While stewing in the afterbirth of our current recession, I am very much gainfully unemployed. On my good days, I wake up in the morning and carefully send resumes to jobs I feel that I have a good chance of qualifying for and actually getting a phone interview from a recruiter. On my bad days, I just aimlessly send my resume to any job that looks good enough, fully knowing that I will never hear or see a peep from that employer. My feelings usually go from upbeat, to rage and anger, followed by depression, at the flip of a switch. One of the major downsides to being unemployed is that you have a lot of time on your hands, and if you don’t use that time wisely, those imaginary people you talk to throughout the day actually start to talk back.

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.