How long have you been without a job?
Have you been looking the entire time?
Have you considered underemployment?
I’m curious because I am basically an unskilled laborer.( Yes, it sucks and I want to go back to school and get a better line of work. ) I have never been without a job. I think I would go crazy not having a job for months or even years. Do unemployment benefits last a long time? Would you consider underemployment after benefits expired?
Well I just became un-unemployed a couple months ago so I think I’m still qualified to answer the quetions.
I was out of work for seven months.
I wasn’t looking the whole time, I was laid off last Halloween, took a vacation to Belize and then decided to slack through the Holidays. After realizing I was tired of Anchorage I decided to stop looking for work up there and moved to Houston in Feb. After moving here it took me about 3.5 months to find a job.
I seriously considered underemployment for when my UI ran out but found my current job before I hit that point. I had already started opening up my search to jobs I was grossly overqualified for, but would still pay all my expenses and was about 1 month away from looking for retail work to pad savings.
Your UI bennies vary from state to state and the amount you get depends on how long you paid into the system while working. I’d only been paying in for about a year (previous jobs had been exempt from the UI tax) when I lost my job so mine weren’t so great.
How long have you been without a job?
I quit my job in May and moved to San Francisco, where I soon discovered that the job market is really bad.
Have you been looking the entire time?
Pretty much. I’ve been kind of picky though. I have a college degree, but no experience. So far, I’ve only been applying to positions for offices and places I’d like to work (I haven’t been to the temp agency yet, not have I decided to go back into being a dog washer, which I used to do). I don’t get unemployment (because I quit my last job), but I have some cash saved up, so I haven’t had to try the temp agency or the dog groomers yet. As much as I liked washing dogs for a living (seriously, it was fun, dirty, but fun), I don’t want to think that I worked my ass off in college for nothing…which I am starting to feel. Good luck to all the other unemployed people, by the way.
I’ve had two serious bouts with unemployment–one lasted six months (I quit my job in DC in Oct. 91, moved to Seattle, couldn’t land a decent job for more than a few weeks at a stretch, and came crawling back to my old DC job the following April). Another lasted about three months (The job I came crawling back to went out of business a year later). Both times I took whatever unemployment benefits I qualified for, but mostly made money underemployed, doing lots of temp and part-time gigs.
More recently (Oct. '96), I got laid off at one shop and had a new job later that day, and then a higher-paying one three weeks later. I’m lucky in that I work in a small industry and personally know the managers at lots of the local companies; this advantage evaporates when I leave the DC area.
I don’t know how people manage unemployment in the current climate.
I’ve always managed to find a job when I needed one. I am usually “underemployed” as well.
I quit my job a month ago, because it was so perilous and miserable and I seriously feared for my professional future there. (Very long story. I’ve rambled a little more about it in previous threads.)
I am being sorta “bankrolled” by relatives for a few months, so I can finish some schooling and get a different job. (This is a kind of job that is much in demand, and my school has an excellent placement record, so my relatives felt it was a good risk.)
But if things get hairy, I’ll get a dead-end job somewhere for a while. Wouldn’t be the first time.