I've not had a job for a while now but i'm over-educated so i can no longer do the low level jobs i used to (phone support, customer service etc.) because they assume i'd leave them in a heartbeat so won't hire me. On the flip side i can't get a job in industry because i have little to no experience in industrial labs and anywhere that's hiring has a good pool of experienced unemployed people to pick from..... i also can't go back into academia because my field is so narrow that i'm struggling to find anywhere that's researching in or around my particular field.

Not sure what to do as i'm currently signed on welfare/dole/jobseekers allowance and they give advice on getting jobs... only it's not working. I only know that if i hadn't been lucky enough to have been living at my parents i would be in real trouble. I don't have any money besides basic amounts to live on but luckily i'd gotten myself out of 'proper' debt before i got into this situation. I'm sure if i could just get an interview i'd be fine, the problem is getting past all the roadblocks to get to that point. I'm a bit worried about the effects of a stint of unemployment on my future career, not to mention pension etc. Mostly i've just been unlucky in that i've come into the market just as it was crashing.

Being laid off is very difficult. It was fine for me for the first few weeks, but after that I kinda had a meltdown. Just make sure you stay busy doing something. With no sense of accomplishment at the end of the day it can be very detrimental to one's psyche. When I was laid off I started playing WoW 20 hours a day. It was terrible. I tried cleaning the house and doing general house chores, but it just didn't fill the void for me. I didn't snap out of it until winter almost ended and a friend of mine forced me away from my PC and gave me stuff to do (IE help him with a bunch of chores he needed done). STAY BUSY!

I worked at a small general practice law firm for two years in a county that is one of the hardest hit by the economy. Hell, President Obama gave a speech there on the economy because the place is symbolic of the economic downturn. As a small firm, a lot of our business was walk-in business, people who need a divorce or needed a will, things like that. Well the business slowed and as the low man on the totem pole I was laid-off. I don't blame my employer, he had no choice. Plus I don't think that type of work is what I wanted to do long term.

I am hoping this gives me a chance to transition into a legal field I really want to work in, but it's tough to find opportunities. I also have limited mobility, since I'm only licensed in my state and have no desire to take another bar exam for a different state.

I'm lucky though because I have parents who are willing to support me while i look. I just fear I'm going to have to take a job I don't want for the time being. But I guess these days having any job is a blessing.

The problem with that is that it would leave large, unexplained gaps in my employment history which i doubt would get employers interested. I don't really have a profession yet but i'll lay out my basic CV:

Customer service/Call centres/project work in temp summer jobs
Chemistry masters degree
PhD (still not received though should be this year) renewable engery/hydrogen storage
self employed (overlapping the postdoc) with a regional newspaper doing freelance picture editing
Postdoc materials science/hydrogen storage materials

Unfortunately, i'm not an engineer which drastically cuts my employment in the renewables sector as no one seems to be interested in storage of energy, just getting it. I have no industry experience in the pharma corps (though i might be in the process of scraping through into a foreign office of one of the firms). Once i get a little bit of experience i'll probably be home free... at least it'll tell me and prospective employers where i should be in my career.

I'm holding out on this one. I think that eventually this will be the way it works again. It will get better. It is just a matter of time. The economy fluctuates in cycles, always has and always will. Most of you had Econ 101 or Macreconomics- It is just the science of it. Don't lose hope my friends, and most of all don't stop trying.

My baby boy is due at the end of September. It is going to be tough to make ends meet with daycare and all. My better half is considering quitting her job to take care of my boy and possibly watching a few other children to even things out. The only problem is that with everyone being unemployed she isn't the only one with that idea. In home daycare is a dime a dozen around here these days. I have been looking for a second job for the last few weeks and have turned up dry. Not even the local Gamestops will hire me. I have sales experience anda little retail experience from my brief college run. It seems that employers are getting their choice of the cream of the crop right now.

Dumb down your resume for the lower jobs. Seriously. Omit your higher education stuff that is blocking you.

Best of luck to everyone. I don't know what else to say.

Yeah, i'm not sure how 8-9 years of blank will look to a potential employer.

Stylez and I opened an on-site computer service company last May, just before the economy started to go south. I had been forced out of my job (but was debt free) and he left the one he had to do this. Canada has not been nearly as badly impacted as much of the world (mostly because our banks were smart) and since Ottawa is a huge government town, it is largely recession resistant. That said, we're still struggling and have been having more and more "doom and gloom discussions" lately. We spent over half our startup loan of $15,000 (lent from a non-profit group) on marketing initiatives (largely flyers) that a large group of people thought would work great and they utterly flopped. Our financial projections in our business plan were completely wrong and the company is only currently doing about 5% of the revenue we thought it would be at this point. Since then, we've been struggling to get customer growth using less expensive means like networking events. Every month is improving but not nearly fast enough.

Late last year, my girlfriend of several years and I split up. I had also accumulated a lot of debt again in order to subsidise my life with the company growing slowly. Stylez's fiance is away at school so he offered to let me stay with him and split the bills which has lowered our burdens somewhat. What we're able to pay ourselves currently puts us below the poverty line on paper but we're able to get by this way. In January, my car basically died (it became unsafe) and I had to replace it which required me to max out my line of credit and borrow a big chunk of money from my Mom. Stylez's fiance comes back home full time at the end of July and our agreement was that I move out at that time. I've been looking at apartments and found one that's both good and cheap (but Ottawa's rent standards) but unless things pick up big time, I will be about half living off of my tax refund and reserves when I move. That will only sustain me for 4-5 months and that's if I live off Mr. Noodle and don't drive too much. Stylez isn't in much better a position and he's also getting married in September. If I want an apartment for the time frame required, I have to sign for something in the next few days. We're currently evaluating various ways in which we can try to raise awareness of our brand in Ottawa and continuing to try and land a retailer partnership which was always key to our business plan but which hasn't worked out because our model for those partnerships is unproven. We're also going to be talking to some people next week about trying to get some more funding so that we can hire a communications/marketing consultant. If Stylez and I could keep going another year, the company's slow growth curve would eventually lead to sustainability. But we don't have a year, we maybe have a few months.

Some of this can be attributed to the economy and people holding onto their money more tightly. Some of what we do is necessary for people but it is also often considered a "luxury service." We've also just had a certain amount of bad luck and many of the promotional methods we tried that worked for everyone else just didn't for us. We've quickly learned that when you go to a networking event and 10 people say they're going to call you or refer you, maybe 1-2 will actually do it. When we started, we knew situations like the ones we are currently in weren't uncommon for new entrepreneurs. Still, it does at times get hard to keep your head up and not feel like you really made the wrong decision. I'll probably have to change careers if this business fails so that's a bit scary. We know our ideas are good and our practices sound, we just need more people to know that.

Our overhead is basically our BlackBerries, VoIP service, eFax and our membership in BNI. We host our own e-mail and web site on a server in the basement. Beyond that, the only other expense is paying ourselves. I don't want to go too deep into our financial data (no offense, just a public forum is all) but the number of calls we need to do in a week to reach sustainability is ridiculously low. But we haven't even been able to hit that level with consistency. We have had months where we've beaten our targets, sometimes by quite a bit but that's not the case most months.

I'm not sure about you, but I know I would never want to work for someone that is broke. A rich boss equals a steady job and typically fair wages- not to mention he usually buys the drinks after, work which is always a plus

Parallax- No need to go into deep detail. I found my fantastic IT company through Dell. I asked my Dell Sales Rep if he recommended anyone, and he pointed me to a company "partnered" with Dell locally in my area. I believe the companies employees just go to some Dell continuing education quarterly. Mike, my IT extrordinaire, said that they have landed many clients though their partnership with Dell. I do not know what kind of red tape there'd be, but it seems to have worked out in the long run for him. He's doing quite well considering the economy and all he has is his A+ Certification combined with some MS training.

I don't have as gloomy a situation as many of you, but mine sucks to me. I work for the State of Connecticut, and our state has a huge economic crisis. Our Governor is trying to close the gap. I work in the Judicial division, and they are making us take unpaid furlough days. I have to take Thursday, Friday and Monday next week as unpaid days. They also raised what we pay for our health insurance. I went from paying $7.48 every other week, to now paying $28.00. It is not a huge amount of money, but it is a significant percentage jump. Also, our prescriptions went from $3/6 to $5/10.

I am considered per diem, even though I work 35 hours a week, every week. To be a perm state employee takes years, because then they have to pay you sick, vacation and holidays. So, every holiday I get no pay, every time I am sick, none. And every vacation I take, zip. The 10 days for the wedding I am taking off are all unpaid.

The union voted to do this to prevent layoffs. The perm employees are safe for 2 years from lay offs. Us per diems are subject to layoffs whenever.

So, I am thankful and lucky to have a job, but it almost seems like I need a second job to afford to work for the state. I know having my foot in the door is a good thing, and that hopefully someday I will be a perm employee. Until then, i am just crossing my fingers.

The JAG core would not pay my loans, sadly. I simply could not afford to do it. Crazy, eh? Graduates from my school have never had a problem getting "market" pay. The problem is that there is no more market. Gone. An industry that founded this country is dead. The way that law firms have run for 100 years (lockstep pay + billable hour) is f*cking dead. I'm not forecasting here, I'm observing. I know to read a pulse and It's dead. Clients aren't paying the fees demanded by top flight legal firms anymore. There is only one thing that can go down --- and that's associate pay.

Those thinking about law school right now. Beware. The whole world is different. think about your dept / income possibility rations very carefully. Best of luck.

It's just as bad down here in Australia. I was made redundant last July when my office was closed down, I still class myself as unemployed, but I do have my own side business as a Mobile computer tech. When I have work doing that the pay is pretty good, but like Parallax I don't get enough calls to make it long term sustainable. Luckily my fiancee has a decent paying secure job. My problem getting back into work is the same as Duoae's I've got on paper some great qualifications with Business degree's majoring in Management, unfortunately I haven't got the experience to back it, and employers won't look at me for the lower level jobs, I can't really dumb down my resume, and when I have tried to in the past once the employer asks the questions about what I've ommitted in the interview they come to the samme conclusion they would if I had left the stuff in the resume to begin with. On average every job advertised in my region at the moment gets 300+ applications, so yeah... considering 12 months ago I was in a position to be managing a small property office, then to watch the company fold because the umbrella corporation decided to "divest themselves of non performing assets" has been a bit disheartening.