Hi, My name is Mary.

I have been a therapist for the last 27 years and was laid off from my current job of 18 years this past September.

My husband and I were prepared for the financial part of this as he was laid off in 1991. I never anticipated how much of an emotional toll this would be on me and my self-worth.

Last month I did get an interview with a hospital for a position very similiar to the one I had. Several days later, I get an email that someone more “qualified” got the position.

I don’t know what was worse, being let go or being told after 27 years of experience that I wasn’t qualified. I have kept up with lots of continuing education and working experiences in various aspects of my field, so I feel like that was a smoke screen.
I was able to get a part-time job with a local newspaper company bagging and delivering newspapers. I work from 1:30-5:00 am. I do this now as, I made 50% of the household income and we currently have five people living in my house.
I also was able to start schooling via a government grant for a possible EHR technican position in the future.

Some of my coworkers want me to continue looking for therapy jobs. I don’t know if I can continue with all the rejection. I don’t want to take a job that nobody else wants, either. I don’t want to prostitute myself for any position.

The newspaper job pays about 1/2 of what I was making at my other job. I know I have to start looking for something else, as newspapers aren’t going to be around forever. The EHR training is going OK, but I don’t know if I’m suited for the type of work that I’m training for.

I pray everyday for direction and release of being in this “black hole”.
Mary

I was laid off on May and had an inclination about how bad things were in the job market but felt confident that I could easily replace my job in the insurance industry. I was SO wrong. There has been NOTHING. I’ve had two interviews in 6 months and now my benefits will expire after a mere 26 weeks. I’m depressed and having anxiety attacks. My husband still has his job but I’m afraid of losing our home. This is a terrifying time. People will become desperate and bad things are going to happen.

another day of depressing job searching with zero results. At 51 im a bit old for the military,and mature and too smart, but would do it as a last resort if i could. By the way i am a vet, so i did join in 1979 when there was no jobs for a poor city kid after high school. Everything changes yet still stays the same. This is Michigan where we are told to keep a positive attitude chin up, even though my unemployment benefits exhausted some two months ago, i only collected a bit over a year because i took another job after losing one of over 22 years, off for few months then next job at 2/3rds less pay ended after 10 months, so my amount and time i could collect was adjusted a lot lower. Typical Michigan story,l ost everything, after spending 16 years as single father raising 2 girls. Lost home, car, everything, i’ll never forget when after i had already given away almost all i owned i was giving away my silverware, growing up very poor we never had matching spoons and forks and knives. Not a big thing to most people, giving away appliances, furniture wasn’t a big deal, the things that meant something were the worse to give up. I now live in one room. Have no income,  turned down for food card. Lucky i get side jobs from time to time but i have kids in college, so anything extra i scrounge goes to them. health care, (i got injured on side job and needed surgery, 15 grand i owe them now) (401k long gone) dental care, cloths, shoes food daily is now a pipe dream. At 51 years old and no huge degree and no great contacts i wonder if i will work a regular job ever again. At least i am able to vent here. I will summit my blog for the 6th also. Peace to all who read this, time to take the country back from the evil bankers and corrupt politicians (that’s 98% of them, even the new ones coming in.) oh, why not tier 5 before the new congress convenes. Other wise this will be a very long winter for very many good americans. peace.

Where to begin…I guess about 10 years ago when my career in electronics was abruptly ended. Since then I have spent irreplaceable dollars on further education only to have the doors remain closed to pursuit of any aspirations in the technology field. I am now again in school, planning yet another redirection into healthcare, due to another recent layoff. I have been looking nonstop for jobs since 2001…DBA, information manager, photography manager, bartender, security guard, armed guard, truck driver, temp…almost always working 2 or more just to pay bills. Now I’ve been unemployed since August 2009, ran benefits out, buried my Mother, went back to school just so I could qualify for a Pell grant to give me some kind of cash flow, lost my home, my car, living with an old family friend which is completely unacceptable to everyone, don’t graduate until this time next year if I can even manage to make it that long, even when I do graduate it doesn’t look as if they’ll be a market for these skills either. I’ve gone in 10 short years from a career that took 10 years to build, VP of an electronics firm, to bankruptcy, to moving to 4 different states, 14 different houses, 3 cars, all to end up back to destitute and hopeless. The only real blessing is I didn’t drag anyone else down with me except my poor cats, well cat now, 1 passed just before my Mother did. Life if just grand, sometimes I wonder if there is a reason for anything anymore.

I was laid off due to “lack of work” in June 2008. My UI benefit expired 7/1/10, when I then joined the ever expanding ranks of the 99ers.

I continue to look for work. From 6/15/10 to today I have completed 75 online job application without receiving a single “call for an interview”.

I am 62 years old and the chances of me NOW finding any work is “slim and none and slim left town”!!!!

How can the “FAT CATS” in Washington sleep at night while they make so many true Americans suffer? We will be their continuing nightmare!!!

I am a high school science teacher that taught in Oregon and California for the last 12 years. I was in California in 2007 and lost my classroom, received no funding for supplies and was facing 40+ students per class so I went to Oregon. I taught for 2 years in Oregon but did not work long enough to receive tenure and my position was eliminated. I got no interviews in 2009 and 2 interviews last year, but was not hired.

I am presently looking to work in restaurants – like I did in college.

99er…for life?

Today, I filed for my very last week of unemployment benefits. You see, I am a 99er. I have been out of work since the Tuesday before Thanksgiving of 2008. What’s the big deal, right? There are hundreds of thousands of people just like me, who have exhausted all of their benefits, who have no other options. I can’t speak for them, but I can share my story, and pray it sheds some light on how dire the situation really has become.

Two days before Thanksgiving, 2008, I went in to work and was told I was being laid off. I was the last one hired, you see, and since that made me low man on the totem pole, I was the first to go. Business was slow, there weren’t enough hours for all of the employees, and there was a question of whether the business was being sold or not. it’s the way of the world. I wasn’t worried, at first. I knew I could get unemployment, and that could hold us over until I found another job. I had been working in the restaurant industry as an assistant manager, so it isn’t like I wasn’t qualified for another job. I had an excellent work history, never late for work. Heck, I only missed one day when I broke two of the bones in my foot. I came back to work on crutches, and did my job just as well as I would have without the injury. Still holding on to that delusion that 99ers are just a lazy lot that don’t want to work? How many of you would only miss one day after breaking two bones in your foot, and return to a job where you a guaranteed to be on your feet for 8+ hours per day every day for five days a week? I wouldn’t consider that being lazy by any means. It shows that I am a hard worker, dedicated to my job and my company, and willing to endure whatever it takes in order to do my job.

December came and went, and while Christmas was a bit skimpier than it had been in previous years, I still wasn’t worried. I would still be able to find another job. It was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. While I was required to apply at two separate places on two separate days per week, I was going to many more than that. 3-4 days a week, I would get out and just drive, stopping at every restaurant I passed, putting in applications, speaking with managers. Still, weeks went by with no interviews, no call backs, and no hope of a new job.

January went by just as December had, February, March and April as well. By May, I was beginning to lose hope. I put in an application at public housing, hoping to get into an income-based apartment, to at least help make ends meet and make things a little less stressful financially. It was only temporary, until I went back to work. For your information, I’m still on that same waiting list, behind 30,000 other families waiting for a home they can actually afford. I applied for section 8, which will pay a percentage of your rent, making it more affordable to get into decent housing without going over what you can afford. I’m sitting at the bottom of a 4 year waiting list on that one.

Fast forward to November 1, 2010. I’m sitting here, after filing for my absolute last week of unemployment benefits. There are a multitude of emotions flowing through me at this point. Fear for my family. Where will we live? I cant live in my car with my two children. I cant feed them from a car, bathe them, dress them. My family is no better off than we are, struggling to get by on a day to day basis. They cant take us in because, even if they had the space for three extra people, they cant afford to feed three more people, nor can they afford the increase in their expenses involved with adding more people to the home. There is desperation, trying to think of anywhere I haven’t been, anywhere I can go, that will hire me, even part time is better than no time at all. I’m in a state with 12% unemployment rates. There’s nowhere I can go that there aren’t at least 500 other people already there pounding the doors down, begging for work. What will happen when we lose our home? Will the state take my kids from me? Will they just let us live in the streets with nowhere to go, a month before Christmas? Will my kids even have a Christmas? This year, its very clear that answer will be a resounding no. I don’t even have money to pay our basic living expenses, how on earth can I expect to be able to give them gifts, that seem wasteful and unnecessary in the face of our impending homelessness.

I wonder about our representatives, our congressmen and senators. I wonder if they ever think of us as they sit down to their Thanksgiving dinners, in their million dollar mansions. I wonder if we cross their minds when they go do a little Christmas shopping, charging thousands of dollars to their credit cards. Do you stop and think of us when you go out to eat, and wonder if we have even had a meal that day? When you walk through the door to your office, do you think of the millions of us who have no office to go to? When you come home each night, do you think of the 99ers who are praying for a miracle, so they might have a home to come to every day as well? If you don’t, then shame on you. And shame on us, for putting you in office, where you are supposed to be representing we, the people, of the United States- the people of YOUR state. We may not have a job. We may be, or will soon be homeless. We may not have much of anything at all, besides the mountains of worry, stress, depression, and anger at being trapped in a situation we cant escape from. But we do have one thing, and its one thing you should fear above all else, if you value your job. We still have the right to vote, and we plan to exercise that right tomorrow. If you refuse to act on our behalf, to help us, to support those who put you in office, I can guarantee that we will fail to support you as well. Say goodbye to your pretty little office, your $178,000 a year salary, and your 22 weeks of vacation every year. Hopefully, you wont find yourself in the unemployment lines, because in this economy, with the failed job market being what it is, you may be in my shoes in 99 weeks. Maybe then, you’ll be more sympathetic to the plight of the 99ers. By then, you’ll be more than happy to vote to grant those extensions we need in order to live. Too bad, because by then, it will be too late, for us and for you.