Gloomy Economic News

I saw many articles this weekend that the global economy is not recovering any time soon. We may have wait several years for the "sun to come out tommorrow."
No End in Sight to Global Jobs Crisis: UN Agency

"The global employment market that shows no sign of recovering, the International Labour Organization said on Sunday. In advanced countries, especially in Europe, employment is not expected to return to pre-crisis levels of 2008 until the end of 2016"

95 Percent Of The Jobs Lost During The Recession Were Middle Class Jobs

A higher percentage of Americans are working low income jobs than ever before, and the cost of living continues to rise at a very brisk pace. This is causing an erosion of the middle class unlike anything we have ever seen in American history. ... [for] college graduates, the future is not so bright. Last year, a staggering 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.

Hugh Hendry On Europe "You Can't Make Up How Bad It Is"

We have reached a profound point in economic history where the truth is unpalatable to the political class - and that truth is that the scale and magnitude of the problem is larger than their ability to respond - and it terrifies them.

12 Things Bought in a Bad Economy

“An avowal of poverty is no disgrace to any man; to make no effort to escape it is indeed disgraceful”
-Thucydides (Greek historian, 460-404 BC)

Moneyland at Time.com lists 12 items that are selling quite well at present. They call them "recession-proof" products but keep in mind that with some items (like #1) sales were flat before the recession so these might not be "good-times-proof" products.

1. Romance Novels - sales are up 7% at Harlequin
2. Junk food - doughnut sales are up, as are chips and other snacks
3. Nail polish - sales are up 68%. Traditionally lipstick has been the recession-proof cosmetic as a cheap way to look and feel better.
4. Halloween Costumes - yet another form of escapism from dreary reality
5. Fast Food - McDonalds is up 5% from last year. Sad in a way because fast food is not so cheap anymore.
6. Lottery tickets - wishful thinking
7. Generic Drugs - that makes sense
8. Chocolate - Hershey up 20%
9. Vegetable seeds?  - I guess people are hoping to save money by growing their own food. It didn't work for us - we grew two peppers.
10. Condoms - cheap entertainment yet reluctance to beget children in troubled times?
11. Yoga??? - inexpensive stress relief?

Bottom Line

When times are tough people find ways to distract themselves with cheap thrills and escapism. Can money buy happiness?

15 Career Advice Sites

“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
-Donald Kendall

WiseBread.com (Living Large on a Small Budget) recommends these 15 Career Advice Sites:

Getting Started - learning the basics
1. Job Search at about.com
2. Managing Your Career at Businessweek
3. Brazen Careerist
   
   Salary Comparision Sites
4. Salary.com
5. Glassdoor
6. Payscale
7. Indeed
   
   Social Networking
8. Facebook
9. LinkedIn
10. Your College Alumni Network
    
    Career Advice
11. LifeHacker
12. The Blog of Tim Ferriss, Experiments in Lifestyle Design
13. NYT: The Corner Office
14. WorkAwesome
15. I will Teach You To Be Rich

Bottom Line

Don't sit around waiting for the old jobs to come back. With computers making it ever easier to do more with fewer people, many old jobs are gone for good. Check out the sites above and create your dream job.

Is Layaway a good idea?

“The man who never has money enough to pay his debts has too much of something else.”
-James Lendall Basford

This year Sears, Kmart, Toys “R” Us, Babies “R” Us, TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, and Burlington Coat Factory are offering layaway plans. What exactly is layaway?

If you can not afford the full price for an item but don't want to see it sold out and unavailable closer to Christmas you pay the store part of the price and agree to pay in installments. There is an initial deposit based on a percentage of the purchase price (perhaps 10-20%) and a service fee (say $5-10) to administer the plan and keep the item in storage for you to pickup later. There are no interest payments but you don’t get to take the merchandise home until you’ve paid for it in full.

Most stores offer 30 to 90 days for you to make all payments. Some require payments every week or two to keep the item in storage. If you miss a payment the item might be put back on the shelf; some stores will give a refund of partial payments (minus cancellation fee) but others will only give you a gift card of money paid. Some stores will honor a sale price after an item has been put on layaway - others have limited time windows for honoring sale prices (eg 7-30 days).

Bottom Line

It's important to ask for and read the complete terms and conditions of a store's layaway plan before using layaway. You might be in for a nasty surprise if you change your mind or the item goes to 1/2 off two weeks later.

Unless the item is really expensive you're better off using a credit card than layaway. Consider the Rock n' Roll Elmo doll for $25 at Toys "R" Us. The layaway fee is $5. Say you have 90 days to pay in full. The $5 can be thought of as a loan with 20% interest for 90-days. (5/25 = 20%).  This is equivalent to an annual loan rate of 107% APR. By law credit cards are maxed at 30% APR. If you used a credit card for Elmo and paid it one year later, the interest would be 25 * .3 = $7.50 which is higher than $5 but you also had 4 times as long to pay it.

Better yet, don't buy a toy if you cannot afford it. An estimated 13.5 million Americans are carrying debt leftover from last Christmas. Go simple. Give a gift with love instead of a gift with batteries. Make something or give a gift of time like a free message or painting a room.

When to take a pay cut

"No success in public life can compensate for failure in the home."
-Benjamin Disraeli

There's a interesting article at Penelope Trunk Blog about the times in your life when it's OK to take a pay cut.

1. For emotional Independence. Yes you could make more with a large firm but you want to be your own boss and run your own business.
2. When changing careers. You're doing something new for you, why should you still get the big bucks.
3. When you're over 40 years old. Salary peaks at age 40! (that's a rude shock to learn). There are exceptions - lawyers, surgeons(?), and those who succeed in climbing the corporate ladder.
4. If unemployed for six months.  You'll most like need to take a pay cut to get hired again.
5. If changing jobs to be close to family. Relationships trump money.
6. If you get a great boss.
7. If you can not cope with the stress of not working.
8. If you need better insurance.

Bottom Line

Penelope has an excellent conclusion,

You are not your salary. You are not worth less in the world because you are paid less in your job. Get your self-worth from a wide range of things and a pay cut won't matter to you. Focus on the components of a good job: learning, personal growth, friends at work, and a good family life. All those things are worth a lot more than a pay cut.

Is Progress Slowing Down?

“When Moses was alive, these pyramids were a thousand years old. Here began the history of architecture. Here people learned to measure time by a calendar, to plot the stars by astronomy and chart the earth by geometry. And here they developed that most awesome of all ideas - the idea of eternity.”

-Walter Cronkite

An editorial by Matt Patterson at pajamasmedia.com asks if the times are a'changing.

In his penetrating new book The Great Stagnation, economist Tyler Cowen ... calls the period from roughly the early 19th to the mid-20th centuries the era of “low hanging fruit.” According to Cowen, technological advances in this period were relatively easy to produce and exploit, resulting in a staggering explosion of living standards.
But by around 1970, most of this low hanging fruit had been plucked and growth rates began to slow. Indeed, growth rates are “lower today than before 1973, no matter what exact numbers you settle on for the absolute living standard.”

There are at least two reasons for this.

1. The age of cheap resources is ending. Many companies relied on cheap water, electricity, iron, etc for production. We've used up the easily accessible resources ("low hanging fruit") so what remains costs more to process and there is now global competition to use it as China and India industrialize and extend middle class comforts to billions of people.

2. The complexity of manufacturing keeps increasing. Compare the engine of a car from 1950 to today. Robots help with the assembly but there are more moving parts and of greater sophistication. Consider the clean room requirements and requirements of perfection on a small scale to create computer microchips.
Complexity makes it harder to create and produce new products.

There is an interesting flip side to the second point. This is the Information Age and while computer software also increases in complexity, well built software hides the complexity to produce "tools" that are easy to use and promote the creation of more information products. Anyone now can create publication ready books, art works, web services, etc on computers. So complexity enables information products and hinders physical products.

You may think, no problem, we'll just transition to an information society where the majority of workers are information workers. In the past the “creative destruction” of progress might end one industry like horse buggy making but resulted in an even bigger automotive industry. However software advances don't do that. Advances in software tend to decrease or eliminate jobs like travel agents. McDonald’s plans to eliminate cashiers in many of its European restaurants, replacing them with touch-screen ordering systems.

Internet companies can be worth more than old fashion manufacturing and reach hundreds of millions of customers and yet employ very few.

[Economist Tyler] Cowen notes that Google employs a mere 20,000; the increasingly ubiquitous Twitter only 300. Facebook has millions of users, but only about 1,700 workers.

For comparison, General Motors employs 209,000 people around the world.

Bottom Line

Again from Matt Patterson,

Unfortunately, politicians in the “low hanging fruit” period made policy decisions based on the assumption that the growth rates of that era — and their corresponding tax revenues — would continue indefinitely. And the American public, seeing successive generations do better than prior ones, came to expect this was the natural order of things. Both governments and individuals borrowed against a future they assumed would be richer and more technologically wondrous than the present.

Patterson observes from history that no civilization lasts forever.The ancient Greeks created the myth of the Cyclops to explain even more ancient fortresses with walls of giant stones that no one knew how to move. It must have been built by giants. In reality it was the Greeks own ancestors several hundred years before.  "The Great Pyramid of Cheops was the largest building in the world until well into the modern era, and still stands after nearly five millennia". And yet a few centuries after its making, Egypt fell and the world forgot how to make them.

Bubbles result when people say, "This time it's different". But the Internet bubble burst, the housing bubble burst (many times) when expectations exceed reality. Have we been living in a technology bubble of 200 years?

Jobless Recovery

“An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.”

While officially the Great Recession is over, we are still in a jobless recovery phase where companies are doing more with fewer employees. Here's a news article cited by Instapundit:

“A Massachusetts employment organization has canceled its annual job fair because not enough companies have come forward to offer jobs. Richard Shafer, chairman of the Taunton Employment Task Force, says 20 to 25 employers are needed for the fair scheduled for April 6, but just 10 tables had been reserved. One table was reserved by a nonprofit that offers human services to job seekers, and three by temporary employment agencies.”

Why are companies afraid to hire? For one, sales are down with so many unemployed. There's just fewer dollars out there. Second, it's expensive to hire someone, see my post The hidden costs of employment. With taxes, social security, and other federal fees, it costs a company $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket.

Third, some are afraid to hire the unemployed. The odds of hiring a "bad" employee is higher with the unemployed - who can tell if they were laid-off by dumb luck or for good cause. There are increasingly bold companies that say in their want ads that they will NOT hire anyone unemployed. Ouch!

Some effects on employment are counter-intuitive. In The World Is Flat Thomas Friedman argues that one reason for past economic success in America is that it's relatively easy to fire someone. In Europe it is practically impossible to fire someone for any reason, as a result many firms are very cautious in hiring. We're seeing some of that in America now with companies using more part-time or contractors instead of new hires.

Sometimes Federals laws damper hiring. In SuperFreakonomics the authors state that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 has discourage hiring of the disabled. Employers are afraid they will be subject to lawsuit if they fire someone who is disabled because of the law.

Another law that dampers hiring? The new Healthcare law which increases the cost that companies must pay to provide health insurance.

Bottom Line

How bad is unemployment? Unemployment Insurance is supposed to last for just 26 weeks. But given the state of the economy it's been extended and extended and extended to a present value of 99 weeks. And there are persons who have exceeded even that. One site claims a million people in the 99er club. People who have exhausted all four tiers of unemployment benefits, are no longer are eligible for any more money, and will no longer be considered unemployed in the official statistics.

Pink Slipped

“The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broad swords, or canals, or statues, or songs”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today I recommend a delightful blog at Forbes.com by a Journalist/editor who was recently "downsized" and joined the unemployed. It's called Pink Slipped.

She offers these tips on finding a new job:

1. Men help. Women don't.
Male friends provided job leads. Female friends provided emotional support.

2. Be flexible, or die.
She has offered a part-time job as a copywriter but had no idea what that meant. After looking it up she accepted despite having no experience at copywriting. It pays well.

3. Getting downsized is good for you.
It can lead to new opportunities like her new blog, Pink Slipped, and the copywriting gig.
Bottom Line

Let everyone know you are looking for work and be willing to try new things. The job I currently have I had rejected when I first saw it advertised. The job description did not fit my expectations in the early period of unemployment. Several months later a different recruiter got me an interview and a job offer. Only afterwards did I realize I had rejected the job before.

Overused Resume Words

"I do not believe we can repair the basic fabric of society until people who are willing to work have work.  Work organizes life.  It gives structure and discipline to life." ~Bill Clinton

If you are looking for a new job this new year, you might want to improve your resume by pulling out buzzwords that have lost their punch. The job hunting social network, LinkedIn.com, looked at the 85 million resumes of its members and discovered the top ten phrases that are the most used in America.

1. Extensive experience
2. Innovative
3. Motivated
4. Results-oriented
5. Dynamic
6. Proven track record
7. Team player
8. Fast-paced
9. Problem solver
10. Entrepreneurial

Bottom Line

If you use any of these phrases, find a substitute. Please send me suggestions. I use several of these cliches myself.

And check out LinkedIn.com. Most (all?) of my interviews came through applications via LinkedIn. I got nothing from resumes sent to companies online or in answer to want ads.

The Great Recession, 2008 - ???

"So, for example, the country was into recession right after I was sworn in, a dot-com bust had taken place. Then the attacks of September the 11th, and then of course the great financial meltdown - the fundamental question facing any presidency is how do you deal with the hand you're dealt?"
George W. Bush

May we all be dealt a better hand in 2011. In 2010 we may have reached the bottom of the Great Recession but we are still in for a long recovery period.

click to enlarge

This graph from CalculatedRisk shows the percent of jobs lost in each recession since 1948, relative to the peak of the pre-recession job market. In terms of the percent of jobs lost, the current recession is by far the worst we’ve seen since World War II.

I have a friend who is an economics professor. He said the Gross National Product (GNP) is nearly back to a pre-recession level. This means most companies have succeeded in restoring revenue without hiring back employees fired or laid off. It's called a jobless recovery.

Bottom Line

From the graph above, it looks like only the 2001 recession has lasted as long as the current one, but the impact on employment was much less then. There are many articles online stating that current government policy during this recession, from health care, to tax law, to environment regulations have discouraged corporate growth and new hiring.

So what about the Trillion dollar stimulus package? Did it help create jobs? Counting back from November 2010 in the graph to January of 2009 when Obama began his office as President, the red line was just crossing 2% line. It fell an additional 4% over the past two years despite the Stimulus. The brief upwards dip in the graph last year came for hirings for the 2010 census. So there is no evidence that the Stimulus helped at all.

Good Jobs With Two-Year Degrees

“Some people think that doctors and nurses can put scrambled eggs back into the shell”-Dorothy Canfield Fisher


What's a decent hourly wage? I know consultants who get from $100 to $200 an hour, mechanics who bill for $80-$90 per hour. So when I first saw a list from Yahoo of jobs that pay $30 with just a two-year certificate I was not initially impressed. But being a mathematician I punched numbers into a calculator and found that if you work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks at $30/hour you can earn over $62,000.

Her are some of the jobs suggested by Yahoo...

*Loan officer ($30.39)


*Diagnostic medical sonography ($30.60) -- I was talking to a fellow church member on Sunday who just finished her two year training and is now a medical assistant at a Women's Health Care clinic. She does sonograms.

*Nursing ($31.99) -- The market for nurses is expected to grow by 22 percent in the next 8 years.

*Nuclear technician ($32.07) -- Work alongside Homer Simpson.

Bottom Line
 
Visit your local community college and see if they offer night classes for certification programs.

Food Storage, part 1

“Begin with a one week’s food supply and gradually build it to a month, and then to three months.” - Gordon B. Hinckley

Creating a food storage takes time and effort. Is it worth it?

When I was unemployed I was asked if I would need financial assistance. No, I replied. I had some money saved away, no debt, and a good food storage. My family could cut spending to the bone, eat from the food storage, and pay taxes and utilities from the rainy-day fund.

Medical Emergency: If your family "chef" became seriously ill, do you have foods, and menus, that other family members could easily prepare?

Power Outages: Do you have easy-to-prepare foods to keep you fed through several days or more of power outage?

Major Natural Disaster: If you had to evacuate your home, do you have foods you could prepare outdoors? And do you have enough fuel for days or weeks of outdoor cooking?

Tomorrow I'll talk about how much food to store and some ideas to get you started.
 
Bottom Line

Since Hurricane Katrina, emergency professionals know that 72-hours is not enough of a preparedness buffer while waiting for help to arrive. The recommended minimum food and water storage is now one week. So why store more? What if you have company staying and they become trapped in your house also? What if your neighbor is desperate with hungry kids and asks if you have anything to spare? What if you find half of your storage has spoiled, gone stale, or become infested by bugs? It's wise to have extra.

The hidden costs of employment

“The best minds in government? If any were, business would hire them away.” - Ronald Reagan

I highly recommend reading Why I'm Not Hiring by the president of a small company in NJ with 83 employees. In the article he breaks down the taxes and fees for his "median" employee, the one exactly in the middle of the payscale.

She makes $59,000 a year but before that money hits her bank, it is reduced by
-$2,376 for medical and dental insurance,
-   $126 for state unemployment insurance,
-   $149 for disability insurance and
-   $856 for Medicare.
-$1,893 in NJ income taxes. The federal government gets
-$3,661 for Social Security and 
-$6,250 for income tax withholding.
That's roughly $15,000 or 26% of her pay going to the government. [The math has been corrected. The article mistakenly says $13,000] Her take home pay is $44,000.

There are additional costs paid by the employer that don't appear in the paycheck:
-$9,561 for employee/spouse medical and dental,
-   $153 for life and other insurance,
-     $56 for federal unemployment coverage,
-   $149 for disability insurance,
-   $300 for workers' comp and
-   $505 for state unemployment insurance.
-   $856 for Medicare (employer's share) and
-$3,661 for Social Security (employer's share).

"When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits. ... Governments impose a 33% surtax on Sally's job each year."

Bottom Line

"Because my company has been conscripted by the government and forced to serve as a tax collector [and insurance provider], we have lost control of a big chunk of our cost structure. Tax increases, whether cloaked as changes in unemployment or disability insurance, Medicare increases or in any other form can dramatically alter our financial situation."

The article goes on to explain that this year his insurance company is charging %28 more for a new plan with less coverage. That's the biggest increase ever and the NJ company will need to increase sales or increase prices to cover the cost. But neither option is likely during a recession.

"Only governments can raise prices repeatedly and pretend there will be no consequences."

So the only option for paying higher taxes and higher insurance rates is cost cutting where possible and cost control with a hiring freeze.

Pollyannaish Economic Prognostications

"At some point, someone is going to have to level with the American people about just how bad things really are and why, despite all the ministrations from Washington over the past two years, they don't seem to be getting much better."

- John Merline, Opinion Editor, AOLnews.com, Aug 13, 2010

I'm amazed at people who believe that the government knows best and can be trusted to control the economy. Centralized planning has never worked, in any country, ever. History is full of examples of failed socialist states, failed attempts at price controls in "free" states, and failed attempts at government controlled utilities (eg. British coal mines). In a free market economy the penalty for being wrong can be the loss of your job or the bankruptcy of the company. Mistakes are weeded out. This is not the case in government - "What our stimulus of a trillion dollars failed?! Why that must mean we did not spend enough and must keep doing more of what failed before." The penalty of failure is an important component of free markets and why the concept of "too big to fail" is such a dangerously wrong idea.

The opinion editor at AOLnews.com has published an article entitled, "Opinion: Where Did All Those 'Green Shoots' Go?" The article includes this chart of "Pollyannaish Economic Prognostications" from the Obama administration over the past two years. It maps government statements to the unemployment rate. From the chart you can conclude one of two things:

1. The government economists are totally clueless
or
2. The administration is lying and not reporting the real predictions of the economists

A) Obama budget predicts that the unemployment rate for 2009 will be 8.1 percent (actual rate is 9.3 percent), and says it will be 7.9 percent in 2010 (average so far: 9.7 percent). -- Feb. 26, 2009


B) Fed Chairman Bernanke says he sees "green shoots" of U.S. recovery, which, he said, would "pick up steam" next year. -- March 15, 2009

C) Obama says, "We are beginning to see glimmers of hope." -- April 14, 2009

D) CNN reports that "Job Recovery May Be on the Way." -- May 18, 2009

E) Jeffrey Kling of the Brookings Institution says, "It seems clear the U.S. economy has turned a corner." -- June 5, 2009
 

F) Bernanke says recovery is under way and "prospects for a return to growth in the near term appear good." -- Sept. 16, 2009


G) Obama says, "We are seeing the corner turn on the economy growing again." -- Feb. 7, 2010

H) Obama says, "The worst of the storm is over. ... We are beginning to turn the corner." -- April 3, 2010

I) Obama says, "The economy is getting stronger by the day." -- June 4, 2010

I) Vice President Joe Biden dubs the months ahead "Recovery Summer," and David Axelrod adds that "this summer will be the most active Recovery Act season yet." -- June 17, 2010

I) Obama declares the economic recovery is "well under way." -- June 29, 2010

J) White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says, "The economy is getting stronger." -- July 8, 2010
 
Bottom Line
 
What's the truth? Aug 10 the Federal Reserve issued a report saying the "pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed in recent months." Jobless claims have hit a nearly six-month high. There is talk in the media about a possible "double-dip" recession.
 
Check out the article "The Cabinet From Another World" by IBD Editorials.

"America is wising up to this administration's incompetence. Only minutes after [the labor] department reported that payrolls had shed another 131,000 positions in July, there was Secretary [of Labor] Hilda Solis speaking brazenly of the "strong and immediate action" the White House had taken to save or create "more than 2.5 million American jobs." But as the market action showed [the Dow fell 100 points in seconds], investors could see she didn't know what she was talking about."

"...There's never been an administration led by so few people with any experience in the private sector — including the president, the vice president and even the treasury secretary, who last week wrongly called it a "myth" that raising taxes on high-income Americans would hurt small business."

Long Term Unemployment

Of all the aspects of social misery nothing is so heartbreaking as unemployment.
~Jane Addams, 1910

A new graph shows the severity of the present recession/depression.

The average unemployed person has now been unemployed for 25 weeks, just over 6 months. This is twice a high as anytime in the past 50 years.

When the results are this extreme it's hard to argue that it would have been worse without the stimulus. Instead some claim that unemployment was made worse by the actions taken by Obama and the Democrats in the past two years. Unemployment only ends when people are hired. Now the government has been hiring but private business has not. Private business is scared. The law has changed on health care and the rules for insuring employees. The law has changed on banking and loans. There may be climate change laws coming. And so on.

A friend had a sign on her desk at work, "Change is good, you go first." While some entrepreneurs can use a time of change for profit, for most companies change means uncertainty - what's the new law going to cost us in paperwork, regulation, and fees? Do we have to change how we do business or how we document our business? Few are willing to risk expansion or growth in a time of high uncertainty. So companies are sitting pat until the regulatory climate settles down and they have a chance to figure out what's what.

Bottom Line

America is better served when the Congress and President are in different parties. Law then require compromise and negotiation. At present any crazy idea can be passed into law if just three people support it - Pelosi, Reid and Obama.

Trade Schools

“College is like a fountain of knowledge - and the students are there to drink”

A Washington Post story notes that More college-educated jump tracks to become skilled manual laborers.

"They started out studying aerospace engineering, creative writing and urban planning. But somewhere on the path to accumulating academic credentials, they decided that working with their hands sounded more pleasant -- and lucrative -- than a lot of white-collar work. So bye-bye to term papers and graduate theses, and hello to apprenticeships to become plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics
and carpenters."

The poor economy has been a boon for trade schools. The electricians' union program in Washington D.C. has 2,500 applications for 100 slots. And nearly 4,000 are competing for the 300 slots at a plumbers and pipe fitters school.

Pay for trade jobs is good. Apprentices start out at half salary with raises every six months. After five years licensed journeymen can expect to be paid $65,000 to $85,000 a year, depending on the amount of overtime. That beats four+ years of college, graduating deep in debt, and with no job.

In Europe many students begin an apprenticeship at age 18 right out of high school. But in the US, high school counselors rarely recommend trade school (except for their worst students). So American youth try college first and then switch to blue collar. The average age for beginning apprentices in the US is 25.

Bottom Line

This weekend my wife and I bumped into an old friend who is moving in the opposite direction - from blue collar to white collar. He was a long-time union employee at a TV station. However with better technology and greater automation, the station was able to layoff 38 technicians. Now my friend is completing a BS degree in Labor Relations and then plans to study law so he can go back and sue the pants off big companies.

There is merit in having some real-world experience before graduating from college.

"I Need a Freaking Job".org

"I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members."-Groucho Marx

The following comes from INAFJ.org and is, I think, well written and insightful.

As families suffer, our political leadership seems content with their dysfunctional posturing. Together we can set the record straight, or at least just make fun of it.

• Stupid is believing the problems we have can be solved by the same people that created them.


• Crazy is saying you're going to create jobs by spending unimaginable amounts of money that you borrow from the very same people (China) that you gave all the jobs to.


• Sick is the billions of tax payer dollars spent on bailing out the financial institutions, while their own immeasurable greed was responsible for the collapse of America's future.


• Tired is listening to career politicians saying one thing while doing another, most having never created a job or felt the burden of meeting a payroll.


• Inexcusable is the rape of the US Treasury in plain sight and in broad daylight.


• Apparent is the government's responsibility to stop digging a hole that the American people have no chance of getting out of, as they have proven time and time again that they are the worst managers of everything.


• Unbelievable are the economic policies that have forced 65% of the manufacturing jobs in America to low wage countries over the last decade.


• Betrayal is the feeling you live with while watching elected officials seek all the glory and take none of the blame.


• Insane is the unemployment rate amongst the youth in America, hovering currently at around 27%


• Unforgivable is burdening America's youth with the enormous and continuously growing national debt.


• Cynical is what you become after witnessing the destruction of American exceptionalism and realizing that you are a casualty of a handful of greedy animals feeding on the soul of a great nation.


• Obvious is the government's need to get out of the way so that inventive young entrepreneurial Americans have the opportunity to stimulate an economy that produces jobs.


• Catastrophic is being a recent college graduate with diminished opportunities and the real obligation to repay educational debt.


• Unacceptable is being a voiceless bystander to the greatest injustice in American history.


• Simple is remembering that honest American people are the ones that made this country great.


• Certain is knowing that together we can reclaim America and the promise for the opportunity to prosper.

Bottom Line

"Here's the thing. Nothing matters if people aren't working. We need to make some noise. The government is absolutely broken. If we work together maybe we can get these posers out of the way. Sign the petition. Buy a t-shirt. Upload a video. Be a friend. Start a movement." - INAFJ.org

Background Check

"We're getting an increasing amount of questions about background checks, almost as many as identity fraud. There are too many problems with inaccurate information being recorded."-Tena Friery, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse

In today's economy employers can afford to be choosy and selective in whom they hire. To that end more are now running background checks on the best candidates. What will they find out about you? The Consumerist put together the list below of agencies you can contact to check your record. Most offer one free report a year and provide a means to request corrections if you see any errors.

Employment History Reports
The Work Number
ChoicePoint (866) 312-8075
Acxiom
Abso

Tenant History Reports
ChoicePoint (877) 448-5732
First Advantage SafeRent (888) 333-2413
Tenant Data Services
RentBureauUD Registry (818) 785-3905

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Odd Jobs for Extra Money

“Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort.”- Helen Gurley Brown

When I was unemployed one question that came up was, How can I earn some money if I don't find a full time job? My preference is to tutor math and science but that that is a crowded and competitive field now-a-days. Not so easy to build up a client base. I also looked at Kumon and similar tutoring business but they take some serious money and training to get started and again will fail unless you can attract customers.
So what else can one do? Fortunately http://www.couponsherpa.com/ has some ideas at Quick Cash: 24 Ways to Make Money While Unemployed.

1. Human Guinea Pig - earn money as a lab test subject


2. Clean Houses


3. Give Blood


4. Walk Dogs (our friend makes a living doing this)


5. Plant Sit


6. Babysit


7. House Sit


8. Flip Web Sites


9. Sell Your Hair


10. Deliver Phone Books


11. Become a Census Worker


12. Sell Your (human) Eggs


13. Rent-a-Truck (help move rubish and items)


14. Do Odd Jobs


15. Add ads to your web site or blog


16. Human Billboard (or Billboard your car)


17. Rent out a Room


18. Paper Route


19. Teach English to Adults


20. Sell Your Stuff (eBay?)


21. Recycle Bottles, etc


22. Paint Street Numbers


23. Recycle Scrap Metal


24. Free-lance Work

Bottom Line

Check out the full article at Quick Cash: 24 Ways to Make Money While Unemployed for more information on each topic include an estimate at how much you can earn. This is not big money but every little bit can help.

Record Unemployment

"We have walked a substantial distance back from the economic abyss and are on the path toward economic recovery. Most importantly, we have seen a substantial change in the trend of job loss."-Sept. 2009, Larry Summers, Obama's top economic adviser

The Obama White House keeps saying the recession is over and their recovery plan worked but the real numbers tell a different story. The White House is pleased that December unemployment stayed at "only" 10% and did not climb. But this ignores two facts.

1. The Holiday Season is a peak time for employment (lots of late hours and Christmas crowds require temporary staff)

2. The official unemployment number does not count "discouraged" workers who have given up trying to find a job. When everyone truly unemployed is counted the value is 17%.

Here is graph that also shows reality quite plainly. The total number of people working continues to fall despite the 1 Trillion dollar stimulus. In fact 3.2 million jobs have been lost since the stimulus was approved.


Bottom Line

Do not expect the economy to recover quickly in 2010. We have not yet seen the bottom of this recession.