10 Things To Do To Make the Most of Your Unemployment

As the employed optimists say, being fired or laid off is really a positive thing because it gives you a chance to rethink your career path and take advantage of all that life has to offer. Well, once you're done doing that and checking the job listings for the thousandth time here are some other ideas to get you through the day.

1.    Watch Movie Trailers on Hulu.com! Now, I know that some of you out there, like me, are really quite hard working and conscientious. You just wouldn’t feel right watching a full-length feature film, even a documentary, during the day when you should be hard at work improving the formatting on your resume for the 50^th time. Well, rest assured; watching trailers doesn’t count as watching a movie. You can stop anytime, after just one or two or three short compilations of the best moments from upcoming movies. You can’t afford to see these new works in the theater anyway so what does it matter that they are all ruined for you. Warning: Hulu.com trailers are highly addictive. Best to begin watching after 5pm so that one of your gainfully employed housemates can pull you away from the computer, with disgust in their eyes, when he or she returns home.

2.    Zumba! You may not be qualified to work but you are definitely qualified to work it out! I recommend taking a zumba class, a new type of aerobic dance class that is all the rage at institutions of physical fitness. In zumba classes, you burn calories jumping around to latin music trying to look like you are doing the samba, salsa, merengue or some potentially sexy reggaeton move. Mastering the choreography will really boost your self-esteem and even if you are a crappy dancer it is guaranteed that someone even worse, probably an elderly white man, will be in the class. And there’s the camaraderie. I mean, you’re all dancing around like idiots at 11:30 am; some of your classmates must be unemployed too!

3.    Get Revenge! Pass by the establishments where you have applied for work and curse them, even if they are doing great work like fighting poverty and educational inequality. I say who needs em’! Talk shit to all your friends. “Oh, so they are empowering low-income women and children. Well their hiring committee sucks!”

4.   Volunteer and then quit! Volunteering is a great way to give back to your community, feel useful, and connect with others, most of whom are also volunteering because they just can’t find a job. Volunteering reminds you to be greatful for what you have and that your time is valuable, even if it doesn’t have any monetary value. Another great thing about volunteering is that you can quit gigs you don’t like and reclaim that feeling of control over your life. In my search for the perfect volunteering relationship, I quit three organizations. I really felt like I was back in the driver’s seat again. Nobody was laying me off this time, I was the one doing the hiring and firing.

5.    Go for long, long walks! I prefer to call these walks “adventures.” Set yourself a high goal like walking on every street and mural-adorned alley of San Francisco’s 7 by 7 square miles. And just wait for the great feeling of accomplishment and physical exhaustion coming your way.  


6.   Become a Master Chef- So you can’t afford to go out to eat as much as before, at least not without coupons. Well, you can make your kitchen your own fancy restaurant. One of my best recent creations was a set of very tastey orange flavored sex organ cakes, one shaped like breasts, the other like a penis -or like Mickey Mouse according to some infantile critics (Don’t worry, I’m not totally nuts, it was for a friend’s engagement party).Remember Julie, from Julie and Julia, well you can by like her minus the awful burden of a job. With a vegan housemate, butter heavy recipes are reviled in my home so instead of mastering the art of French cooking I am mastering the art of soy cooking with the recipe book Veganomic. Yum!

7.    Earn and Learn! Roll coins while watching foreign movies borrowed from your local library-without the subtitles. Soon you will be able to add a foreign language fluency to your resume.

8.    Make a meal from the free samples at local grocery stores! I recommend Trader Joes, Whole Foods and farmer’s markets especially on busy days when you can get discreetly get seconds or thirds. Then there is always the bulk bin at any local store - although a manager might argue that is stealing not sampling.

9.   Give Purchasing Decisions the Time They Deserve. This is your chance to make really educated decisions about what you buy. For example, it’s a new year and you are in the market for a weekly planner. Visit all the hip local curiosity shops and check out their supply of pocket calendars. Now you don’t need something too big, because let’s be honest, you probably wont get a job in 2010 and so there wont be much at all to note down in your planner. And you need something light-weight for taking on your long walks just in case someone calls to schedule an interview. Compare prices, paper textures, artistic quality. Try to bargain with the hipster behind the counter. Make clear to them that you have time to search the whole city for a planner and this is their only chance to get your business, although in reality you could come back tomorrow and the day after to see if they are in a more generous mood.

10.   Create your own blog! But not about the joys of being unemployed, though, that’s obviously taken.

Young People Need Good Jobs Now

Friday, Dec. 18, 2009 

By Liz Shuler and Donna DeWitt

SunNews.Com http://www.thesunnews.com/opinion/story/1221372.html

As the new year rolls in, a four-letter word is on everyone's lips: jobs.


With the unemployment rate at red-alert levels, the White House held a jobs summit, the president gave a major address and Congress is preparing legislation to create jobs. But not many are looking at the particular problems facing young workers. Not only have they been hurt disproportionately by the economic crisis, they could very well be the first generation in recent history to be worse off than their parents. Joblessness among young workers is even higher than the national average. They need jobs -- good jobs -- and they need them now.


In a recent survey done by the AFL-CIO and our community affiliate Working America, young workers spoke out about their dilemma. "Things are definitely harder for me today than they were for my parents at my age," 31-year-old Laura told us. "Back then, you could graduate high school, get a job at the local grocery store and still be able to buy a house and even put a little away for retirement. It's just not that way anymore."

Despite trillions for economy, next job might mean less pay

WASHINGTON — Tania Jackson was earning a comfortable six-figure income at a local real-estate development company before the gale-force winds of recession began blowing her way last month.
As the company's residential, commercial and government real-estate projects dried up in the economic downturn, Jackson's job as director of external affairs was eliminated in a cost-cutting move in late January.
"I was devastated," Jackson said. "I always tell people I had my dream job and there were a lot of times where l literally could not believe someone was paying me to do this job everyday. It was so much fun because I really love being out in the neighborhoods. I love interacting with all the different groups from all over the city. I love going to meetings. . . . But looking around at what was going on in the economy, I guess it was inevitable."

Today, young people are coming out of college tens of thousands of dollars in debt and unable to find jobs -- certainly not the kind of jobs they thought they'd find. "Sometimes we wonder if it was really worth it to get an education for the price we've paid," Jessica, also 31, reported.


More than half of the 18- to 34-year-olds we talked to earn less than $30,000 a year. Only 31 percent make enough money to cover their bills and put some aside. And benefits? Young people say the situation is just as bad. Thirty-one percent are uninsured, up from 24 percent 10 years ago. Less than half have retirement plans at work.


Many young people are worried they won't be able to start their adult lives and pursue their dreams of having families of their own. And they're right to be worried: One in three 18- to 34-year-olds lives at home with their parents.


Without immediate action to create jobs, living standards for young workers -- and even their children -- may be stunted permanently. History teaches us that deep economic troughs like the one we're in can scar young people for their entire careers as their earnings may never recover and their children may earn even less.


Yes, we need longer term economic restructuring. But we have a jobs crisis right now -- for young people and all of us. And Congress and the president must jump-start jobs immediately.


Our states and communities are starving for aid to keep teachers and firefighters (many of them young workers) on the payroll. Let's get that aid to them now. Schools are crumbling and higher education costs are out of control. Without significant new federal investments, the state and local budget catastrophe and infrastructure collapse will strangle long-term solutions for young workers. Are we really ready to write them off as a lost generation?


When people need jobs so badly, it's the right time to invest in the clean, green technologies of the future, and in the distressed communities, putting jobless people to work tutoring children, cleaning up abandoned buildings, or providing child care, to name a few.


And let's move some of the leftover bank bailout funds from Wall Street to Main Street, so community banks can lend money to small businesses for the purposes of job creation.


Efforts like these can keep and create at least 2 million jobs in the next year. As I travel across the country, young people tell me they are ready to join the fight.


In the same survey, thirty-five percent say they voted for the first time in 2008, and nearly three-quarters say they keep tabs on government and public affairs, even when there's not an election going on. Job creation, health care and education are their top economic priorities. And -- by a 22-point margin -- young workers favor expanding public investment over reducing the budget deficit.


Young workers are not just calling for action to create jobs and fix the economy -- they're depending on it. Their economic future -- America's economic future -- is at stake.


Shuler is the secretary treasurer of the AFL-CIO. DeWitt is the president of the S.C. AFL-CIO.