(Some) Stories of Hope: Landing a Job After Long-Term Unemployment

I came across a June 6, 2011 article in Slate today entitled “Your Year (or More) of Living Joblessly.”  (It’s at this link:  The long-term unemployed: How do they finally find new jobs? - By Emily Yoffe - Slate Magazine.)  The article recounts the negative “financial, psychological and physical effects of long-term unemployment...”.  Here’s one pessimistic excerpt:

In testimony before Congress, Till von Wachter, associate professor of economics at Columbia, presented a grim picture of long-term unemployment damaging health and even shortening lives. And when people finally return to the workplace, he noted, their earning power can be reduced by as much as 20 percent for the next two decades. The scourge afflicts an entire family, too: Long-term unemployment can echo through the next generation, resulting in lower educational attainment and earnings by the children of the unemployed.

But I entitled this post “(Some) Stories of Hope” for a reason.  At the end of the Slate article, writer Emily Yoffe invites her readers to post their own personal success stories about finding jobs after a prolonged period of joblessness.  A number of readers did respond and I encourage you to go read their stories.  A lot of us can use a boost these days and many of the posts from Slate readers create that hopeful feeling.  It’s good to see real stories about real people finding jobs despite the odds.

After all, as the article notes quite bluntly, “…there's not much good advice to give people when job seekers outnumber jobs.”  I think I could recite in my sleep all the things we’re supposed to do to give ourselves an edge, to make our resumes stand out among the crowd of papers stacked on the hiring manager’s desk.  And sometimes those perky “surefire job-hunting tips” articles make me feel like I can’t possibly win the “how to dazzle the recruiter!” sweepstakes.  So the actual success stories are a nice change.

I will warn you, though, that not all of the posts are uplifting.  Quite a few are not success stories at all, but grim descriptions of the realities of many people’s lives today.  Some even expressed cynicism about the (employed) writer’s “silver lining” view of unemployment.

Still, I found all the posts interesting and thought-provoking.  The "good" stories made me feel optimistic, while the "not-so-good" stories kept me realistic.  What’s your reaction to the Slate article and the responses to it?  I’d like to know.