Give People What They Want

Lately I have been hearing more and more people say that there are no jobs. I hear this so much it is beginning to make me a bit angry. There may not be the same number of jobs that there were two years ago; however, there are still jobs. There are actually tons of jobs, all over the place. But here is a little reality check:

• If you want to make $70,000 a year assembling steering assemblies in an auto plant, there are not as many of these jobs anymore.
• If you want to work for a newspaper that is losing money, there are not as many of these jobs anymore either.
• If you want to get overtime every week on your job, there are not as many jobs that are paying overtime anymore, since companies are cutting back and watching their money more carefully.
• If you want to make $80,000 as a salesperson in a furniture store, there are not as many of these jobs as there were a few years ago.
• If you are a union electrician who used to get paid $60 an hour to install wiring in Las Vegas high rises–there are not as many of these jobs as there were a few years ago.
• If you are typically paid $250,000 a year as a copywriter in an advertising agency, there are not as many jobs as there were a few years ago.
• If you are a corporate attorney who used to make $275,000 a year, whose job is to help big companies sell securities, there are not as many of these jobs around.
• And if you are a finance wiz who used to be paid $500,000 a year to do incredibly creative things with numbers–there are not as many of these jobs around either.

The viability of certain types [Read more]

Women and Men, Planning, and Unemployment

In my days of practicing law, some of the other young male associates were extremely secretive about sharing their personal lives with anyone in the firm. There were two things they did not necessarily want everybody to know about:

• Whether they were involved in a serious relationship, and
• Whether or not they had purchased a house.

These associates were concerned that if the partners in the law firm knew they were in serious relationships and/or had homes, the partners would be more likely to consider them shackled to the job, and therefore at the mercy of the law firm. If a man had a significant other [Read more]