unemployment

Quick Things To Help your Unemployed Fellow Fan

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So you've got some fellow fans, geeks, and otaku who are having a tough-time job wise.  Maybe they just lost their job, maybe you've found your online or local community is plagued by unemployment.  What can you do, fast, to help people out?

  • Set up a message board topic or similar area on your gang/convention/group's website for job assistance and encourage people to help out.
  • Make unemployment – and employment – a subject at your next gaming session, group get-together, etc.  For that matter make a spinoff group until people's economic lives are less unpleasantly unemployment-focused.
  • Do a whip-round in your mailing list or preferred social media to gather people's lists of recruiters, temp agonies, etc. and pass them out to those seeking employment.
  • Make sure everyone in your fan group links to each other on LinkedIn and helps each other network.
  • Collect people's resumes and distribute them to the group in case they hear of any openings – that can take just an evening.
  • Hold an immediate online commiseration session.  It'll feel good.
  • Have everyone in your fan group go see if there are relevant openings at their companies.  Set a deadline to report it.

Any other suggestions?

– Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: Can The Recession Keep People From Hating the Unemployed?

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One thing I'm hoping about in the Great Recession is that people will finally get over the idea that The Unemployed Are Bad People.

I know that's probably a naive hope, since people without jobs appear to be the favorite whipping boys/girls of any politician who wants to score quick points in the "personal responsibility" category, or preachers who want to single someone out as worthy of their god's wrath.  But I'm hoping, perhaps beyond hope, that people are going to learn the valuable lesson that people without jobs are not Bad People.

I'd like to hope that this comes about from empathy.  As people see their friends and family suffer unemployment, they will understand that the unemployed are all of us.  As we find ourselves encountering the unemployed, we will realize they're like us, they're trying, and things are hard.  As we see more of this suffering, we will come to understand it.

Of course for the case of some people, that is a terribly naive idea on my part.  So I also figure that some people will learn that the unemployed are not Evil Incarnate by joining their ranks for awhile.  It's hard to claim some legion of people are a faceless bane on existence when you're part of them.  If anything, it'll at least take a few egos down a peg and humble them a bit.

Sadly that may be naive as well.  I suspect those who need to believe that others are Bad People will cling to the idea the unemployed are Bad since they make such easy (and powerless) targets.  Those who wish to paint the unemployed as bad people, even if they are unemployed, will find ways to claim they're different.  Their egos can't handle anything else.

But, hey, I can hope – and write rants like this with the hope of helping people change.

– Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: The Jobs Aren’t There

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Frustration Friday: There aren't any jobs you morons

As I watch the not-quite smoking not-quite ruins of the world economy, I've also noticed that some politicians, public figures, and people in general seem to have a problem with the unemployed.

Namely, it seems that they want them to get a job, as if people who are unemployed aren't looking for work.

The real problem is that there are plenty of people looking for work – its that there aren't enough jobs, or jobs that they're capable of doing in this Great Reset.

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