TheJobBored

Apparently, people are taking to sites like craigslist and eBay not just to find original Voltron toys from the 80s… but simply to make ends meet (h/t SavvySugar).
Americans unload prized belongings to make ends meet
At Craigslist, which has become a kind of online flea market for the world, the number of for-sale listings has soared […]

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The headlines speak for themselves.

March payrolls down 80,000.
This is the largest decline since March 2003.
The decline in payrolls was steeper than the 60,000 decrease that had been expected.
Job losses thus have totaled 232,000 since the New Year, an average of 77,000 lost jobs per month.
Unemployment rate jumps to 5.1%.
Data fans recession fears.

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This is something I’ve been worried about for some time now.
We all know that the collective declines in the value of our homes has hurt our pocketbook.
But the resulting immobility of the workforce - the fact that we can’t just pick up and move to a better job because we can’t sell the house we’re […]

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Here’s a different philosophical take. From the make lemons from lemonade department…
A bad job market might mean you’re not going to get your dream job for a while. But maybe you should take this time as an opportunity to figure out where you want to see yourself when the bad times end.
The storm will pass. […]

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Also from BusinessWeek (good stuff from them this week)…
Lets think of offbeat places to look for work. Every time I’m in the mall, I see that little store that makes keys, and fixes shoes and repairs watches.
I always wonder… how do stores like that survive? Every mall has them. I’ve never given them more than […]

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U.S. employers cut payrolls for a second straight month during February, slashing 63,000 jobs for the biggest monthly decline in nearly five years as the nation’s labor markets weakened steadily, a government report on Friday showed.
The Labor Department said last month’s cut followed an upwardly revised loss of 22,000 jobs in January rather than the […]

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Anyone taking bets?
Consensus forecast is +30K jobs.
I have a bet. Less than the consensus: people will be really frightened. If slightly more than the consensus: people will be relieved for a day. And then go back to being really frightened.

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When a company is doing well, it will rhapsodize often about how its “most valuable asset” is its “people.” But when a company is doing badly, those “assets” quickly become their most expensive (and thus expendable) expenses.
I thought this post from Valleywag summed it up so nicely, I have to quote the whole thing:
Nortel, the […]

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digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/educational/40_Things_I_Wish_I_Knew_When_I_Started_My_Career’;A conversation with some friends this weekend led to this list forming in my head. Feel free to add your own in the comments. If I like them, I’ll add them to the list.

The career you think you’re going to have? This is not the career you’re going to end up with. The […]

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The jobs news was bad again last week, but I didn’t post about it cause it’s no fun to post bad economic news every day. But this morning brings more bad data:

Service sector index plunges to 41.9%, second lowest result on record
“This is a stunning fall,” said Michael Moran, chief economist at Daiwa Securities America […]

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