I have been out of work for 7 weeks, the first gap in a 32-year continuous career in consulting engineering and electronics. I was laid off in 1999, but I had 6 interviews and 3 offers within just over 2 weeks. I have been networking and applying for various full-time, part-time, and contract/temporary positions, indicating each time that I am extremely flexible regarding compensation. Yes, all of us have been through hard times before -- my wife and I used to live on $6K to $8K/year in the mid 1970s, when she was a substitute teacher ($35/day) and I was a starving grad student -- but the current employment situation is by far the worst I have ever seen. The discouraging part is that job creation is always the last stage of an economic recovery -- the stock market has to recover first, and I expect us to be skidding and bouncing along the current bottom for much of 2009.
The bright note is that I can easily handle 2 or 3 years of unemployment with cash on hand -- this is my wife's reward for putting up with 35 years of my Scottish penny-pinching. (Copper wire was invented by two Scotsmen fighting over a penny.)
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"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." --Theodore Roosevelt
Capo: 1959 Modell Campagnolo, S/N 40324; 1960 Sieger (2), S/N 42624, 42597
Carlton: 1962 Franco Suisse, S/N K7911
Peugeot: 1970 UO-8, S/N 0010468
Bianchi: 1982 Campione d'Italia, S/N 1.M9914
Schwinn: 1988 Project KOM-10, S/N F804069