Posts Tagged ‘unemployment’

It’s a familiar scenario — a diligent, even workaholic, career-bent employee unexpectedly gets laid off from his job. Pity the poor jobless person who suddenly has nowhere to go and countless hours to scour want ads in her pajamas … right?

Wrong!

Get that image of a depressed and downhearted job seeker out of your mind.  Think about replacing it with a 30-something young woman relishing the ocean breezes while sipping a margarita.

Some laid-off employees, particularly those in their 20s and 30s, are quickly transforming sudden unemployment into “funemployment,” according to a June 4 Los Angeles Times story.  Others arrive at that happy state by voluntarily quitting their jobs.

While the “funemployed” may have outwardly appeared to adopt the work ethos of older generations who accepted the bonds and limitations of traditional employment, more young people today are skipping what they believe will be a fruitless job search and heading straight for the beach, golf course or travel abroad.

One young person interviewed by the Los Angeles Times put it this way:  “The rat race puts blinders on you and makes time fly, and then the next thing you know, you’ve missed the chance to be your more exciting self, or to push yourself in a gutsier direction.”

Instead of slinking away to a hole somewhere and expecting everyone to forget them, today’s unemployed often blog or twitter about their new lives of unemployment quite happily.  And instead of taking a temporary sabbatical from work, some people are opting out of the system entirely, with no desire to return to corporate America. (Of course, it helps if you have substantial savings or generous parents.)

Everyone deals with a crisis in their own way, and it seems to me that if you’re forced to deal with a layoff, it’s better to make the most of your newfound time instead of wallowing in self-pity. Still, if you’d prefer to return to the workforce as hastily as possible, we’ve got a 16-step guide to help you get back on course.

Amish church leaders in northern Indiana have relented in shunning one modern amenity — unemployment checks — to help unemployed members of their community survive.

It’s no longer possible for many Amish to earn a living through farming, due to rising land prices. Up to half of Amish men in Indiana now work in factories, according to a Los Angeles Times story.

Amish religious beliefs normally frown on such things as electricity, insurance and automobiles (the local Wal-Mart in northern Indiana has a hitching post for horse and buggies), but repeated rounds of factory layoffs have forced elders to relax the rules. The unemployment rate in Elkhart and LaGrange counties, where Amish populations are centered, has reached about 19%, the Times reported.

Although furniture-making has always been a mainstay occupation for the Amish, local shops aren’t able to hire all of the available workers because the demand for furniture like Amish-made tables, which retail for between $750 and $2,200, is off, too.

It’s been said that this recession is unique in that it’s cut a wide swath through every segment of the population, hurting those at every income level, in every occupation and of every age.

How vulnerable is the industry that you work in?