…or make the best of it.
Let’s face it. The “Recession of 2008″ is now officially over, because it is January, the first month of the “Depression of 2009.” The last jobless statistics for ’08 showed more than half a million new first-time unemployment filers, which represent only those workers who qualify for unemployment. Final ‘official’ tally for ’08: 2.6 million jobs lost. These are the worst figures in 16 years, while the average hourly workweek for those underneath the supervisory level doing the real work shrank to the lowest number since the government started keeping such statistics in 1964. That, for the quick-math challenged, is 45 years ago.
Most of us who watch the economic comings and goings in this strange era of bail-outs for super-crooks and callous economic eugenics for working families also know that the ‘official’ statistics don’t come anywhere close to matching what is really going on in the real world. Young workers, seasonal workers, minimum wage workers, temp workers and millions who otherwise don’t qualify for unemployment aid or who have exhausted their eligibility are completely off the books – no one bothers to count them, even if their numbers swell the real unemployment picture to more than double the reported statistics. “Unofficial” numbers can range anywhere from 11.1 million jobless Americans to somewhere very close to 20% of our work force. No one much likes to mention that, since anything more than 10% puts us in that ‘depression’ they’d rather slit their wrists than admit to.
Because lengthy layoffs and lack of available new jobs will tend to swell the ranks of both young and unemployed workers going back to school (one way or another) to expand their horizons, I have found a very interesting website tool called Online College that readers may find helpful for themselves or their children suddenly looking at a bleak employment picture for the foreseeable future. There are good and very useful articles posted to the site, and one stands out right now – 15 Ways to Set Yourself Apart in a Recession.
These are hints on how to make yourself stand out on the job so the bosses looking for employees to lay off skip right over you. Some have to do with expanding your useful role to the company, how to make the best impression while looking for new work, and what you can do educationally while ‘between jobs’ to enhance your hireability when the smoke clears. There are even helpful hints about striking out on your own – always risky even in the best of economic times – to find opportunities that will either get you inside a startup or send you in the direction of starting your own business.
And on that starting your own front, a website called brainz offers some great ideas in 33 Ways to Fund Your Startup Business. With the observation that even in the worst of economic times there is always money out there and people looking to invest, these 33 ideas are pure gold for the budding entrepreneur with a good (and potentially lucrative) idea. Some will cost the idea man less than others, and it’s probably not the best idea in this economic climate to risk one’s own property, if one’s real estate is still worth anything (and that’s not very clear right now in many parts of the country).
In future posts we’ll take a look at some of the ideas out there for small business startups, supply and demand and the most “recession-proof” goods and services people will need regardless of economic situation. So stay tuned, don’t get too discouraged, and begin taking a close look at where your family is right now, what its immediate future looks like, what resources you may have to invest and how best to invest them.
Links:
Free Fall: Jobless Rate Worst Since ’94
Mid-Cycle Meltdown: Jobless Claims January 15, 2009
15 Ways to Set Yourself Apart in a Recession
33 Ways to Fund Your Startup Business