It's the Stupid Economy

The good news is that after 10 months of job hunting, I finally got a job offer today.

The bad news is that it's a step down from my last two jobs in terms of responsibility and authority, and it's a whole decade back in terms of pay. And did I mention that it took 10 months for me to find it?

With all due humility, I'm an incredibly qualified person. A certified genius, and scores on all the college and grad school admissions tests that are (in all probability) better than yours. Two college degrees. 15 years of work experience, most of that in the "high tech fields" that job counselors are telling displaced workers to take classes for.

The problem wasn't my interview technique; I only had a few of them. The problem wasn't my resumé; I bartered with a professional job-placement counselor for advice on how to put it together. It wasn't my references; the folks who laid me off had wonderful things to say about me. There just weren't jobs to apply for. The last time I was job hunting six years ago, I used to find a few interesting jobs to pitch myself at every week. This past Spring, Summer, and Fall, I've been lucky to find one job per week that even roughly resembled my qualifications (which are even broader now, I might add). I helped review resumés a couple years ago when my now-former employer was briefly adding staff, and we got a stack of dozens. For a pretty lousy, low-paying position. Many of them were even more qualified than me. I can only imagine how high the stacks were for the jobs I applied for this year.

And I'm one of the lucky ones. Not just because I finally found a job, but because unemployment benefits in my state were extended to a full year instead of the usual six months, because I had several thousand bucks in the bank to cover some unexpected auto repair and medical bills and the hundreds of bucks my interim health insurance had cost, because my parents were able and willing to loan me a few thousand more to cover cash-flow bottlenecks (like when the rent's due this week but the unemployment check doesn't come until next week), because I don't have dependents to feed and clothe and house, and because I'm good at finding ways to save money (e.g. clip coupons, then use them when the product is on sale, for even bigger savings). I'm not quite lucky enough to be friends with President W, but I've managed.

Other people aren't that lucky. I know enough about economics to know that the president and the governor aren't personally to blame when things go badly. But I also know enough about it to know that they have the power to make a difference when needed. FDR showed that with the New Deal. Sure, it was World War II that really got the US out of the Great Depression, but the New Deal helped. And most importantly, it helped people. (And FDR waited nearly a decade after taking office before getting the country into a war; it wasn't his Plan A, like a certain current president or his father.) Politicians ignore that at their peril.