Danielle Belton of blacksnob.com
wrote a piece this week called "Everyone
I Know Is Unemployed," in which she discusses the sluggish job market
and the fact that, yeah, most everyone she knows is unemployed, “cobbling”
together a living with various freelance gigs.
What was surprising, if not downright shocking, about this admission is that Belton is a
well-regarded blogger and writer with a respectable following. She’s been on television and
radio and even had a stint as a writer for the TJ Holmes Show,
and she’s saying she can’t get a
full-time j-o-b with bennies? Dang.
Commenters on the blog
thanked Belton. Many wrote about being unemployed or underemployed and then
hearing about a “recovering” economy and thinking they must be crazy or
complete losers.
Their stories certainly
fit with my experiences. Several people in my circle are in the same boat,
including me. I’ve got my clients and my prospects, but it’s not easy by a long
shot.
And then I hear about
the friend of a friend who just started work a few months ago and is now facing
a layoff, the colleague whose entire program has gone belly up (no more federal
funding—stick a fork in it, it’s over), the colleague whose organization was restructured and his position eliminated, and so on and so forth. This in addition to my "traditionally" employed friends stuck in crappy jobs they’d leave in a
second if they could find anything to replace them.
And then I read about people standing
in line to pay $40 for a donut, and I seriously begin to question whether
we’re all living in some modern-day version of The Matrix, seeing the reality being peddled by The Powers That Be versus our actual reality, which kind of sucks, but most of us
aren’t trying to hear that. We’d rather pay $40 for a donut and pretend it’s
all good.
Meanwhile, there’s all
this talk about the skills gap, the labor shortage, how employers can’t fill
positions, blah, blah, blah, and I just want to know one thing—
Seriously, where are the
jobs?
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