Posts marked "Jobs"

Job Creation Brought to You by Swine Flu

Posted October 26, 2009

Ladies and Germs, we know that the swine flu is bad. It’s here, it’s nasty, and we’d better get used to it. And of course we’re worried and we’re reading all about it, a lot of the time — maybe more than we should be.

Yesterday we stumbled across an article announcing a shortage of hand sanitizer. It seems people may be hoarding the stuff. Some retailers may run out. Sales are up by a factor of three. Which means the factories are running 24/7; they’ve even hired additional workers to try to keep up with demand.

It’s job creation, brought to us by the Swine Flu. A stimulus in microbe’s clothing.

Time for a New Approach to Job-Hunting?

Posted August 6, 2009

By early this summer, 4.4 million people were considered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to be “long-term unemployed” — that is, out of work for 27 weeks or longer. That was three out of every 10 officially unemployed people.

Of course, there are many, many more people who are really unemployed, as opposed to officially unemployed. That group includes countless men and women who have been out of work for so long (for some of them, even longer than the official start of the EconoMess) that they don’t even get factored into that long-term unemployment count.

We’re talking off the top of our head here, but we suspect that the ratio of long-term to total unemployed people could be as high as four or five of every 10. Whatever the number is, though, the fact is this: Those people have got a huge problem, and so does our society, because smart, motivated, talented men and women are falling out of our job market like crazy and they can’t find a way back in.

5 Reasons You Need a (Work) Diary

Posted February 16, 2009

You may be employed, unemployed, partially employed, self-employed, studying something or other with the hopes of sometime getting employed, or involved in one of those employment relationships that provide lots of work and no paycheck, but the potential to hopefully one day, with a lot of luck, move on to a regular job someplace or other.

Whatever your situation, it’s time to start keeping a work-related diary.

Don’t tell us you don’t have the time; once you get the hang of this, it’s easy to make diary-ing a quick part of your daily routine. And don’t delude yourself into thinking you don’t need this valuable technique. If you feel secure in whatever your situation is, you need a diary and a psychotherapist. We can’t address both of those problems today.

So, let’s focus on the work diary. Here are five ways this can help you get from where you are to where you want to be:

The Bright Side To Death and Taxes

Posted October 31, 2008

Job hunters, here’s something to celebrate: If death and taxes will always be with us, then there are actually some meltdown-resistant, layoff-proof ways to earn a paycheck.

Let’s start with death (actually, some people might find it less painful to contemplate than their tax bills). As baby boomers age in the U.S., demographics are on the side of the multifaceted death biz. Back in 2006, 8.1 people per thousand died here in the States; by 2020, that number is expected to rise to 9.3 per thousand. Now that should put a smile on the faces of funeral home directors (although not when they’re meeting their customers, of course).

At last count, there were more than 21,500 funeral homes in the U.S. Together they earned somewhere between $11 billon and $15 billion. Little wonder that all those fired CEOs are setting up funeral homes just as quickly as their golden parachutes bring them down to earth.

Is There A Future In Bank Robbery?

Posted October 13, 2008

If you’re the kind of person who gets your best ideas from the movies, you may well have considered switching to a life of crime. After all, it worked pretty well for Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni, unemployed execs turned bank robbers in the 2005 film, “Fun with Dick and Jane.”

Now don’t get us wrong: The Whiner would never endorse illegal activity as a career option. But we have occasionally wondered if the odds of success in this line of work would be better than your chances in, say, the auto industry or the newspaper industry or, when it comes right down to it, any number of industries that we might list right now if we had an unlimited supply of time and energy.

Here’s what the FBI has to say about bank crimes that took place during the third quarter of 2007 (these are the most up-to-date statistics that are available on its website). There were 1,609 in total and loot was taken (yes, it’s really referred to as “loot”) 92% of the time. A whopping $24,538,528.24, in fact. More than $23 million of this was in cash. (The Whiner is gratified to learn that bank robbers pick up pennies too.) Not surprisingly, none of it was in the form of food stamps.

We learned some other interesting details too. More than twice as many bank robberies took place during this period in the South (543) as in the Northeast (240). We don’t really know why.

6 Ways to Prepare Now for Getting Fired

Posted October 8, 2008

You’re going to get fired sometime in your career.

It might happen next year or next month. Given the way the economy is going, next week may even be a strong possibility. Bury your head in the sand and you’ll give up the potential for whatever competitive advantage can be gained by planning ahead for the (inevitable) corporate ax. Here are 6 steps to take, instead:

1. Be real. To the degree that you can assess just how bad things are right now for your employer, your industry, your community – or whatever else impacts your job – you can start making realistic projections about just how long you’re likely to hold on. That’s important for effective planning.

EconoTip: Pay attention to those subtle warning signs that conditions are going from bad to worse. First the flowers in the 2nd floor reception area may disappear, for example, and then the receptionist, followed one at a time by all those departments that used to be located on the second floor. If you wait until then, you’re in trouble.