With unemployment rising to 5.5%, more Americans are finding themselves with more time to catch up on their daytime TV or put in some serious time on World of Warcraft. Others see unemployment as an opportunity to begin a new career, take a mini retirement, invest in yourself, or find other sources of income. Their perspectives, inside.
Some of our favorite financial blogs have written articles justifying their departures from their normal jobs in favor of writing online. Although not everyone can blog (it’s like, really hard), their advice is useful for those considering a different career, especially one that involves working from home. Trent at The Simple Dollar claims quitting his job has saved him $8,000 a year in gas, food, and daycare costs, among others.
Get Rich Slowly discusses the concept of “mini-retirements”: a period of several months or a year living somewhere else, doing something else. Get Rich Slowly interviews Tim Ferriss, author of “The 4-Hour Workweek,” for more information.
Going back to school during a period of economic downturn is a common suggestion, but if you want to make yourself more marketable without taking out more loans or spending money on classes, consider other ways of investing in yourself. Web Worker Daily advises readers to build their online persona; a strong online presence, created through a personal website or other means, “is one of the best ways to attract new job and business opportunities your way.”
Unemployment is also a good opportunity to begin exploring and building alternative income streams—sources of income other than a paycheck from your job. Moolanomy lists over forty ideas and links to other lists for those looking to supplement, or replace, their employment income.
(Photo: Getty)
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Unemployment is also a good opportunity to begin exploring and building alternative income streams-sources of income other than a paycheck from your job.
If you ever see “Explored and built alternative income streams” on a resume, that means “robbed a bank”.
@timmus: Not always. My “alternative income streams” came from my home meth lab.
The “secret” is that unemployment is at least twice, if not three times the stated rate. Reagan and Clinton made Congressional changes to unemployment and welfare regulations into law which dropped people from the statistics after X weeks of benefits run out. The “logic” was that if the checks ran out, you would be forced to get a job or go on welfare.
However, you can only get welfare for a cumulative maximum of five years…and then you drop off the statistical rolls again.
Add in seasonal labor (agriculture, for example) and it can be as much as four times the “reported” levels of unemployment in an area.
Those “alternative income streams” may be more like “robbed a bank” than we may wish them to be…
@timmus: omg that made me laugh a big guffaw! cracked me up!
I was unemployed for the first time in my life at the end of last year/beginning of this year and things were AWFUL. Then I started spending every spare second that I wasn’t looking for a job picking up jobs to troubleshoot, configure, install and update WordPress and I’ve turned it into a full-time business. I’m making more money than I ever did (I was an Administrative Assistant before), and business is booming. Unemployment was a great fire under my butt to take my skills to the next level and improve my life!
Oh, I only wound up being on unemployment about 6 weeks. Been self-employed ever since.
I’ve been seeing this trend… Employed then Unemployed then Self-employed.
It’s ridiculously easy to “prove” you’ve been desperately searching for work when your unemployment is set to expire. The way my friends explained it, it was much easier to work one day a month filling out applications you never intend to follow up to earn your unemployment check than it was to actually get the job.
They have no shame.
The state of Illinois for some reason decided I didn’t qualify for unemployment and it took two months to prove them they were wrong. They still tried to find any single reason to deny me the benefits. Now it looks they want me to pay back what they gave me. I’m pretty fed up with their “guilty until proven innocent” policy. I’m glad I resumed working before they became a bigger headache. Like some of you, I ended up making way more money as a freelancer than as an employee.
Don’t go to school if you want to receive benefits. Recently laid off, I took advantage of unemployment to go to school full-time, but that makes me ineligible for unemployment benefits. My claim was denied. Back to a shitty job for me.
I’m on unemployment right now, and got my first check today. $159. Thanks IL gov’t! That’ll feed my family of 4! Went from bringing home $400 a week to $159. Bastards. It’s an insult.
@Ayo:
That’s how I did it back in 2000. The bank I worked for got bought, and my job title changed to “back office redundancy.” I was unemployed, then decided that I could do what I did for other banks as a consultant. I raised my hourly from $28/hr as an employee to $175/hr as a consultant and have been doing it ever since. The irony is that my former employer hired me to do what I’d been doing for them a few times since I left.
Chuck Norris has never been unemployed because he has chosen not to be unemployed.
Learn something new.
@mgy: I don’t know how they do it. I can’t deal with having that much free time. I was unemployed for about 5 months from last August to January and I almost went nuts. I spent as much time as I could, looking for a new job.
On the Moolanomy link one of the points is Paid Online Surveys. I’ve read some interesting information about them, and to be frank a lot of it sounds too good to be true.
However, I can’t find a single definitive list of good companies who actually provide worthwhile surveys, let alone any for anywhere other than the US.
Does anyone have any experience in this matter?
@Eoghann:
“$175/hr as a consultant “
What do you do for that kind of money? Can you train me to do it in Seattle? Seriously! I’m ready for that kind of job.
@Krondonian: YOU should create one! Ding ding! Job opportunity for you!
@MissPeacock: Alas, if only I had the money to try out all the different services.
There’s plenty of lists, but each one seems to contradict the last. Making money online I fear will simply suck too much time to be ever worthwhile. Back to applying for menial part time jobs it is…
The Get Rich Slowly link is broken; there’s an extra quotation mark after it. Try this:
>> [www.getrichslowly.org]
@mractor:and it would be nice to sit around and do that exploration, more people are getting laid off rather suddenly these days. perhaps they were convinced they’d have that job for life, or maybe they were working those averages of 60 to 70 hours, and simply lacked an additional moment to do that level of soul-searching.
@Dilbitz: May I be so nosy as to ask the reason for your unemployment?
@Vanguarde: Chuck Norris is self employed as a full-time dick.
I’ve become a pretty good guitar player during my stint of unemployment. I can bring the brOOtaLz now! Anybody know if Killswitch Engage is looking for a guitar player?
I believe the Fifth Way to Make The Most of Unemployment involves a 12 pack of PBR and the Lifetime Movie Network.
@Dilbitz: Dude, unemployment isn’t intended to replace your check and pay all your bills. It’s a “safety net.” That $159 is better than $0. Be grateful for it.
Unemployment gives women the opportunity to find out if they can work the pole. You know I be strippin’ to pay da billz.
You can be on unemployment and go to college. I was laid off because my employer sent our jobs overseas. You have to be ready and able to work to get unemployment. I took 17 credit hours of classes, but would have stopped going to college or worked something out when I found a job. I did find a job and worked my butt off to finish the semester. Now I have my AA and am working on my BS in Legal Studies. Make the best of the time on unemployment. Look for a job, network, go to school (sometimes unemployment may pay for it) learn a new skill, and become involved in the community.
I am currently unemployed..again. Not seeking any welfare or unemployment checks though. Just making the most of wasting my money on cigarettes and booze and hoping that I’ll find a job soon.
Here is the trick. Go on vacation for three months all the while submit resumes and applications on-line that will certainly get rejected. Pretend you are looking for work and are available. When you get back, take some classes and continue to pretend that you are available. Also, make sure you get caught up on all of your favorite TV shows…
I agree there are opportunites, and also that I needed to be very realistic and search for work at light speed because unemployment was not going to cut it. I set up an online fax account for $5, Googled the words fax and the town I wanted to work in, and I was determined to send out as many resumes as I could each day. I was called for an interview down the road, and when the owner said “in my ad I said …” such & such, and I looked him in the eye and asked “what ad?” and told him I’d just faxed out resumes to everyone I could, to improve my odds. He looked like he would soon fall off his chair when I asked “but could I see the ad you placed?”
I was offered the job right on the spot, he thought I was quite a card 
And now I’m working on a home business too, because I do not trust this economy….
Damn, you’d have to go back to the good old days of the Clinton administration to have it any higher.
OR you could go volunteer somewhere. Teachers are ALWAYS needed in China. The place may not be clean, but you can live like royalty teaching English kindergarten to our future rulers. Plus Chinese girls dig foreigners, (male or female).
Or volunteer in Africa, you know, save some lives.
OR you could do online surveys…
@HPCommando: That’s not really true. Cash assistance is 5 years(TANF), and there are exemptions there to stop the clock. One can receive Food Stamps and Medicaid as long as one is alive and eligible. Many on unemployment have applied for both for themselves and their families.
I enjoyed being unemployed for a while and nearly didn’t want to go back to work. I had to pull my kids out of daycare and it was real nice being able to spend some time with them. With unemployment plus no daycare costs (also tax refund and rebate), we were only short a few hundred dollars a month on our expenses, but we had a decent amount in savings to help cover the gap. I could have stayed unemployed over the summer, which would have been nice, but I got a decent job offer. Hopefully it works out.
@Pro-Pain: Killswitch Engage is looking for a guitarist? I’m not terribly down with thrashing, but I can play the heck out of “Holy Diver!”
Seriously, if I ever get laid off from my middle manager, I’m going back into the cooking business. I know SO much more, now, after 20 years of cooking for my family. I enjoy the heck out of being in the kitchen, and I miss those old jobs I had! And I can work rings around the typical entry-level person…
@timmus: I fix other peoples houses. Insured business no less. Screw working for da man.
@Eoghann: Less for house fixin’ but still happy. Got tired of having to prove that I wasn’t a dope smoking criminal bankrupt illegal alien.
I was unemployed for 2 days after college. Luckilly my PT place kept me instead of dumping me immediately but I was worried for a while.
OF course I think most of that 5.5% unemployed are new students looking for their first job. In my anecdotal experience my company as well as my parent’s employer are working on keeping the status quo and not increasing or decreasing just yet.
IF you work for GM or Ford, well …
I was unemployed for about 2.5 months starting in March of this year. Thankfully I had 1 month’s severance to help ease the burden and was basically on vacation for that whole time.
I work in a fairly new industry so I had to pace myself in terms of the number of places I applied to or I’d run out though.
In the end, I was able to start up one website that now provides me a couple hundred bucks a month and started another one which I’m about to launch which has the potential to make a lot more–thank you affiliate marketing!
I also recently started a new job that pays what I was making at my old one although they cover ALL the benefits so I’m actually taking home $600 more per month which I’ll invest a good chunk of.
Bottom line is, if you are decent at what you do, its a numbers game. There may be a lot more unemployed people out there now but there will always be jobs to fill. In the meantime, try setting up a home business with a Yahoo store or eBay or affiliate marketing or something. I found that to be much easier and quicker to return than blogging which takes forever to build readership and is a constant effort. I personally think its better to set up a site that makes money on autopilot (or minimal effort) and keep that going to have multiple revenue streams.
Also, I’ll just add a warning that the article you linked to has the bulk of their “suggestions” linking with their affiliate code.
This means they get a commission if you sign up for any of their recommendations.
This means they have a not insignificant financial incentive to steer you one way vs. another.
Take the suggestions with a large grain of salt.
@silverundertone: Your employer paid for unemployment insurance on your behalf, as part of your compensation. Unemployment checks are something you EARNED.
@sir_pantsalot: You don’t have lung cancer, do you?
Anyway, mini retirements are still an incredibly dumb concept. You “save” money that you spend on other stuff and don’t “make” money. Stupid.