Is Any Job Better Than No Job?

[dharma]

Depends on how hungry you are, I'd say.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/10/i...an-no-job.html

[Sysiphus]

Quick answer - yes. I would hold down two $25K a year jobs to feed the family before I would suck at the gov't teat. This whole thing about not taking a low-paying job is a bunch of BS.

[Potemkin]

Had a talk one day with an Admin (secretary) who took a $50k/yr gig after 10 months of unemployment.

"I had to take a pay cut when I took this job!"

"You were making $0/year before you came here. How is that a cut?"

I also get a hoot when people say something like "I need to make $15/hr to live!".

"You are making $0/hr now, anything is better."

Looters.

[occupant]

Oh yea, it is. Having someplace to get up and go to every day keeps the doldrums away. After my company closed, I was thrilled to sit on my azzz for a few months.Stay up late at night, sleep in until I felt like getting up, actually have lunch out with friends, travel a bit. Unemployment was nice, for awhile. Then I started getting bored, then depressed. I actually got a job on the very day Bush signed the first federal extension.I guess I could have lazed around for a year or so more but thats not good for the mind. If your not quite yet a senior, not big on volunteering, most of your friends are not home all day because they are working, well boredom sets in. Not good for ya. So I think its better to keep busy even if you are making 1/3 of what you used to

[sandyd]

I think overall yes but I understand needing x to pay the bills and if unemployment pays them and a job won't...

[Dreamweaver]

There is much truth in the saying "idle hands are the devil's handiwork". Taking care of yourself rather than relying on someone to take care of you is also the essence of good character.

[dyrt]

Originally Posted by sandyd

I think overall yes but I understand needing x to pay the bills and if unemployment pays them and a job won't...

I don't know about other states but the top rate for unemployment in Texas is $400/wk. It is based on previous pay and length of employment and does not pay anywhere close to what a person was earning previously.

[sandyd]

I think Cali's top is $450 and I agree, that won't be near what many were making working but 400 is twice 200 and I would bet there are part time jobs to be had for 200/week

If someone has bills, would you give up the 400/week to earn 200/week?

If you can find 2-3 part time jobs paying 200/week, it would be better but going from 400/week to only ONE pt job paying 200/week?

Not many with bills would dare....unless bankruptcy is already expected.

[dyrt]

If a person qualifies for the maximum $400 a week and gets a $200 a week part time job then the state will pay the difference.

In fact there is a lot of full time work available. It just never seems to be available to meet the desires of the unemployed. The job is too hot. It is not close. I don't want retail. I am worth more than that. I am not cutting my hair. No tie, etc.

[rb.]

Jobs come with expenses...proper wardrobe, transportation, child care, etc. If you make $400 a week on unemployment, not incurring any of those expenses, and are faced with making that much, or less, WHILE incurring those types of expenses, it can be cost prohibitive.

I'm all for working as many jobs as you can, if you need to, be sometimes it doesn't make financial sense. 2+2 doesn't suddenly equal 5, just because you took a job.

[sandyd]

If a person qualifies for the maximum $400 a week and gets a $200 a week part time job then the state will pay the difference.

Not Cali...and not most States I've read about. Most kick the person off and tell 'em to live on the 200 and if that job ends you can file for UI using that job and now get oh...140/week UI.

[occupant]

Originally Posted by dyrt

In fact there is a lot of full time work available.

There is NO full time work here in Michigan available unless you are highy degreed and those are ony a trickle.I must admit things are improving in the last year or so, though.
I have almost 40 years experience in retail and catering, 10 of that in management.Retail is DEAD, here.Catering is too.So there are so many variables in the way this question needs to be answered.Remember I told you that I put in 75 applications for work while on unemployment, even for jobs that were far away or that I had no experience at. Got 5 crappy jobs out of those, for very little money and treated like crap, because the employer had such a large pool of begging prospective employees, he could.
The only way we could keep this house and pay our bills is my wonderful DH, who supported us through it all and continues to do so by working his azz off, and we used most of his savings and all of mine. I may need to look at a second part time job option soon.

[flowerchild]

I know there aren't many jobs in my area of michigan, and what there are don't give you more than 15-20 hours. Even the people that I know that work full time, have had their hours cut down to 28-30 hours a week.

[Potemkin]

Originally Posted by occupant

There is NO full time work here in Michigan available unless you are highy degreed and those are ony a trickle.I must admit things are improving in the last year or so, though.

Originally Posted by flowerchild

I know there aren't many jobs in my area of michigan, and what there are don't give you more than 15-20 hours. Even the people that I know that work full time, have had their hours cut down to 28-30 hours a week.

THE "JOB" IS DEAD.

(Note the date)

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...y-1571617.html

The death of the JOB : INSIDE STORY

We are hooked on jobs, but the addiction is only a recent one. Now tech nology, economics and the global market are changing the world of work and we a re going to have to kick the job habit. American author William Bridges, in a new book entitled "Jobshift", argues that, almost unseen, this process is alrea dy under way, but there are still plenty of shocks in store. This is an extract

William Bridges

Sunday, 5 February 1995

EVERY day brings another story of "job losses". We are told the recession is over, but the proportion of the workforce that is "jobless" has not fallen as it has after previous recessions. John Major's government is trying to "create jobs" by easing taxes and regulations, but the opposition says it should intervene more. We hear that the only way to protect "jobs" is to increase productivity, yet the result seems usually to be to make "jobs" redundant. When I was growing up, we used to read that by the year 2000 everyone would have to work only 30 hours a week and that the rest would be leisure time. But as we approach the year 2000, it seems more likely that half of us will work 60 hours a week and the rest of us will be unemployed. What is going wrong?

The reality is that what is disappearing today is not just a certain number of jobs, or jobs in certain industries or in one country - or even jobs in the developed world as a whole. What is disappearing is the very thing itself: the job.

THE JOB is a social artefact, although it is so deeply embedded in our consciousness that most of us have forgotten its artificiality or the fact that most societies since the beginning of time have done fine without jobs. In the pre-industrial past, people worked very hard, but they did not have jobs to frame and contain their activities. Then jobs became not only common but important; they were nothing less than the only widely- available path to security and success. Now they are disappearing.


......


Those old rules are gone. Although organisations are remarkably uncomfortable in articulating them, new rules are slowly coming into focus, and the sooner today's workers understand them, the better off they will be. The new rules are these: l Everyone is a contingent worker, not just the part-time and contract workers. Everyone's employment, that is, is contingent on the results that the organisation can achieve.

l Workers need to regard themselves as people whose value to the organisation must be demonstrated in each successive situation they find themselves in.

l Workers need to develop an approach to their work and a way of managing their own careers that is more like that of an external supplier than that of a traditional employee.

l The wise company will work with these new-style workers collaboratively to make the relationship as beneficial to them as possible, but the benefits of this new work arrangement will be different from the old ones. They will probably lie in the nature of the work itself rather than being add-ons such as sick leave, pensions and health care.

l Workers must act like people in business for themselves, by maintaining a plan for career-long self-development, by taking primary responsibility for health insurance and retirement funds, and by renegotiating their compensation arrangements with the organisation when and if organisational needs change.

l Because more and more of the organisation's efforts are likely to be undertaken by project teams made up of individuals from different backgrounds, workers must be able to switch their focus rapidly from one task to another, to work with people with very different training and mindsets, to work in situations where the group is the responsible party and the manager is only a co-ordinator, to work without clear job descriptions, and to work on several projects at the same time.

l Just as workers will need to be ready to shift from project to project within the same organisation, they should expect that much more frequently than in the past they will have to move from one organisation to another. Long-term employment is, for most workers, a thing of the past. The organisation will try to minimise these shifts, recognising that they are difficult and disruptive to the effectiveness of both the organisation and the worker. But both parties will have to make their long-term plans with the likelihood of such shifts in mind.

[DReynolds]

I agree with this, but the shift occurred 20 or 30 years ago. It's been a generation at least since people could expect to hold the same job for years on end. I'd say it happened in the 1980's with the IT revolution.