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It’s a terrible job market out there, right? Everyone’s firing everyone. The employment statistics are positively frightening. This is all true. However, there are certain careers (not freelance writer, I stress) that are actually expanding during the country’s recession. A story on CNNMOney.com says that people looking for careers in health services, education and accounting are making sound choices. These are three fields that are actually doing well right now. Education is thriving because, unfortunately, so many people are out of work. They’re looking for more degrees, training and certifications to boost their status among potential employers. Health services is doing well because so many of us aren’t. The population is getting older. That means more aches, pains, illnesses and injuries. The demand for healthcare is booming. Finally, as companies try to not to overspend and cut back on their budgets, they’re turning to accounting pros for help. Thus, the accounting field is thriving, too. Yes, it’s a bit depressing that these fields are doing well largely because of firings, the poor health of our country and axe-wielding employers. But what can you do? In a jobs market like this, you take whatever good news you can get.
A friend of mine recently started a new job with the City of Chicago. This came after he spent more than 10 years working for a different government agency. The first five or so years were fine. Ever since, he’s wanted out. He’s wanted out so badly that it at times made him miserable. At a holiday party last weekend, he told us all a story of a fellow employee who received a plaque and commemorative medallion when he reached his 10th year of service at this agency. The employee wondered aloud what the present was for 15 years of service. My friend had a quick reply: “If I’m here in 15 years, I hope they give out a gun with a single bullet.” Yes, it was time to move on. Here’s the best advice I can give to anyone unhappy with his or her job: If it’s making you miserable, if you hate trudging to work in the morning, do something about it. Start interviewing. Start networking. Start looking for something new. Yes, this is a terrible time to find a new job. But, isn’t at least looking — at least being proactive — better than complaining every day about your boss or the dull work you’re saddled with? Get busy looking. Your dream job could be just around the corner.
I’ve long preached to the workaholics I know that they really shouldn’t devote too much of their lives to their careers. Yes, it’s important to earn your money. But devoting every waking minute to your employer is excessive, and I know too many people who do just that. This story on Yahoo!’s finance site provides yet more evidence that while you may care about your employer, the odds are pretty good that your employer doesn’t care all that much about you. The story lists the top 10 benefits employers may cut next year to boost their profitability during what everyone predicts to be a dismal 2009. The changes include requiring employees to pay for a greater amount of their healthcare costs, freezing salaries, reducing merit increases and cutting 401(k) matches. It’s not particularly pleasant stuff. So next time you’re tempted to work through the weekend or hang out in the office until 8 p.m., think twice. You owe your employer an honest day’s work, but nothing more. Your employer certainly isn’t watching out for you.
I was talking to a public-relations pro working from downtown Chicago on Friday. As we were waiting for a vice president from her company to join us on the line, she mentioned that she had to attend her first work-related holiday party later that evening. She didn’t say it outright, but the tone in her voice did: She wasn’t looking forward to the big event. And who could blame her? Work-related holiday parties are bad enough. I mean, do you really want to chat up the boss during a holiday party? Not unless you can ask him where your holiday bonus went, I suppose. Or maybe you’d like to tell him that while you appreciate the coupon for a discount ham, you’d much rather have some cold, hard holiday cash to spend. But worst of all is the holiday party held on a Friday after work. Most employees are trudging through the week with Friday as the light at the end of their tunnels. A holiday party on that magical day? Talk about dimming that light. So listen up, bosses of the world: If you insist on forcing your employees to attend a holiday party, hold it on a Wednesday or a Thursday. Leave Friday alone. That’s the day your workers finally escape you.
Because I’m a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines, I often hear the complaint that the news media spends too much time reporting on the negative. How can we hope to recover from this recession when the newspapers are telling everyone that everything is so bad? they ask me. Well, there’s a reason the newspapers are filled with so much bad news these days. That’s because things are bad. Really bad. Just look at the news that the United States shed more than 500,000 jobs in November. That’s right, more than half-a-million jobs were lost in one terrible month. No wonder we didn’t need to hear an official acknowledgement from economists that the country is in a recession. We can feel it. So next time you wonder why you can’t read anything good in the newspapers, maybe it’s because there isn’t much good to report on.
Everyone hurts when the economy slumps. No one loses a job and doesn’t suffer at least a bit. But it’s single women who stand to suffer the most as the recession swallows jobs. Gail MarksJarvis, a columnist writing in the Chicago Tribune, writes that single women are the most vulnerable as job losses mount because they generally have little to no savings to back them up. In an emergency, they don’t have the cash needed to help them survive. MarksJarvis took her information from the Consumer Federation of America. The federation reports that the 26 percent of households headed only be a woman earn, save and have built far less wealth than have other American households. Here’s a startling statistics: Women on their own had acquired a median net worth of $32,850. At the same time, the median net worth for the heads of all households in general came in at a far higher $93,001. The Consumer Federation recommends that financial counseling be made available to single women who support themselves. I agree with that. I have no idea how such a program would work, but the federal government and the states should be able to work something out, don’t you think?
We all received a memo this morning at the publishing company at which I work on a full-time/part-time basis. Seems several employees have been entering and leaving the building without swiping their tiny little electronic tags in front of a sensor in our lobby. The tags help the company keep tabs on when employees are leaving and returning to their cubicles. I admit, I’m one of the culprits. I come in one day a week, and I’ve long since lost my electronic tab. I’d like to think it was a deliberate bout of sabotage. After all, it’s pretty intrusive of an employer to keep such close tabs on employees. I find it a bit insulting. But, alas, I really did lose my tag. And I don’t feel like going through the effort to replace it. Most days this is OK. But depending on who is working at the reception desk — and how fast I move — I have to sign in every time I walk in or out of the building. If I go to the 7-11 across the street for a Diet Coke? Yep, I have to sign and out. It’s a real drag. I’ve never fit well into corporate culture, which is why I’m thrilled that I spend most of my days working from home, and that the better half of my income comes from freelance writing, where I’m my own boss. Here’s my thoughts on signing in and signing out: Isn’t there a better way to measure whether employees aren’t working hard enough? Can’t you look at their work itself? For instance, our building is filled with salespeople. Some sell a ton. Others, well, they don’t. Are the salespeople who sit at their desks from 9 to 5 better than the ones who take constant smoking breaks even if the ones taking the breaks bring in more ad dollars? I don’t think so. So many companies — and, yes, I know there are forward-thinking ones out there — focus on the tiny things, the minutiae that rightly drives workers crazy. Times are incredibly tough out there right now. I think everyone would be better off if companies focused on big-picture ideas of how to bring in more profit. Keeping tabs on every time their employees run across the street for a coffee? That seems more obnoxious than profitable to me.
Remember life before the Internet? Me neither. Today, though, you can jump on the Internet whenever you’re feeling glum about your own life and find someone’s life that is in far worse shape. Or, if you’re out of work, looking for a new job or just not satisfied with your own career, you can always search the Internet for tales from other folks whose careers are giving them massive headaches, too. A good place to start if you’re into the “misery loves company” thing is the Career and Job-Hunting Blog run by QuintCareers.com. The blog itself is quite informative, filled with, as its name suggests, job-hunting tips, statistics on the labor market and recent hiring trends. It’s these last two parts, the statistics and the hiring trends, that fits in the “misery loves company” angle. For instance, by logging onto the blog you’ll find that the number of U.S. residents filing claims for unemployment insurance has just surged to its highest levels since 2001. There’s the by now old news that 1.2 million U.S. jobs had been lost as of November of this year. And this is just the beginning. I know we’re in an “official” recession now, but I sure didn’t, and I’m sure you didn’t, either, need any officials telling me that the job market’s been in the toilet. We just needed to look at our bills, our paychecks and our 401(k) plans — not to mention the blogs out there — to know that.
Thanksgiving is behind us. That means we are in the full grip of the holiday season. For some this is the merriest time of the year. For others? Well, there are a lot of Scrooges out there. But what about in the workplace? Does work suffer during the holidays? After all, the holiday season is filled with days off. There are holiday parties. Christmas music on cubicle radios. Online shopping. Today is CyberMonday, when everyone’s supposed to click away a few dollars on holiday doodads. Surprisingly enough, there have been studies in the past that suggest that workers aren’t really any less productive during the holidays. But, just in case you’re managing an office and feel that your workers are too busy ho-ho-hoing instead of type, type typing those business reports, visit this Web site for some tips on maintaining productivity during the holiday season. I won’t list the tips. They’re pretty self-explanatory. But I will say this: The holidays should be a time for productivity to dip. We work hard in the United States, taking less vacation time than do workers in European countries. It’s no crime to let down just a bit during one month of the year. Don’t be too hard on your employees if you catch them doing a little online shopping. Who knows, they may even be buying a gift for you.
It’s unfortunate that this story still needs to be written. But the Wall Street Journal last week ran a story on how women can “hold their own” in what is still a male-dominated working world. I’m not a woman. But I’m a bit amazed that a story like this still needs to be written. Maybe I’m naive. But women shouldn’t have to worry about being treated any differently than men in the working world. My wife tells me, though, that, unfortunately, women always do have to worry about this. She once worked at Montgomery Ward’s before the retailer went out of business. (Quick story: My wife designed children’s apparel for Ward’s. About three months before the company went out of business, Ward’s sent my wife and five other apparel employees to Singapore and Thailand on a long, and costly, business trip. Is it any wonder that the company went out of business?) My wife told me then that she and the other women with whom she worked had to work three times as hard as the men to earn the same level of respect. I found this hard to believe back then. Unfortunately, it seems to be true today, too. That’s one of the reasons that I prefer working largely for myself. My wife does, too. There aren’t unfair barriers when you work for yourself. There aren’t corporate politics and gossip and silliness. Sure, there are tons of other aggravations. But at least you know you start on an even playing field. The Wall Stret Journal story I linked to above has some good advice for women. I just wish it wasn’t necessary. |
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