Listening to the news today, as a person who was almost a ‘99er, and now thankfully is working as a Substitute Teacher, I find it appalling and shameful that so many Americans are still without jobs, struggling day after day to make ends meet. I know several ‘99ers who fear that they will not ever work again. Why should a woman who worked for decades on Wall Street as a Law Librarian have to struggle to find work, or a Museum Curator live out of her car? This is not the America we all know! Why isn’t this seen as a national emergency that millions of men and women cannot get a job, or have funding to survive until they do?

Our country, with all its natural resources, must also value the inhabitants of this land.  Every day, more and more people don’t have enough money for food or rent, and with all the horror of recent natural disasters, and worry of war too, every American is increasingly frightened: what is to become of us?

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American talent is an at-risk commodity from massive layoffs, extinct corporations, bankruptcies and displaced workers. We didn’t start the fire, but suffer from smoke inhalation. Huge shifts like plates in the earth under our feet create urban blight. Like a Discovery Channel segment from Life after People, workers are tossed about like ocean buoys clanging and bobbing in rough seas or desert tumble weed blowing around in the wind. I believe that threat to American talent is ultimately more ominous than the loss of stock or money.

Trying to wend one’s way into new work is like trying to jump onto a swiftly moving Merry-Go-Round without horses. Starting Over is marked with words like ‘reinventing’ oneself and ‘branding’ oneself. It’s no longer enough to have experience—one now has to have more and more certifications and continuous formal schooling to re-prove oneself worthy of the Man and the Hood. It’s the reverse of everything we’ve been taught to be true about working hard and being rewarded. It’s perverse and distorted. Finding work and working one’s way up a ladder is a fairy tale. No more forty year perfect attendance awards like my father in law received upon his retirement and no gold watches for longevity. Seniority will be a phase of life instead of status on a job. If I were a Congress person, I’d introduce a bill that anyone laid off over 50 should have their salaries and retirement plans paid for by the companies laying them off in the eleventh hour.

Starting over is like having to don a new outfit to gain acceptance into the crowd, as if back in high school. It’s hard work looking for work! Like a Chinese jigsaw puzzle, it’s a struggle to make the one stubborn square go into the sequence where it belongs.

Job titles and descriptions resemble nothing we’ve seen before. Secretarial type employment requires industry-specific experience and a Bachelor’s degree. Employers are combining unlikely skill sets– medical assistants with paralegals—secretarial with information technology helpdesk— into one title offered as strange bedfellows for one person—with meager wages. It’s ludicrous. The lucky few who are actually called in by prospective employers and interviewed feel like they are trying out for a part in a Broadway play.

Corporations panic and dump. Layoffs have occurred on and off for decades, maybe some by economic necessity for a company to survive, but many because of greed. It’s not altruism to create human blight; it’s exploitation for the few to take so much—at the expense of so many. Therefore, companies keep changing the rules and pulling the rug right out from under their people. It’s a cruel board game, dirty pool, where they change the rules in mid game, without preparing their workforce, without so much as a warning, and dump. How soul-less business can be!

In my work as a one stop career counselor for Workforce NY, I see many people. Huge numbers are hurting. I listen to them and calm them when they are having a bad day and the brutality of looking for work from A to Z becomes too much for them to bear. Then they can start to pick up the pieces and formulate a plan. The alienation and isolation is palpable. The lament of the unemployed is about how many Internet ads they answer only to never hear from any of them. Public pulse tells me the employers want rocket scientists for ten dollars an hour. Part time need only apply and kiss those benefits goodbye. Ah, starting over…

What companies don’t realize is that it’s probably cheaper to retrain incumbent workers than pay out severance to thousands and then have to advertise and interview throngs for whatever position in those companies that might have survived the ax or become realized after time—not to mention the tremendous upheaval that such business strategies might avoid. I wish that companies and corporations would call on all the one stop career centers nationwide, with substantial jobs, cut to the chase and get qualified people. It would be a sold-out crowd. Step right up, standing room only! They might even meet some of the ones they dumped! And to our President Obama, my message is, send more money, please! I know he has a penchant for the little guys, too, not just the stuffed shirts of giant corporations.

In the ashes, I am seeing a new phenomenon: a resurrection of American talent and the American spirit in a new way. People in droves want to do their own thing by starting their own small businesses—from the youngest to the oldest—mostly oldest—jobseekers—and work for themselves. It’s an amazing and refreshing sign of the times while a bit daunting and overwhelming by their sheer numbers on a daily basis. The reason I always hear is that they do not want to be at the mercy of a corporation ever again. They refuse to work for an established entity. They don’t want to be an anonymous square peg in a round hole. They simply do not want to fall victim to another layoff or scramble for another unemployment check. They are mad as hell and aren’t going to take anymore. Wanting control over their destinies and often ignoring age and the cultural dictates of past generations who retired in their 60s, they are forging ahead and clearing new paths for themselves. They are applying their treasure trove of life and work experience—something precious that cannot be substituted—in new ways.

What they do want is relevance and skills to keep up with the changing times. They still keep a hand searching in the old professions, seeing what they can dredge up. Many have double Masters Degrees and lost big six figure salaries. Even those who didn’t hold high positions want education and a total makeover. Perhaps they will find a way to blend both the old and new, the staid and safe, on unchartered waters. Maybe they’ll be independent contractors performing service in the short term in their field, while finishing and landing an assignment somewhere else. Maybe they’ll wind up pooling talent and sharing jobs, doubling up and presenting themselves in joint interviews to one employer at a time. The pattern could be repeated all their work lives. Work ethic will be self perpetuated and self rewarded. Entrepreneurial willpower will prevail!

I admire my customers as they teach me so much about forging ahead in the face of economic adversity. They want to take advantage of every opportunity available to them for retraining and competing. They’re not thinking defeat.

The workplace is changing into a whole new creation in time-lapse, resembling nothing we’ve ever seen before. People are forced to think of work in an entirely new way. Everyone now has to sell something—themselves--and not even get a 401K guaranteed for performing. This regrouping will probably go on continually throughout one’s working life. They can’t look up to a boss without looking into the mirror. Meet the new boss. It’s not the same as the old boss.

Rather, the workplace is a new landscape and it takes a new breed of people, one more virulent than before, armed with new skills, and highly intelligent and socially adept. As more companies and worksites offer temp or part time gigs, prospective workers will be forced to morph into independent contractors and free lancers. Without on the job training or benefits or a living wage, in many cases, it will be survival of the fittest at every level. For better or for worse, the species must adapt.

The jobless have a new mission—should they choose to accept—and time on their side in which to do it—not only to reinvent themselves—but to reinvent the whole world of business. It’s a little scary and very overwhelming but it will be interesting to see where it’s going. I hope that there will be opportunities to make a living. At least laid off individuals are not lying down to die.  The courageous new world of attaining work is a testament that the human spirit will prevail even in economic hardship and the struggles of daily living.

-By The Job Enthusiast Who Won’t Rest Till Everyone Is Put To Work!

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