a thread for the unemployed

blacksmith105

Right here goes , to those of you reading this thread that are unemployed at present tell us how you feel about the future of this country and if you think you stand a chance of getting back to work within the next 12 months

I have been out of work now for some time and would kill a bus full of babies to get back working but there is nothing available , just about keeping my head aboe water but interest rate rise by the ebs has added another kick in the you know whats and sinking fast . I am not going to start blaming the government for the collase in the economy but I think from listening to ministers recently they really cannot get us of of this mess and really dont understand what its like .

I ended up on prozac and could not cope with the whole situation , the calls from credit card companies , the feeling of hopelessnes and the impact it is having on the family .
I have just finished a part time course in NCI which helped but then you realise that there are no jobs available and crap its back to reality

Unfortunatly there is no one to represent the unemployed and we cant go on strike after we lost 5pc in the last budget . I am sure that there are tens of thousands of people in the same boat
I would be interested to hear how you are coping and you do you blame for the mess

sinnerboy

I started a poll here awhile back on "whose to blame"
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055633082

It remains open if anyone wants to take part . I too am unemployed since Nov last . I have taken to down time to upskill and keep "the head straight" . It is tough -very challenging financially .

sinnerboy

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/forumdisplay.php?f=72

This forum is a very useful resource if you are unemployed

Banned Account

sinnerboy wrote: »

I started a poll here awhile back on "whose to blame"
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055633082

It remains open if anyone wants to take part . I too am unemployed since Nov last . I have taken to down time to upskill and keep "the head straight" . It is tough -very challenging financially .

What the hall has "who's to blame" got to do with helping people get back to work?

Annasopra

There are groups that represent us - The INOU for a start - also I know in a lot of places around the country people have set up job clubs - a form of self help

cson

I'd agree with that to a certain extent; apportioning all the blame in the world won't get you a job. Though there certain persons are more culpable than others and must be held accountable [and I suspect it'll end up just being FitzPatrick and Fingleton being nailed to the cross to placate the Irish public when someone like Neary should face the same fate but thats for another thread] one must concede that a majority of us, the Irish people are culpable too. We paid €325k for 2 bed apartments in Sandyford, we ran up the Credit Card debt, we paid ourselves the wages that are crippling the country now. Granted it was handed on a plate for the most part, but we took our piece and then some.

I sympathise with those who are unemployed at the moment; I really do. There isn't a lot you can do except to keep trying to add to your skillset, take up a past time to keep you occupied and try to put on a brave face as much as you can.

Sleepy

Keep the heads up, use LinkedIn or any other network you have access to, keep sending emails and consider anything.

I'm on my last day of 6 months of contracting in the UK (commuting back and forth at weekends to see my family) and start a new job in Dublin next week. There are still some jobs out there but they're harder to get and won't be at the same levels of pay you used to get. My new job pays 5k less a year than my old one did and less than half what I make as a contractor but I'm delighted to be going home tonight knowing I'll get to put the kids to bed again most evenings.

sinnerboy

Fitzcaraldo wrote: »

What the hall has "who's to blame" got to do with helping people get back to work?

Well nothing directly of course . It is a part of a reasonable emotional reaction to ask this question when you are unemployed .

Ignore it if it bothers you .

I believe it is a useful question to ask because the answers may hopefully inform our future thinking about what we should expect of our own behavior and what trust we should place in - or what expectations we have of "authority" figures .

dan_d

Congratulations Sleepy. I recently took an offer of voluntary redundancy (not by choice, compulsory will follow shortly after for those of us left), and am now in the last few weeks of my job. I'm happy to be leaving my current job as my life has been hell the last year or so, but I'm very scared about the uncertainty of being unemployed. I intend to fill my time up as much as possible, but I'm under no illusions that it's not a place I want to be in, and I'll be doing my hardest to try and find a new job. Hoping and praying I'll be lucky, and i'm trying to be optimistic that I'll find a job in the next 6 months, at least.

DidierMc

I punched my local FF councillor in the face, made me feel alot better.

jimmycrackcorm

DidierMc wrote: »

I punched my local FF councillor in the face, made me feel alot better.

Did he not fix the potholes out on your street?

johnnyskeleton

sinnerboy wrote: »

I started a poll here awhile back on "whose to blame"
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055633082

It remains open if anyone wants to take part . I too am unemployed since Nov last . I have taken to down time to upskill and keep "the head straight" . It is tough -very challenging financially .

Seeing who is to blame for the recession is one thing, but applying the same blame to unemployment is problematic.

The problem is that the Irish economy was damaged by a massive debt fuelled bubble which debt now has to be repaid. As this bubble money went into housing, it caused a construction boom. So many of the jobs in construction, retail and the professions were never sustainable jobs but were rather the by product of the credit expansion.

With that in mind, it is hard to blame, for example, the banks for lending too much money because it is somewhat tautologous. Sure, by lending too much money they set us up for a fall, but a significant number of the jobs which have been lost so far are jobs that would never have existed anyway but for the banks lending too much.

So in a way, an unemployed builder may feel cheated by the construction crash, but on the other hand the only way that a construction crash would not have happened is if his job was never made available to him in the first place.

Unfortunately, it must have been very difficult for many kids to stay in school/college with the goal of ultimately earning a small amount of money when their contemporaries who left school were making very good money on building sites. I don't think you can blame them for taking that choice, even in retrospect, but from a purely neutral point of view this acceptance of the easy money to be made was a cause of serious problems.

So in a sense we are back to square one with regard to the unemployment situation i.e. back to pre-bubble unemployment levels (though it is noteworthy that even still we have more people working in the economy than previously). The problem is that many of those who are unemployed entered into long term committments based on the assumption that wages would stay the same and/or increase. This is the big difficulty facing the unemployed at the moment - debts. Apart from anything else, these debts often inhibit an unemployed person from trying to start up a business, look for work in a different part of the country or even accept a low paid job (there are threads on this forum about people who used to work as e.g. architect who have been offered jobs in tescos etc but don't take them because the pay would not service their loans).

dan_d

sinnerboy wrote: »

I started a poll here awhile back on "whose to blame"
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055633082

It remains open if anyone wants to take part . I too am unemployed since Nov last . I have taken to down time to upskill and keep "the head straight" . It is tough -very challenging financially .

I've a question (bit off topic maybe, I'll start a new thread if needs be). When you say you had to "upskill" what do you mean? I've a degree and a certain amount of experience.I have a vague idea about how the system works, but I'm sure I'll be told at some point I should take courses with FAS or something. What can FAS do for me, if anything? I'm computer literate, Autocad literate, literate full stop (linguistically in 2 languages). I'm interested in doing another language course to brush up, and maybe one to learn another different language, but they're in private institutes and I'll pay for them myself.I want to do continuing professional development courses with the professional institute I'm a member of to gain another "grade" through them, while I have the time. My other options are to look at post grad education or retraining in a totally different undergrad course (which isn't really an option tbh)

I'm not looking down on any of FAS courses or anything, but how can someone like me "upskill" through FAS? Surely I'd be more adding to my skills?? And how can I sit in front of FAS and agree to do a course with them when there aren't really any courses that i need through them? Sorry if I sound conceited, I just don't know how else to say it!

ei.sdraob

sinnerboy wrote: »

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/forumdisplay.php?f=72

This forum is a very useful resource if you are unemployed

that forum is very useful if you want to end-up in hell if you become unemployed

the owner (Brendan Burgess) is part of the vested interests that talked up (still talking up) property bubble and god knows how many people jumped into mortgages after visiting that site

and he has no problem banning to this day anyone who disagrees with his opinion

here are some gems... :rolleyes:

Sunday Times Money section, 31 July 2005:

"The lenders who have come up with the 100% [mortgage] have balanced the risk. Of 100 people that take out these mortgages, maybe 95 will be okay and five will get in serious trouble and the banks can take care of that trouble."

AskAboutMoney.com post, 8 Nov 2006:

"You can find extensive, informed, articulate, balanced and entertaining commentary on the impending collapse of the Irish property market [at thepropertypin.com]."

AskAboutMoney.com post, 9 Nov 2006:

Further speculation about the future direction of house prices is banned on Askaboutmoney.

Irish Independent, 18 August 2007:

I would invest in AIB or Bank of Ireland rather than putting money on deposit with them.

RTE News, 16 September 2008:

"Irish banks are very well regulated, Irish banks are very sound..... [...] we're going to look back in a few years at the state of Irish banks [and ask] how did we not fill our shoes with those shares?"

AskAboutMoney thread, January 2009:

Pat Neary distinguished himself as the Prudential Director of the Financial Regulator before he was appointed. Had I been on the interview panel, I would certainly have chosen him ahead of a 27 year old recent PhD graduate.

The academic qualifications of someone at a very senior level are of little relevance.

[...]

Sorry, I pay no attention whatsoever to Morgan Kelly who suggested burning the €1.5 billion instead of putting it into Anglo.


AskAboutMoney post, 14 January 2009:

More sensational stuff from Morgan Kelly in yesterday's Irish Times:

[...]

Apparently we are going to be demolishing houses now instead of building them.

But I suppose it gets headlines."

CMcK: *cough*: BusinessWeek - Ireland’s Bad Bank May Demolish Homes, McDonagh Says

"Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency may knock down some vacant homes built during the country’s real-estate boom, the head of the agency said."


Sunday Times Money, 8 Mar 2009:

If you’ve a real need to buy now – for example, if you are starting a family – don’t allow the fact that your job is a bit uncertain to put you off. If the worst happens, the government has ordered AIB and Bank of Ireland to lay off homeowners in arrears for at least a year, while other lenders must give them a six-month breather.


AskAboutMoney.com post, 3 June 2009:

I still believe, that as a general rule, it is a good idea to buy your own home. With the benefit of hindsight, this would not have been a good idea over the past 5 years.

[..] I have made it very clear that, with hindsight, it would have made much more sense over the past few years to rent rather than buy.

AskAboutMoney.com post, 11 Oct 2009:

"People ask now why did we not listen to the economists who warned of the housing bubble and the economic crash? [...]. Their warnings were dressed up in such stupid, sensationalist language, that it would have been like taking the economic forecasts of the Sunday World seriously."

AskAboutMoney.com post, 22 Dec 2009:

The paperwork for money laundering is hugely inappropriate. Under the law, Charlie McCreevy would have had to provide a passport and two utility bills. Everyone in the Irish Nationwide knew him. I would have no problem with them not complying with this law.

sinnerboy

Well thanks for the heads up with respect to AAM and the housing market - I was not aware of any of that

However - if you find yourself unemployed I insist that the particular sub forum I linked to is a useful resource .

I found it so anyway I have yet to end up in hell

sinnerboy

dan_d wrote: »

I've a question (bit off topic maybe, I'll start a new thread if needs be). When you say you had to "upskill" what do you mean? I've a degree and a certain amount of experience.I have a vague idea about how the system works, but I'm sure I'll be told at some point I should take courses with FAS or something. What can FAS do for me, if anything? I'm computer literate, Autocad literate, literate full stop (linguistically in 2 languages). I'm interested in doing another language course to brush up, and maybe one to learn another different language, but they're in private institutes and I'll pay for them myself.I want to do continuing professional development courses with the professional institute I'm a member of to gain another "grade" through them, while I have the time. My other options are to look at post grad education or retraining in a totally different undergrad course (which isn't really an option tbh)

I'm not looking down on any of FAS courses or anything, but how can someone like me "upskill" through FAS? Surely I'd be more adding to my skills?? And how can I sit in front of FAS and agree to do a course with them when there aren't really any courses that i need through them? Sorry if I sound conceited, I just don't know how else to say it!

Well I have taken PHPP training
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055800478

I'm half way through a FAS start your own business course . I think it's good
but not everyone does
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055800478

And later this month I am taking a part time FAS course in 3D CAD Revit

Upskill / adding to skills . Use whatever turn of phrase you wish . But the above is what I meant by upskill .