It Sucks to Be Unemployed

Summer vacation started for me a few weeks ago, and as I have no plans to travel this summer, I’ve been searching and applying for summer jobs. I started this process weeks ago, yet I’ve had no success so far. I’m not the only one that hasn’t had success with finding a summer job, all of my friends who are not returning to jobs they had the previous summer or know someone who knows someone are all stuck in this endless search for a summer job¹.

My friends and I have each applied to 10, 12, 15 jobs in our fruitless search for summer employment. It’s not that we’re not a good candidate for typical part time positions in the retail, food, and customer service industries; each one of us are good students with relatively good work experience and strong references. It’s the fact that the summer positions that are available are down by a quarter compared to last summer, and the majority of these positions are being taken by adults that are either already in the workforce or are re-entering it and are able to work full-time and year-round, rather than part-time and only during the summer.

Unless I hear back from one of the many places I applied to and manage to successfully get a job, I guess I’m going to be out of paid employment this summer. This sucks, because not only will I not be able to earn (and save) money this summer, but I’ll also have to search for something else to do. Volunteer work is always an option, as well as continually adding to my Etsy shop, but it would be nice to have a paying job this summer…

1. I can’t even begin to imagine what the search must be like for someone who is looking for full-time work, particularly for Class of 2009 college graduates! [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.