The backwash of the credit crisis of late last year continues in the form of high unemployment figures, which will continue to worsen. There are a couple of points to bear in mind in the current circumstances. If you lost your house in a hurricane, it would be a major personal economic calamity, accompanied by the obvious discomfort of having to live in a public facility while you rebuilt your house. But there would be no sense of shame or loss of dignity associated with having to do this. One of the things I have noticed is that people that have lost their jobs due to resizing tend to feel ashamed, as though it were somehow their fault. The reality of the situation is that we are going thro...

As we continue with the drumbeat of bad numbers we must remember that the economy is creating new jobs even as we speak. In the first quarter of 2009, two and a half million job losses took place. What people don’t realize is that nearly double that number of new jobs was also created. Thus, the net effect is really not as bad as it sounds—it's not as though all those millions of people that have lost jobs are all jobless and have not found other jobs. What’s really happening is that even as the current economy is destroying some types of jobs, other new types are being generated. So be very creative and innovative and open to opportunity if you are looking for a job c...

A few days ago I came across an amazing article. While most of us (myself included) sit back and bemoan the current economic crisis, there are groups around the world that are seeing opportunities and preparing for them in a long-term manner. The example given here is the little-known industry of begging. While we may argue about whether or not it can legitimately be called an organized industry and so on, and without going into the moral aspects, this article clearly shows an industry that is looking at things from a long-term perspective, wants to take advantage of a market that they know will exist for a fairly short period, is preparing for it well in advance, is practicing for th...

I commented in a recent blog post that about four and a half million jobs were created in the US during the first quarter of 2009. This New York Times blog post talks about how the big issue with the current recession might not be the number of job losses but the lack of creation of new jobs. Having experienced various recessions during my career I can confidently state—based on personal experience—that there is a lot of truth to this. There are very few industries, if any, that are doing some net increased hiring. However, while on one hand it may appear that this recession is going to be extremely devastating for many years to come—or at least that’s what a lot...

There is currently a tremendous level of emphasis and thought around the issue of job creation. Here is a really interesting, nonprofit, grassroots-evolved job-help situation that I thought people would be interested in reading about and (possibly) joining. Job Angels is a movement that is growing quickly on social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and promises to give a boost to out-of-work individuals. The mission of the Job Angels is for each member to help just one person find gainful employment, and to assist people by even just lending a sympathetic ear. This mission is rapidly snowballing and represents an effort by individuals to help battle the current job crisis...