Well, the President came out with some decent stuff during his State of the Union address the other day (January 20), and offered a great deal of assurances to the American working (and non working class) that things are at least moving in the right direction.

In fact, his speech was so rousing and well received that a full 81% of the voters polled by CNN, rated it as very positive or somewhat positive. Not too bad for a sitting President that has been under constant fire from the other side of the aisle for the past 6 years.

Among all of the things he covered during his just 3 seconds shy of one hour long speech, the economy and the employment rate figures took up an appropriate amount of time. 

But before I get to all of that, let me just say two things here and now:

First, I am an unabashed Obama supporter. Always have been. Always will be. 

Second, My blog tries not to be political. I concentrate on unemployment from a personal standpoint – how it affects you and your personal life. But it’s sometimes difficult to ignore what happens center stage. After all, what happens in Washington as well as state capitals around the country could have (and probably did) affect your current joblessness condition. For that matter, what happens regarding national, state and local issues could affect the future of your joblessness condition.

Now that I have given you the disclaimers, let’s get back to what happened the other night.

At worst, all Presidents lie. At best, all Presidents stretch the truth. And on Tuesday evening, regarding the current employment figures, the truth was, as Bob Uecker used to say, “Juuuust a bit outside.” 

Among the claims President Obama made in reference to the employment/unemployment statistics was, “Over the past 5 years, our businesses have created more than 11 million jobs.” 

Nice.

But the usual caveats are appropriate here. While it is true that so many jobs have been created during the past 5 years, over half a million federal, state and local government jobs have been lost (many in the teaching field). Add to that, the fact that since his time in office, the U.S. lost millions of jobs in both the private and public sector. Boil it all down, and what you get in a net increase of about 6.4 million jobs that have been added during this time.

Not bad, but not the 11 million plus he spoke of. Better than the Bush or Reagan administrations, and far below the Clinton era’s 18 million. A long way to go. But encouraging nonetheless.

One last thing, before I am done here for the day, The president also stated that wages for those that have jobs are finally going up. 

Yay.

True, but between 2013 and 2014, the average rise in hourly wages went up a whopping 40 cents. Average weekly incomes rose about 2.5 percent during that same time period.

Look, I get it. State of the Union addresses are very political, and represent the arguments for an administrations policies. This means that actual context is often missing in them.

What do I mean by “context?” Ummm…. you. I mean you. You are here reading up on advice for the unemployed. The talk about joblessness in this country is all fine and well, but right now, you aren’t in the overall conversation. And you need to be.

It’s really pretty simple: Let us all help each other stay better acquainted with support and advice on helping everyone who enters this forum in the quest for finding a job, as well as help in dealing with the day to day personal problems unemployment brings.

My Advice? Stay with me.

“Unemployment.”

It’s the word Sergeant Munch writes in the center of the whiteboard, strategically placed in the middle of the squad room. All the other detectives stand around staring at it in rapt attention, notebooks at the ready. He then circles the word, and draws lines that radiate out in all directions. At the end of each line, he writes the words “depression,” “anxiety,” “fear,” “loneliness,” “failure” and “broke.” He circles those words also.

The camera now focuses in tightly on Detective Benson, sporting her 16th different hairdo of the season. With one raised brow and staring that thousand yard stare, our Detective Benson, speaking to no one in particular in that whispery, mannish voice of hers says, “We’ve got a serial killer on our hands.” Then, Detective Stabler (showing us his entire range of emotions) crosses both eyes and purses his lips. “Let’s just go kill the sonofabitch. You know I need to kill someone,” he responds in his stoic yet ever so slightly psychotic manner. In the end, Fin mutters something unintelligible, because (finally acknowledging the elephant in the room) Ice-T simply cannot act, and Captain Cragen, still refusing to accept his failures as a Captain and a man, shouts, “Fine. Just do it by the book or we’ll have I.A.B. up all our asses!”

Class dismissed.

Sorry for the T.V. reference, but if you think about it, it’s apt.

If you are, or have been unemployed for a week, a month, or, God forbid, a year, that word occupies the center of your galaxy and everything in your life revolves around it. Decisions on where to go, what to do, how to do it, and why to do it, are all predicated on that one word. It is Patient Zero from which all things flow.

Damn.

That is way too much pressure for one person to handle. But I believe there is some hope, and evidently you feel it too, and that is why you are visiting these pages

This blog is designed to help you navigate through what can be the horror show of unemployment, assist you with overcoming a variety of financial obstacles, and guide you through the inevitable relationship meltdowns unemployment brings. If you stay with me you will find that I give some pretty sound advice to (at the very least) mitigate what is unquestionably a truly stressful time in your life.All that being said, let us press on with what this blog is about.

To much of the planet, you are a number on a page. You’re part of the 7.6%, or 7.7%, or whatever number they’re using at the end of each month to explain the unemployment percentages. You’re one of the 13,000,000, no, wait, you have to add in the underemployed, so now you’re part of the 17,000,000, no, wait, you have to add in the numbers of folks that have completely stopped looking for work altogether, so now you’re part of the 20,000,000 unemployed. And on and on and on.

Numbers on a page.

Look at it for yourself. Whether it’s Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN. Turn them on, and when the time comes for them to talk about America’s unemployed, you are simply reduced to numbers. Rarely does anyone, in detail, ever truly focus on what unemployment means.

“Yes,” you say to your TV. “I know you know what unemployment is, Mr. Hannity, but do you really know what it means? Because I sure as hell do.” He, of course, doesn’t. He, like so many others, twirls his little pen, admires his perfectly coiffed hair, and looks completely dumbfounded that anyone would be so naive, so silly, so wasteful, so un-American, as to extend the unemployment benefits for another year.

So what is unemployment, anyway?

 

• It is the fact that almost 25,000,000 families have had their homes foreclosed upon since 2007.
• Over 2,000,000 families were foreclosed on in 2012 alone.
• Many of the 18,000,000 displaced families are living in cheap motels, with family, or in their cars.
• Recent studies have indicated that there is a strong correlation between significant increases in child abuse and local mortgage foreclosures.
• Just a 1% rise in unemployment was accompanied by a roughly 1% increase in suicide in the U.S. This also true in Greece, Spain, and Italy.
• The rates of suicides between 2008 and 2010 rose 4 times faster than it did in the 8 years before the recession.
• In a recent survey of law enforcement agencies across the country that polled 700 agencies, 56% of them said that in 2011 the bad economy had caused an increase in domestic conflict. A similar survey found that that number was at 40% in 2010.

Now, those facts, as interesting as they may be, explain only what unemployment is, not what it means.

Let’s not confuse the two.  

Just a short time ago, you may have been regarded as a productive member of society, a “really good person.” You were someone who could always be counted on. Someone who mattered. Now, because you find yourself jobless, you may not be held in such high esteem. That’s part of what unemployment means.

It also means a lot of unwanted emotions are now your best friends (like teenage acne) who

never, ever leave your side. Emotions like humiliation, loneliness, emptiness, the feeling of failure, desperation, and the fear of just about everyone and everything.

And it brings the one searing question that is always in the back of your head: “How in the hell am I going to make it through until tomorrow?”   

Those emotions, and so many others are included in what unemployment means. And honestly, how many times do we get to sit down with anyone, and I mean anyone, and really talk about that part of being unemployed? Rarely, if ever.

We simply just never get it out.

And all you want, all you need is to get back to that place you once were and leave all this nonsense behind. I often wonder why most of us don’t completely just jump out of our skins. After all, no matter how busy, or how much pressure you were under when you used to be down at the office, it can’t compare to the pressures of being unemployed.

But there is hope. There are solutions. You can survive this. 

My advice? Stay with me.