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Top Hard Times Blogs
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Miss Pink Slip
I saw a segment about tax deductions for job seekers on today’s CNN “American Morning”. In case you missed it: http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/09/tax-deductions-for-job-seekers/ http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/03/08/tax.tips.unemployed/index.html?hpt=Sbin This is for anyone unemployed in 2009! ...
Miss Pink Slip’s Out-of-Work Oscars, Part Deux
Yesterday I counted down the first five of 10 movies I think best exemplify the life (for better or worse) of the unemployed. Some of them are inspirational; some are cautionary tales of the highest degree. Here we go with 6-10: 6. American Beauty- Oh, Kevin Spacey and his bitter, sardonic pervy Lester...
Miss Pink Slip’s Out-of-Work Oscars
The Oscars are four days away, so I thought I’d repost one of my favorite blog entries from 2009: Miss Pink Slip’s Out-of-Work Oscars. While “Up in the Air” was obviously not on this list, it is certainly the current crown-bearer of unemployment movies. But there are many others! As I said...
Interview Wardrobe Ideas for Spring 2010
I am dying for Spring to get here. So the other day, I visited one of my favorite bargain sites, Chadwicks.com, to see if they had any fun, inexpensive dresses to kick off the season. I ended up ordering four. Many times, Chadwicks has really cheesy clothes, but every now and...
How to Mount an Olympic-size Campaign for Your Job Search
Like much of America, I was getting pumped for our Olympians last night. The USA beat Canada in hockey, capping off a thrilling weekend that also included medals for Bode Miller, Shani Davis, Apolo Anton Ohno and Lindsey Vonn. What do all these athletes have in common? Determination, drive and, of course, a dream. In fact,...
“How NOT to Apologize” by Tiger Woods
I couldn’t bring myself to watch Tiger Woods’ self-aggrandizing “apology” today. As everyone knows, the golf phenom took to the international airwaves an hour ago to publicly apologize for his “irresponsible and selfish” behavior. He went on to confirm his many affairs with many mistresses, say how much he disappointed everyone, how his wife should be praised, blah blah...
WSJ.com: Laid Off And Looking
In December 2008, we launched the Laid Off and Looking blog as a way for WSJ readers and job seekers to learn firsthand about how rising unemployment was affecting Americans. We asked 29 laid off professionals with M.B.A. degrees to share what it was like for them to deal with suddenly...
Working with Financial Recruiters
The pros and cons of using search professionals...
After 16 Months, Finally Starting a New Position
Looking back on a long search...
Using ‘Strategic’ Volunteering to Help With the Search
Taking advantage of corporate programs...
Making Each Minute Count During the Search
One of the upsides of being unemployed is having complete control over my day. But the flip side of this gift has been a challenge. While I have the freedom to determine what my day looks like—a freedom I would have loved when I was working in the corporate world—I also feel...
Advice: Turning a Temporary Position Into a Full Time Job
With many employers setting aside budgets for specific projects, working on a temporary or interim assignment can be a great way to end up with a full-time position. During the interim period it's important to show the company that you're irreplaceable, writes WSJ's Melissa Korn. Additionally, Ms. Korn recommends that...
I Don’t Wish Unemployment on Anyone
via PostSecret But then again, I suppose there is comfort in numbers. ...
Can’t afford to eat out as much as before? Just head out to restaurants a little bit earlier. Discount dining is back in style, with several restaurants offering discounts before 6 p.m. Early bird specials are no longer just for senior citizens looking to be thrifty, but for anybody who...
Survey Says: Americans Not Happy at Work
The Conference Board research group conducted a survey that found 55 percent of Americans dissatisfied with their jobs—the highest rate in 22 years. Okay American employers: I have an assignment for you. Figure out how to make your employees happy! I promise you’ll get higher productivity! ...
May 2010 bring us more work and a better economy! ...
Yesterday Phi announced it was shutting down due to the Great Recession’s economic climate. Most of you probably don’t know of Phi, the high-end luxury label founded by Susan Dell, wife of Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell. I remember admiring Phi’s architecturally sleek, sexy and tough designs when we used a dress...
I was thinking about this just now. The last four guys I’ve dated have been underemployed or unemployed—unstable, basically—just like me. One guy was unemployed and bounced through traveling, friends’ apartments and his parents’ home; another lost his job and couldn’t pay rent; another was underemployed, doing odd jobs and...
NYT > Michael Luo
For Workers at Closing Plant, Ordeal Included Heart Attacks
The first to have a heart attack was George Kull Jr., 56, a millwright who worked for three decades at the steel mills in Lackawanna, N.Y. Three weeks after learning that his plant was closing, he suddenly collapsed at home. Less than two hours later, he was pronounced dead....
At Closing Plant, Ordeal Included Heart Attacks
A growing body of research suggests job loss can have profound health consequences for workers....
Jobless Turn to Family for Help
When unemployment leads to borrowing from family and friends, the experience can be stressful....
Struggling, and Seeking Hope in President’s Words
Don and Sheyenne Kreamer, who have to move from their foreclosed home by Sunday, stopped packing to watch the State of the Union speech....
Economists See a Lift in 2010 Census
Next year’s census will not only count people, it will also put money in millions of pockets and potentially create a well-timed economic spark....
For Many, Uncertainty, Fear and Shame Often Follow Pink Slips
From Allotting Help to Seeking It Out In the last year, Evan Gutierrez, 29, has gone from administering a church's good-will fund to applying to one so his family could pay the rent as he continued to look for work....
Stuff Unemployed People Like
#148 Claiming Their New Year’s Resolution is to Get a Job
Most well-meaning people set out to start off the new year with a clean slate, vowing to quit this or start that - anything that will make them a better person. But it’s well known that resolutions were meant to be broken so this December, all of the unemployed people...
#147 Making Something Out of Nothing for Halloween
Halloween 2008 was probably one of the final blowouts the now-unemployed had in the past year. Chances are it was the last time people had the opportunity to party hard before doomsday reports, job losses, and a massive downsizing in money and fun took over in 2009. With pitiful signs...
#146 Staring At Their Useless Diploma(s)
For generations people have fallen for that whole “work hard in school to get a good job” bull crap that is starting to sound more and more like a line of lies these days. After hitting the books and taking the smart people classes to avoid turning out like Jimmy,...
#145 Cramming in Their Health Care
With national health care being widely debated in these here United States of America, plenty of unemployed people have their own way of dealing with a lack of health insurance: cramming in as many visits and tests as possible before their coverage ends either due to a lay off, a...
#144 Ironically Celebrating Labor Day
With Labor Day over and the majority of America winding down their summers, there may have been a certain sect of people (jobless) who made employed people wish they had more than one lousy day off to celebrate their contributions to society and the economy. Having no job was hardly...
When rich kids want to look cool, they shop at thrift stores to look poor. When unemployed people want to look clothed, they shop at thrift stores so they don’t get arrested for wearing nothing but their tattered former company’s t-shirt and dirty socks. Thrift stores, “in this economy”, are...
Everyday People
I Love Earthships but This Is Even Wilder
My nominee for most incredible, interesting and imaginative home ever. Period.I stumbled across it on a green homes for sale site.Yes, there is a little voice in my conscience that wonders if it's appropriate to build a home in a former Anasazi village. But it was a dwelling....
Which Way Blow the Prevailing Winds?
I can't figure it out, I tell you. There's been a definite shift in the universal winds, a movement after months of stagnation, a scent of change in the air.And most of it is forward motion - something I've hoped and worked for.But just as I take a deep breath,...
Toyota, it's a small world, especially when something is shocking. Word gets around.So after initially downplaying the danger of the Little Cars That Won't Stop, you put a good face on it, expressed remorse, admitted that the company had begun to put market share before quality and promised to...
Canada, You're Better Than That
We have a visitor here in the Hudson Valley...and he's cute as hell. Marine rescue experts say he's a young Arctic harp seal, probably wandering south looking for some fish and a comfortable place to molt.We're delighted to have him. People are lining up along the shore to...
We went on a road trip this weekend, my daughter and I. She had to make a fast trip to Baltimore to meet with a young representative of an overseas program she wants to do next year. "I'm in!" I announced. "Road trip.""Really? I didn't want...
We found ourselves having dinner at the local diner tonight, my guy and our friend the sensitive musician. We were celebrating a little; my guy's new songs are nearly ready for airplay and the local radio station jumped the songs past a boxful of hopeful CD submissions. Our...
The Unemploymentality
When unemployment gets you down, read this website. Back at work finally? Submit a post. ...
Michael Spafferty makes Gawker’s list of top 5 video resumes. Sorta.
It's official. Gawker likes us. Today Gawker included Michael Spafferty's video resume as one of its top 5 examples of how NOT to land a job: The video resume. Thanks Gawker. Dreams do come true. ...
From all of us to all of you – Happy Valentines day ...
Getting through to the EDD: Call for Vietnamese number
Still having trouble getting through to the EDD? We've already mentioned this strategy in our 'mas popular' post tips and tricks, but if it hasn't sunk it yet, check out Rudy's video blog below on how calling the Vietnamese hotline got him his checks. Besides, although he doesn't...
TwitJobSearch: A New Way to Find Jobs?
Twitter has teamed up with TweetDeck to offer a custom desktop job search tool. For those of you who can’t imagine finding a job on the social networking service, check this out: 340,000 jobs have allegedly been posted on the site so far. The new feature is supposed to...
“One American Dream?” is a documentary exploring the American Dreams of the youth generation. As a feature length documentary, “One American Dream?” will follow my journey as I travel around the country in search of how the vision of success has changed and what the American Dreams of today’s...
Portraits of an Economy
My wife and I have been married for coming up on 16 years and have three exceptionally brilliant children (mostly her doing.) For the better part of 20 years after college I sold commercial printing in the DE, PA, NJ area and lead a successful, yet very boring career killing...
submitter's note: trigger warningI managed to score a wonderful job just as the recession hit. I am employed by a non-profit organization, and happily took a slight pay cut in order to regain a sense of personal satisfaction with my work.My non-profit assists survivors of sexual assault in various aspects...
Portrait: Prince George's County, Maryland
Last night my husband and I broke down and tapped into our very last resort. We emptied my 16 month old daughter’s piggy bank for money to sustain us for the next 10 days until our next paydays.Despite the dire straits that we might seem to be in right...
Portrait: Puyallup, Washington
My husband and I have spent our entire young adulthood making what we thought were the "right" choices. He got me through nursing school so I could get a good job and I could, in turn, get him through chiropractic school so he could get his own great job....
Portrait: Vermillion South Dakota
A few years ago, I was 22 and enjoying my own quiet riot of excess and stupidity. I was mindless about everything. Mindlessly dating and sleeping with a man that didn't love me and vice versa. Mindlessly wracking up thousands in stupid debt, living off of my mother, and just...
Portrait Update: St. Louis Missouri
You published my story on Portraits of an Economy on Mother's Day. My husband and I were in the middle of what felt like a never ending adoption limbo, waiting to find out if we could keep our daughters and sacrificing everything we could to continue channeling money at our...
Nicejob Media
An exclusive sneak peak at what ABC's World News Tonight will look like after the News Division completes its transition to a leaner and meaner "digital journalist-based" operation....
Preservationists were alarmed recently when they learned that the owner of a plot of land abutting the famed Hollywood sign in Los Angeles was planning to build structures above the edifice. Panic quickly spread, as conservationists imagined landmarks desecrated by enterprising enterprisers everywhere....
My old Day to Day colleague Shereen Meraji asked me to go to the NAMM music show in Anaheim and do a story for All Things Considered, where she now works. And I was only happy to do so.It's the biggest musical instrument show in the country - maybe...
Why Be With Coco When You Can Be Coco
...
Name That Spot: The Full Collection
This is a free player from embedr.com. It's little, and a little gnarly, but it does allow me to present all the Name That Spots, in order, in a not-quite-ready-for-primetime package.For old-fashioned link-by-link viewing experience, try this post....
A one minute wrap-up of the year, from a personal perspective....
Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures
Now that I have a boyfriend who reads this blog, I have to begin by saying this did not happen to me but to my girlfriend who has no name or location. But she and I are the same size and age and have similar sensibilities. We almost always make exactly the...
I’m one of the original girl technogeeks. I bopped around the Internet back when it was just a small neighborhood, or more accurately a boy’s dormitory. So put an electronic toy in my hand, and I’m as swift on the uptake as my kids, and that’s saying a lot. When I save to...
I’m feeling garaged. I practically live in one—a basement apartment below the living quarters of my ex husband. I hope to make my prison break soon. That’s what if feels like, living in a prison that on some weeks when I’m not watching the kids I can come and go as...
Day 262 — If Job Seekers Could Tell All
Tonight, I’m watching the ABC reality dating show, The Bachelor: On the Wings of Love. This episode is especially special because it features all of The Bachelor’s rejected bachelorettes and, of course, the bachelor, Jack Pavelka, a pilot with brawn-perfect chest and arms. Since the season started on January 5, Jake...
I’m growing to believe that saving is a lot like dieting. It takes a while to be good and take off the extra pounds. But once you get on a roll, you begin to stick with the program, with an occasional fall. When you have so little money, it’s hard to start...
Day 260 — Getting Off Government Assistance
We get on to get off. I got off last week, government services, that is. I had been a recipient of unemployment, food stamps and Medicaid (remember, Medicare is for old people). When I got off the unemployment roll, the change in my income disqualified me for government assistance. Sure, I probably could...
Bob Loblaw's Job Blog
Has Thanksgiving weekend left you feeling unsatisfied? Hungry? Are you looking for some hearty goodness? For all of you Unemploymentality fans out there (yes, I’m speaking to all 4 of you) I bring you Lyndsights My new attempt at telling my story. Still me, with a little more depth, and just as much ridiculous-ness...
Peeps, I’m asking ya’ll a favor….just as the addictive New Kids on the Block song demands, please hang tough through this hiccup in my blogging road. I know I have been silent. I know I have let you all down. But I’m in the process of some maj life decisions and am trying to discover...
It would really suck to have a name that sounded like someone famous. The co-founder of the Hover Round is named Tom Kruse. Brutal. So, I’m trying to get back into the blogging swing of things so I thought I’d share a little bite sized gem I found on Craig’s List regarding...
…it bruises easily. I know I seem super tough on the outside. Almost a Madonna-meets-Indigo Girls-meets-Demi Moore in GI Jane-tough. But really I’m just a softy. So when we were hanging around our Safari campsite and our cook Stephen made the following comment, I almost packed up and shipped myself back to...
Guys. I leave tomorrow for Kenya. My freak is totally freaked but I’m so excited. I promise to come back with more blog inspiration (blogspiration) and without a raging case of yellow fever. Or malaria. Or typhoid. Ohmygosh. If you want to follow the kenyan adventure and hear about how I’m probably making huge cultural faux pas, check out www.yeswekenya.wordpress.com Keepin...
One of the joys of living in this blessed city is the plethora of people that come visit you. From old high school friends to distant relatives to baby’s daddies (just seeing if you were paying attention), everyone and their mom (seriously, they bring their moms) makes plans to visit Chicago...
Tales From the Recently Laid Off
My apologizes to my friends on the east coast. I know you have #snOMG and #snowscrewed and all so don’t judge me when I complain about the rain. It really is nothing personal. I know you have the day after tomorrow outside your door tonight and all, and have been...
Nothing like becoming an adult than watching those around you become victims of the economy while you’re still struggling to regain your own sense of working self. A year ago we all imagined that now we’d be in a place populated with jobs, money, and options. Ok.Slight fabrication. We knew that...
Cheers to the end of 2009. I don’t know about you, but that year –2009– not in my top ten for the decade or the prior 28 for that matter. I won’t begin to contemplate the future years. Woo. There’s one thing 2009 taught me, kids. Don’t be too hung-up...
Taking it to the streets: Step Up
It can happen anywhere – your desk, the movies, dinner, while you’re lying in bed – suddenly the fear creeps in. Your palms sweat and your pores ooze. The lights begin to flicker. Not again. The horror, the horror. Oh, Post-tramatic Layoff disorder (PTLD), how you taunt with your visions...
Self-actualization via the crazy
Congratulations are in order. And by that, I mean I’m going to congratulate myself. I’ve made the jump from all-out unemployment to the realm of part-time underemployment. Translation: I am wedged in between the lowest tiers of Maslow’s self-actualization pyramid! Huzzah! Still, it’s progress and I have my...
Last week, I committed the ultimate interview faux pas. I was late to a follow-up. It was scheduled for noon. East coast time. Running around at the gym, I finished up around 10 PST to see several missed calls. With voicemails. “Apparently we had...
Broke-Ass Stuart's Goddamn Website
Rick Moranis. A man’s man. A woman’s man. A jack of all trades. The man. The myth. The dad from Honey I Shrunk the Kids. Rick Moranis has played a large part in my life through his various groundbreaking roles in cinematic history. ...
So you want some new friends. Maybe you don’t have any yet because you just moved to the city. Maybe you recently broke up with your girlfriend, who turned everyone you know against you (whore). Or maybe you’re just kind of sick of the friends you’ve already got. I mean,...
FREE Homemade Brooklyn Pop-Up Shop
I’m sure this pop-up shop trend pisses off landlords, but until this whole economy thing sorts itself out, I fully welcome new and inventive ways to use empty storefronts. I wrote last month about Kill Devil Hill in Greenpoint turning into a bakery boutique and now they’re showing you a...
Psychopathic Bosses Are Bitches
I have always heard that it takes a certain type of person to live in New York City. Those who move here are often looking to make it… to rise to the top and claim their fortune. Sometimes these New Yorkers are looked at as “Type A” or overambitious. Sometimes...
Reasons to Raise Chickens in Your Backyard
There’s this relatively new phenomenon happening right now called the Urban Farming Movement. (Check it out: even T.I. supports it!) My boyfriend, in particular, is really into it for two reasons: 1.) He fancies himself as a sort of misanthrope and really loves the idea of never having to unwillingly...
If you have ever ridden a bike, own a bike, or know what a bike is, you’re probably familiar with the messenger bag. One of the sweetest types out there are a little local operation called Timbuk2. Maybe you’ve hear of them? Well even if you haven’t...
Recession in America - BusinessWeek
The effects of the recession are still reverberating throughout America. But with the U.S. economy improving, other BusinessWeek blogs will continue the discussion and provide updates from the political, economic, and small business perspectives. Thank you for your readership and comments. ...
Dead Not Immune From Recession
The Poynter Institute's Al Tompkins notes this morning reports that more people are seeking government aid to pay for funerals and that unclaimed bodies are piling up at the Detroit morgue. ...
Last month, my BusinessWeek colleague Chris Palmeri blogged about withdrawing an all-cash offer for a home in Pomona, Calif., after learning that BW was being put up for sale by the McGraw-Hill Companies. I'm also feeling jittery about the prospect of losing my job, so jittery in fact that I've...
Back to School Shopping Suffering
When I was a beginning reporter, I used to do first-day-of-school stories, and one image sticks with me. It was an early September day and the temperature was in the 90s, but most of the elementary school kids lined up outside were in long sleeve shirts and fall outfits. Their...
Arena Football League Suspends Operations
Hard hits on the playing field may be one thing, but the recession has proved to be too much for the 22-year-old Arena Football League. The league, which had already canceled its 2009 season but was hoping to regroup for 2010, told its owners last night that it had been...
Like most people who grew up in the 1960s, I had music class in elementary school. I have many happy memories of singing tunes from the Up With People traveling show as well as American standards such as This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie. I've written about this...
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