  You will have to really dig deep to find the government agencies that only require a Confidential “Public Trust” clearance to work as a contractor.  The Food and Drug Administration and Department of Treasury have a few departments in which one could find an IT job as a federal contractor.  As for myself, I decided to stop trying to look for IT  jobs as an federal contractor.  I made a lot of good friends and had a lot of fun during my time as a federal contractor.  As with most things, they must come to an end at some point.  I figure this would be a good time to switch gears and pursue other interests.