I came across an article this afternoon explaining how the government funded health care benefits for the unemployed will run out soon if Congress fails to pass an extension. I found the article interesting, because I opted to cross my fingers and go without health benefits rather than pay my Cobra when I was unofficially retired.
“An auto parts employee laid off from his job last year has been able to hang onto his health insurance because the federal government has picked up most of the tab. That subsidy ends Tuesday for Don Hall and thousands of other Americans.
Hall’s premiums will jump $500 a month, becoming unaffordable for him and his wife. A new study finds that many other workers will be in the same position unless Congress acts.”

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Outside of earning a salary for paying bills, putting a roof over your heads and having the ability to buy goods and services, what value does having a job bring outside of those fundamentals? Is it that important to have a place to go to in the morning, where you can share stories by the water cooler, or could it be a burning need to be a part of a larger social dynamic on a daily basis? Maybe having a job somehow validates the worth of your high school diploma, certification or college degree. Whatever your motivation maybe, what is the point of it all? What is the true purpose for having a job, and why I do I feel so desperate at times because I don’t have one.

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.

One of the things I enjoy doing while being unemployed is to read just about anything that talks about unemployment. If you follow the daily news like I do, then you already know that according to the talking figure heads, the recession is over for the most part. However, job recovery is running a little late. Companies are still somewhat leery about hiring, and in some cases there are companies that are still streamlining operations by adding more members to the jobless nation. It is great that the recession has been officially declared over, however not so great news if you are unemployed like me and haven’t been able to get one interview, let alone find a job.

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.

The time has come to knock some dust off this blog. I started this blog initially because I needed to vent. The first few weeks were fantastic, I had plenty of material in my head that needed to be written. I used my unemployable technical skills to get the blog up and running. I wrote cool articles with cool pics. I studied SEO, traffic generation, social bookmarking, back linking and Black/White Hat techniques. I was ready to kick some ass and chew some gum and I was all out of gum. Then the unthinkable occurred, I lost my motivation and drive. The ideas were still percolating in my brain, however I couldn’t seem to get over the initial hump of opening this web browser and starting a post. My mind was trapped in a mental fog which felt like a painless, odorless gas that dulls your senses and saps your energy levels. I was still very angry and needed to vent, however I did not have the need to blog. Hours turned into days, days turned into weeks, as I was trapped in my state of “just being”. Writing just didn’t seem as therapeutic as it once did. This blog was going nowhere fast because Big G kinda frowns on static websites. This blog was fast becoming just a WOFT.

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.

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.

It’s an opinion of mine for which I really don’t have any concrete evidence to prove it.  It has more to do with listening to my intuition than the tanking economy and bleak outlook that we hear on the news everyday. The primary formula behind how to be successful in this country has led many of us down the path to being unemployed.  The formula is quite simple and many folks have been successful in following it:  Study hard in school +  Get Good Grades + Get Hired after College or High School + Work Hard + Get Promoted = Good things will become of it.  I will be the first to admit that I have tasted some of the success  mentioned above.

However, the formula mentioned above is for the worker bee.  You spend your entire life living off one stream of income which comes from your  job.  Your job defines you, it pays your bills, buys you nice things and give you a false comfort.  Life is good until the day you’re called into the conference room by your immediate supervisor and told that the company has to let you go.  If you are fortunate to have saved your money well or your spouse is earning income, you manage to stay afloat until you find another job and start the whole process over again.  If you are lucky, you may end up making the same income as your previous job and you might actually find a another job that you enjoy doing.  The unlucky ones, end up taking a job in which they are over qualified, and probably earning considerably less income than before.  Having that type of job is better than not having one at all; however, the unlucky one is now a lower level worker bee going nowhere fast. This is why my intuition tells me that the American Dream is on life support.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I am pissed off about being unemployed.  Like many of you, I showed up to work on time, worked long hours, gave a 110% effort and sacrificed quality time with family and friends for the sake of my job.  I feel betrayed and that I deserve something better for myself and family.  I have been laid off twice during this year.  The first layoff, I saw coming and had prepared myself by looking and interviewing for jobs before hand.   The second layoff, I didn’t see coming, it totally took my surprise. That day I decided to have a talk with my two uncles “Jack Daniel and Jim Beam.”  Talking to them always puts me a better frame of mine.  They helped me realize that the initial hurt will pass, the intensity of my anger will lessen, and most importantly they told me to go have fun.  It’s funny how my two uncles are so very wise, especially during my time of need. My two uncles suggested that I use this time to do the things that I really enjoy doing instead of the knee jerk reaction of desperation that I have done in the past.  It was suggested that I spend sometime pursuing other interests while having this unfortunate downtime and to use this time to rediscover a sense of purpose.  I think ultimately what my two uncles were trying to tell me that I shouldn’t get to down on myself and I should think outside of the box as to ways to resolving this matter.

According to an article from the Georgia Department of Labor the reason why I am still unemployed is because I am at fault. The article goes on to say that there are “1,000,000 new job openings occur each month, many job hunters find themselves unable to reconnect quickly.” After reading the article, it became perfectly clear to me, that although I did not ask to be unemployed in the first place, I must be lacking in several areas due to my failure to secure employment. The article goes on to mention that there is a “hidden job market” out there, with desperate employers looking for someone like me.

I guess it is easier to write “Sunshine and Bull-loney” articles if you are employed and you are not faced with the devastating consequences of being unemployed. If your are not able to quickly find a new job, here are the reasons why:

* At least 40% turn off prospective employers by presenting themselves poorly in appearance and manners.
* Approximately 42% are qualified but have difficulty tapping the “hidden job market.”
* More than 80% cannot identify or describe their skills and abilities.
* Approximately 85% of the long term unemployed do not spend enough time looking for a job.
* Approximately 90% cannot answer difficult questions during interviews.

Although I do believe there is a certain validity to the claims mentioned above, I am skeptical of the statistics. Statistical research data is one of the hokiest form of data in the world. Stats can always be skewed to serve a purpose or point. I am not saying that the numbers are totally wrong. They should be taken with a grain of salt.

You rarely see articles written about being unemployed from the unemployed person perspective. You never hear about how some companies have horrible HR departments, either because they are using outdated methodology or the HR person doing the interviewing lacks basic knowledge about the position. Another pitfall is dealing with recruiters, and their idiosyncrasies. Based on my personal experience, I have found about 95% of the recruiters I have dealt with to be useless and a total waste of time. They are mostly just interested in padding the recruiting database for the sales guy out there trying get companies to pay for their service. Since the reason why I am unemployed is my fault, I think I will grab a shovel and my boots and start hunting for this “hidden job market.”

Are you currently unemployed due to downsizing,  misconduct on the job,  or just bad luck with employment? The current economy is rough and a lot of us out here are struggling.  The price of goods and services is skyrocketing, while our take home income is constantly shrinking.  Losing a job stinks and the sudden change in lifestyle can be downright demoralizing.   Having to rely on savings and unemployment  benefits to make ends meet is another level of stress that one should not have to endure.  There is an inner voice that is angry, frustrated and not heard.  Use this site as an outlet to voice your opinions, frustrations, rants or whatever you feel like discussing about the current job market.  Your opinion matters — help build a strong united voice for the jobless nation.