Writing off the unemployed

For months, well since November, if I havee gotten one phone call or "hello" or "how are you" from a family member, it's one call too many. Again, each one assuming that I am not doing "enough" or thinking "positive enough" to seek out permanent work. Friends are a bit more understanding and supportive.

I am extremely grateful for the one sole family member who referred me to a job lead. Unfortunately that lead to a series of long term interviews and with the employer in Long Island and about a two-hour commute and without a license or a car, my commute became the focus of the follow up interviews. I should have never mentioned how I got there. I have learned a valuable lesson since that interview! The woman wanted to hire me and was "trying to figure out a way for me to work in one of her other locations until I get my license."After a while, she said she felt that it would be best she hire someone who actually lived in Long Island. Had I never mentioned my commute during the interview, maybe now I would have been working. Maybe now I just would have been living in a friends basement studio apartment, just 26 minutes away from that Long Island location. Maybe now I would be earning a normal regular income.

So today, the latest jabs from the family are now "when are you going to learn how to drive?" Hello? Cost of exam and driving lessons is just as hard to come by as a freaking metro card -- maybe if I ask them to pay for that expense they will shut up? I know I can do it, but I also know that I need to get hired first so I can pay for the exams, lessons and license.

An article was featured in the New York Times today finally acknowledging some issues about long-term unemployment...I hope others get to read it and maybe understand.

  "the long-term unemployed are mainly victims of circumstances — ordinary American workers who had the bad luck to lose their jobs (which can happen to anyone) at a time of extraordinary labor market weakness, with three times as many people seeking jobs as there are job openings. Once that happened, the very fact of their unemployment made it very hard to find a new job."
(I wonder how months of research did it take them to figure this out???)

For more, read here: Writing off the Unemployed by op-ed columnist Paul Krugman.