I left my job about two months ago, and I applied for unemployment immediately. I got a new job today, but I STILL haven’t gotten my unemployment decision. Additionally, my food stamp application was delayed due to personal circumstances. In short, had I not had money saved for an emergency, I would have been mega-screwed.

I know some people are not in a position where they have the luxury of storing away significant amounts of cash but, if you are, I beg of you to do so if you aren’t already. I can’t imagine what position I’d be in right now if not for my budgeting.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

PS. I posted this here instead of in c/finance because the sidebar there specifies that it’s supposed to be for finance-related news.

  • That’s pretty similar to my experience, although I’m maybe slightly less seasoned than you in terms of experience. I wasn’t exactly expecting to get a new position immediately, but given all the talk in the media of a needy job market, I had a pretty damn hard time getting so much as a call back from most places.

    •  Rentlar   ( @Rentlar@beehaw.org ) 
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      10 months ago

      Yeah the job market is so fucked up, being told everywhere needs people, except for every company you just applied for lol.

      On one end you have HR sitting on their ass for months, advertising for jobs already filled (only finding out weeks later), go through 2/3 interviews to not be picked or put on hold even following up for a couple months, random filters that screen out proper candidates while keeping ones who bloated it with keywords… long lines to even speak to someone at career events. Been through it all. I picked up every single god-damn call and still it took 10 months. The whole process is so denigrating and it makes it easy to fault yourself for it. (Lesson learned: don’t do that!). Other thing I learned is many companies for some fucked up reason like to hire around the same time so often it was 3 interviews 1 month, 0 interviews for the next two.

      On the other hand, from recruiting side you have an avalanche of applications to sift through, many of them AI garbage nowadays, and if you interview someone that can’t say much about a project they put on their resume, what can you do?

      With inflation at the level it is, and salary offers not keeping up either, even if you can land something it’s not quite a golden ticket on its own.