[CoalBucket]

Tommy Tiernan used to do a sketch about when he was unemployed in the 80s when it was socially acceptable to be unemployed.

Back when unemployment was down around 3% you would have been considered a lazy fcuker to be out of work, assuming you were able. Now its not looked down upon and rightly so.

[Priori]

OP, you might be interested in some of the responses on this thread too.

[Delancey]

There is huge anger throughout society at the mess we're in and I regret to say that all too often that anger is directed at those in receipt of state benefits - just look at some of the threads in the State Benefits forum where people get attacked for asking about their entitlements ( I'm sure the moderators have some stories to tell ).
This anger is totally misplaced - I say take it out on the greedy bankers and developers , the corrupt politicians and the incompetent regulators who slept on the job , taking it out on people in difficult circumstances is cowardly.
I think that there is still stigma attached to being unemployed - perhaps this is felt more keenly by the person unemployed , the effect of unemployment on a person's self worth and confidence is well known.

[Sir Oxman]

Originally Posted by ekans

it amazes me that people should feel the need to lie about being unemployed due to embarrassment. i've been unemployed. i did n't hide it. who are others to judge in any case. i'd rather be honest than be so lame that i'd feel the need to lie

I agree.
I am neither embarrassed nor ashamed.

[Limerick Bandit]

Originally Posted by Dudeschmood

There are lots of jobs out there. People these days are too quick to point the finger of blame at someone else than accept responsibility themselves.

A lot more unemployed people out there than jobs.

[Sheensie]

Thanks Priori.

[Sheensie]

Thanks to you all for posting - it's really interesting to hear your views.

I'd really like to get some examples of people's personal experiences of unemployment... have you been unemployed for any length of time and are looking for a job with no luck? Or have you given up looking?

Maybe you've always worked and don't see how people are finding it difficult to get a job?

Either way, I'd be interested to hear your story.

Please PM me if you're interested in sharing your perspective for my article and I'll give you further info and contact details.

[Handsome Bob]

It's embarassing for me personally, and that is coming from someone on a full time FAS work placement. You can't win with some people, before I was on the FAS WPP some people were almost hostile towards me when asking me what kind of jobs I was applying for. But now that I'm on the FAS WPP, those same people give off the vibe of "get a real job".

In sum, some people are just pricks, hypocritical pricks at that. They won't be happy unless they're dumping their negative vibes onto another individual. So one should just try to forget about what these people think.

[dan_d]

I think I answered this question on another thread not that long ago....

I find it embarrassing, but that's just me. I don't know if other people particularly care about whether I'm unemployed or not.

It's less the embarrassment though, and more the complete frustration. I've spent the last hour going through all the usual recruitment websites, and individual company sites - I'm just going through Linkedin now aswell. There's just...nothing! Nothing that I'm qualified for in my field - which is civil engineering, so I've accepted that it's dead! - but everything else requires experience in other stuff that I just don't have.It's been...9 months now and I'm heartily fed up with the whole thing. Looking at jobs in Germany this morning too (I'll need to take German lessons, don't speak it), France (have good French, but it's not fluent)....the UK (what I've seen this morning requires about 10 years experience, which I don't have)....

I don't know exactly what I feel at this stage. The whole situation with what was done to this country by FF (in terms of the fact that just threw money around and allowed reckless and unregulated banking) makes me extremely angry - so much so that I don't think about it any more. I don't blame the Government because the construction industry was unsustainable. But I am very frustrated at the fact that everything has stagnated for over 2 years now, and is not really showing many signs of improving. Not only has construction gone, but plenty of other industries went too, and really, no movement has been made anywhere to improve the situation.I've no idea what on earth could be done, but anything would be better than sitting in an indefinite limbo.

At this stage I'm completely torn and cannot decide the "right" thing to do. Emigrate (and stay in civil eng, therefore staying abroad indefinitely, because it ain't going to recover here any time in the future) or go back and do a Masters in a different field. Both will be tricky as there is a mortgage to consider. People keep saying to me "you need to decide what else you'd like to do".....problem is, I am what I want to be (an engineer), and I've not the first idea what else I'd like to be. Anyway, it's long past what I'd "like" to be - it's a case of taking any available job by now.I'm trying to be optimistic, but honestly, my heart sinks into my stomach every time I open up the recruitment sites and start a new search every day. it then sinks lower and lower and lower as I look at the same array of IT/sales/business jobs, none of which I have any experience in whatsoever. Can't even find admin/temping/shop jobs at this stage...

I could go on, but I'd drag you all into the abyss with me and I've rambled long enough!

[doolox]

I do casual work while looking for that elusive full time job.
I would never consider being embarrassed by unemployment in a country that has a long history of weak economic performance, gombeen politics, cronyism, open unprotected workforce protection etc....

There is an attitude of blaming the unemployed for their condition when, many times, there are underlying physical and psychiatric conditions behind their unemployment.

I'd say half the people on the dole in the good times were suffering from drug addiction, undiagnosed or improperly diagnosed learning disorders ( I knew several good hands-on engineering types who could not handle reading and writing because of undiagnosed dislexia and were held back in their jobs because of it).

What should have been done in the "good times" was an in-depth analysis case by case of each person on the dole longterm so as to better focus training resources to the genuine cases and stop wasting money on the non-starters.

People with not a hope of sustaining a job in a reasonable organisation should be placed in some form of semi-protected employment and at least kept supplied with the essentials of life. Society should not be wasting its time harrassing them to fill in forms and look for jobs they haven't a hope of securing or retaining if by some fluke they get accepted in the first place.

There needs to be radical joined up thinking between Depts of Education, Health, Labour, and Social Protection in this regard so that the personal qualities of each person on the dole be better examined to see what remedial action needs to be taken to better equip the person to enter the workforce, if that is even possible.

A lot can be done to coach people to enter temporary work arrangements on a casual basis to tide them over and get some cash flow in these straightened times. The government seems to think only in terms of full-time "permanent" jobs in large organisations and tend to neglect sole traders, small business or part-time work.

These are the future of employment as they offer greater flexibility, faster start-up and reaction to hard times and at least give some money and hope to people.

[Laika1986]

Lack of experience is a killer for me.I'v worked in most retails environments for years but no "proper" experience. The worst thing about it is not just the rejection of nothing getting anything,its having to tell everyone who knows you had an interview that you didnt get it. Its just a frustrating system.

I was in dole office about a month back. In the queue to sign for about an hour and i got a phone call so i answered it was just chatting to my mate for a min when these 2 scumbags tatoos etc jumped in front of me. Now im not particularly well built but i knew there was no real point in disputing it!then the fella behind me starts saying "oh i wouldn't let them away with that" and all this crap

[ABajaninCork]

It's horrible being unemployed. We would do ANYTHING to get out of this awful situation.

I hate going to the dole office every month. The office is dirty, dank, smelly and depressing, which mirrors itself on the people both working there and those who have to avail of the 'services'. There isn't even a public toilet in there. I guess this is for obvious reasons, but it's still not nice.

The ladies in the PO where we go to collect our payments are all very nice, and know us by name, but it's still horrible queuing to collect.

It's depressing to switch on the computer every day, scouring every website, scouring the press, sending off applications, most of which aren't even graced with a PFO.

It's especially horrible to find we are the only couple amongst our peers who aren't working. We still try to go out, have the odd takeaway (when we can afford it), and try to enjoy ourselves. But we pay our way, and don't want to be taking handouts or have people feeling sorry for us.

But do we find it embarrassing? I guess we've gone WAY past that now. I find people don't really ask what you do now, as there's so many of us in the same boat...

[Delancey]

Doolox makes a good point - in the good times of what was considered by economists to be '' full employment '' we still had around 100.000 thousand people drawing unemployment benefits - this should have been tackled at the time , it was probably a combination of medical / skills problems combined with a few who were just workshy.
Too late to do it now.....

[HellFireClub]

Originally Posted by Sheensie

Thanks to you all for posting - it's really interesting to hear your views.

I'd really like to get some examples of people's personal experiences of unemployment... have you been unemployed for any length of time and are looking for a job with no luck? Or have you given up looking?

Maybe you've always worked and don't see how people are finding it difficult to get a job?

Either way, I'd be interested to hear your story.

Please PM me if you're interested in sharing your perspective for my article and I'll give you further info and contact details.

I've recently come out of 2 years of unemployment, having started up a small business... I tried applying for job after job after job but was either overqualified or sometimes I just couldn't work out what was going on that was causing a lack of interest at all in my CV/application.

I've come to the conclusion that it isn't what you know when applying for a job in this country or demonstratable skills, or academic record... It seems to me that a lot of jobs are filled these days on who you know or having a connection somewhere that will open a door for you.

This is the bit that I found most frustrating, dealing with a country full of people practically screaming at me through forums such as this website, that I should not be a burden on the state and go and look for work and that I'm a lazy useless c*nt, but at the time, despite all my very best endeavours, not seeming to be able to get out of the rut that I had found myself in.

One big thing that wrecked my head, was having to decide to take off the bit of text on my CV that said I was currently unemployed, albeit that you are then wandering into a territory where as an applicant for a job, you are trying to start an employment relationship on the basis of a mistruth, something that as an employer in the recent past, would have caused me to immediately park a CV and it's accompanying applicant, if I had become aware of some falsehood that the CV was carrying.

So anyway, after a year and a half of life on the dole and 2 years of unemployment, without money to get off this island, I found that the only way I could get myself off it was to create a position of employment for myself.

I still wonder what kind of an insufferable hell on earth it must be for someone who might not have had this particular option that was open to me, as I had worked for myself previously and had experience with starting up a business. I can't think of anything worse than being on the dole and not having some kind of a gameplan or strategy to get off it, I was fortunate that I was always working away on a project of my own that if I couldn't land a job, this was going to be my job that I had started up for myself, but I can honestly say if I hadn't have had that little tiny light at the end of the very long tunnel to wander towards over the last year and a half, I don't know what I'd have done...

As I said, it's not like I'd have had the money on the dole to go overseas and try a fresh canvas approach, I genuinely don't know what I'd have done, but I can say that although it was never something that I had ever contemplated, you certainly get a very clear insight into the deep and dark sense of abject hopelessness that I feel after my own experience, must be causing suicides in young males in Ireland.

One thing I deliberately left until last, is the experience of signing on every month. To me, the dole office is a huge part of the problem, and the staff that work down there, the culture within the front line staff in the local dole office is a huge part of the prolem... If I was minister for Social Protection in the morning, my fight against the scourge of unemployment would start in the local dole office.

There is this working assumption in the dole office, and you'd have to have gone through the "signing on" process to get a handle on this, that everyone at the business end of the counter is a worthless piece of absolute sh*t that is out to claim as much as they can and scam the system.

If I was Minister for Social Protection, I would start off by having three queues on signing on day...

Queue 1: Those who want to work and will take PAYE employment. I imagine this queue would be the longest by far. These people should be brought together into a group, their skillset and academic qualifications assessed within a week by them registering this information on a website, their work experience assessed and there should be an outsourced private sector HR/Recruitment Team that can work with these people IMMEDIATELY, (not in 12 weeks time as is the current set up with work to rules, etc), who want to work. The other thing that should be made mandatory is that all jobs/vacancies in the state should have to be registered with this new team, and if a suitable match is found, the employer should be incentivised to take the person in the queue on, with a small grant or something along those lines. (someone coming off 188 Euro a week saves the state 9,776 Euro a year. It seems like a no brainer to me, to give an employer a grant of 10% of that amount, 977 Euro in 3 or 6 months time, if the person is still in the job, saving the state 8,799 Euro a year and this is before you look at how much tax the person in the job might be paying after commencing work).

I say an outsourced private sector team because until you have to deal with the PS instransigent spastic belligerant gimps who work in the dole office, you will never understand why the place is so full of hopelessness, gloom and dread, and how their attitude towards those that they are paid to assist and serve, is projected onto the walls of the office that they work in. I have a theory that dole offices are literally infected with this deep sense of resentment by those that work there towards those that come through the door for state assistance.

Queue 2: Those who have worked for themselves before or who are in a position to start up businesses, who have a business plan and can get a business up and running with a 3K guaranteed LOAN maximum... This was the category that I fell into. As things currently stand, (2-3 years into this economic crisis), you would get more respect and thanks from any government department in this country, (or at least this has been my honest experience over the last 12 months), for keeping your mouth shut, your head down in the dole queue once a month and not rocking the boat, than you would get for walking into meet your Jobs Faciliator in your local dole office and saying that you want to start up a small business. There should be a proper enterprise support team along the lines of the BNI Network, where you turn up once a week, everyone supports each other, generating sales leads, looking at loan repayments, with local business people helping out on a voluntary basis. What is there at the moment is a Jobs faciliator in your local dole office, who takes your business plan for the "Back to Work Enterprise Scheme", and sticks it in a file. It never see's the light of day again!!! You fill out reams and reams of paperwork, but there is no purpose behind it, it is all for a big f*cking file they keep on you, but at no stage are you supported at all with your business!

Queue 3: For those that have no wish to do (1) or (2) above, I reckon there are only a handful of these people, and I think they should be set aside for the moment because if we dealt with the vast majority who present in a dole queue who fall into category (1) or (2) above, I don't actually think we'd have an employment problem at all in this country, or at least we would have a much much smaller problem than we currently have.

Make no mistake about it, and this is the word and opinion of a man here who has spent 1.5 years on the dole, tryed to find work, threw the towel in and ended up having to start up a small business: this government is currently obstructing job creation with petty rules, small minded petty politics in local dole offfices, rules that seem to be designed to keep people on welfare and civil servants in jobs, a lack of "giving a sh*t", by people who work in the dole office, a culture of, "that's someone else's job" in the dole office, and a lack of ownership of the problem of unemployment and a total absence of clear, fair and purpose driven LEADERSHIP by higher civil servants and the minister in question.

If you want to start dealing with a chronic unemployment problem, I don't know of a better place to start than with a "signing-on" queue of anywhere up to several hundred to possibly a thousand people once a month in a social welfare office.

[dan_d]

That is an extremely good post HellfireClub.

The points about the dole officers are very true.I deal with 2 offices (such are the vagaries of the system), and in one, they are actually very good to deal with - but the other...oh the other...

Having quite recently been treated extremely rudely by these people, basically accused of lying and hung up on, I am left with a deep amount of resentment towards them. They are there to help people, some of whom are experiencing the most vulnerable period in their lives, and they treat people like dirt. It is inexcusable. Politeness costs nothing, and if somebody is being polite to you, the least you can do is be polite back. I don't care how jaded you are, or how much crap you have to deal with. Common good manners takes little effort and costs nothing.

The point about knowing someone is equally valid. It certainly opens more doors than cold applications, applying for your merit and experience.

And then there are the ignoramuses who shout that you're here by choice, creaming off the state and living a fine life because you "couldn't be bothered" working. It's unbelievable that there are still people out there that think 450k people are on the dole by choice.Unbelievable.