Original Story: news.monster.com
Businesses; jobs and the workplaces are changing faster than ever before. Skills which were considered ‘hot’ until yesterday are no longer considered even special today. With the change in business due to competition and customers expectations soaring high; today the employees are evaluated on many additional parameters they aren’t even aware of. Fact is employees are constantly being observed to check if they have the critical yet unwritten ‘virtues’ to fit into the new roles & responsibilities needed for the organizations present success and future growth.
Follows 10… Oh! OK 9 signs that your career is getting ‘killed’ silently and you are gradually loosing the plot at the workplace without your knowledge.
1.If you are considered a Rambo…a one man army
You have won many awards in the past for great performance and have the personal ability to steer any project to success. You have always been a successful lone warrior. You never need anyone’s help and asking for help is a big embarrassment for you.
But you know; today’s work is too complex to be handled with just ‘personal heroism’. Today’s businesses need ‘collective’ efforts & intelligence to succeed. You need to collaborate with your peers; customers & partners every time. Today your success in the organization would depend more on how connected; collaborative & ‘social’ you are and less on how ‘capable’ you are as an individual.
2. If you are always worried about your work-life balance
Your idea of work-life balance is a 9 to 5 job. You haven’t yet discovered that there is nothing like work life balance. Actually life & work are integral to each other. You cannot separate them. You have to build a ‘synergy’ to do justice to both your personal and work lives. They cannot be delimited by time. Fact of the matter is you could never win doing the ‘balancing act’. You have to find ways how both gel well into a holistically rewarding experience for you.
3. If you and your desktop are inseparable
You have always loved your desktop computer. After all; it stores all software and documents you need for your work. You become uncomfortable if someone wants you to work on a ‘cloud’ application from a different computer. Where ever you are; you can start your work only when you are back at your desktop.
4. If for you work means phone calls; emails & face-to-face meetings
Your idea of work is to read/send emails; answer phone calls and if both don’t work have face to face meetings. You know these methods are big time wastes but you still continue with them. You are yet to catch up with the idea of using new communication methods like video chat; social collaboration & mobility at work. Remember, a meeting is an event where ‘minutes’ are taken and hours wasted. ” A conference call = 1 person talking and 26 people continuing to do their email” says Dr. Eddie Obeng a well known business guru.
5. If you find downloading Apps on your phone and using them cumbersome
You have a gleaming smartphone in your pocket but that’s only to attend calls and send emails. You don’t search or download apps in it to make your work easy. You wonder why the millennials in your office often ask you ‘ Why do you do this manually. Don’t you have an app for it?’
6. If you often wonder why some people bother so much about ‘virtual’ badges; levels or points
For you the perfect incentive is only bonuses & cash awards. You are motivated only when you get a salary hike or a promotion. Winning online badges & points doesn’t make sense for you. You are not able to figure out why someone would strive for ‘recognition’ as an ‘expert’ without any monetary rewards.
7. If you keep new ideas too close to your chest
You keep your ideas to yourself waiting for the perfect time to unleash it before the senior most guys. You feel they might get ‘stolen’ by your colleagues if you share them on employee’s internal social network.
8. If you trust on your conventional wisdom only and not on ‘data’.
Old perceptions are fading fast and what we have always considered right is turning out to be big myths. Thanks to the massive data today people easily have access to. No doubt your intuition/gut feelings are important but they need the support of data insights too.
9. Last but not least; if you still aren’t convinced that it could happen in 2015.
Great that you are an optimist! Loosing the job doesn’t necessarily mean you would immediately stop getting the paychecks. But the process could start in any or all of the following ways:
a) You getting isolated within the team
b) You not being included in important projects
c) You being sent on forced sabbatical
d) You not taken to customer meets
e) Millennials stopping interactions with you
f) Your boss & senior management start ignoring you.
If there is evidence of above signs in your work it simply indicates that you are gradually loosing your battle at the workplace and it should be addressed urgently. It makes a lot of sense to get pumped up and be the change agent for your self.
Showing posts with label jobless. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jobless. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Friday, August 3, 2012
Unemployment Checks Running Out
Story first reported from USA Today
Since abruptly losing her $312 weekly unemployment check in June, Laurie Cullinan has depleted her savings, sought food from the Salvation Army and lit candles to save electricity.
If she can't find a job this month, the Royal Oak, Mich., resident worries she'll be evicted from her apartment, an unthinkable prospect for the 52-year-old, who enjoyed a solidly middle-class lifestyle until she lost her office-manager job two years ago.
"What am I going to do if I'm homeless?" says Cullinan, who collected unemployment for 1½ years. "My mind won't let me comprehend that."
Cullinan is among about 1 million long-term unemployed Americans whose jobless benefits are phasing out this year as the federal government reels in Great Recession lifelines that provided unemployment checks for as long as 99 weeks in many states. By year's end, another 2 million will see their checks cut off sooner than Cullinan's were, because extended unemployment benefits will end beyond the standard 26 weeks that states pay for. Congress could renew the program, but many economists say that's unlikely.
The cutbacks, required by a federal law passed in February, are already taking a toll. They are nudging some Americans into poverty, straining social services just as states and localities face their own budget woes and further crimping weak economic growth as those who lose benefits spend less.
The number of jobless workers has fallen from over 15 million in early 2010 to about 13 million now, but the share of unemployed workers collecting jobless benefits has dropped more sharply. It was about two out of three in 2010, but it's less than one in two now. Next year only about one in four will receive payments, according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP).
"There's going to be lots of people without any income still unable to find a job," says George Wentworth, a senior staff attorney for NELP. "You're going to see these people not be able to feed their families and not able to pay their mortgages. It will have a devastating impact on a lot of local economies."
Wentworth, like other advocates for the unemployed, does not accuse Congress of acting rashly, and he believes some scaling back of benefits was warranted. The federal government spent $59 billion on extended unemployment benefits last year and the up-to-99-week periods of subsidies are unprecedented in any economic downturn.
The February legislation was seen as a compromise that kept payments flowing but phases them out as state unemployment rates fall from near-record levels. Yet the cutoffs are coming as job growth has slowed to an average monthly pace of 75,000 in the second quarter from 225,000 in the first quarter. Unemployment rates rose in 27 states in June. The government is expected to report today that the U.S. gained 100,000 jobs in July and the unemployment rate stayed at 8.2%, according to a consensus forecast of economists.
States eye ways to save
Some states, including Illinois, Michigan and South Carolina, have trimmed even initial benefits to less than 26 weeks, and some have cut the size of payments and restricted eligibility. Florida residents must apply online and take a lengthy skills test, keeping some from receiving unemployment insurance.
Under the federal compromise, states are truncating the second phase of benefits, which helps people unemployed from 27 to 79 weeks, when their jobless rate falls below certain levels. The reduction in so-called emergency unemployment compensation will affect about 600,000 recipients through December and 2 million more at year's end, NELP says.
The biggest impact so far has been on the final phase, known as extended benefits, which provides an additional 13 to 20 weeks to those who have been jobless as long as 79 weeks. Benefits in that phase depend on a formula that requires state jobless rates to be higher than the past three years — a tough standard to meet with unemployment falling from recent peaks. So far this year, more than 500,000 Americans in 32 states and Washington, D.C., have lost extended benefits. This month, Idaho will end the program, effectively eliminating it nationwide.
Economists worry most about the likely suspension of all benefits past 26 weeks at year's end. The average unemployed American has been out of work 40 weeks, according to the Labor Department, and there are still about three jobless people for every job opening.
"We're still in a world where you can't expect anybody to find a job within a specific period of time because there aren't enough jobs out there," says Jesse Rothstein, economist at University of California-Berkeley. "I think it still calls for pretty long extensions."
Workers who lost jobs in the recession and exhausted their benefits by January 2010 had a poverty rate of nearly one in five, and about 40% had incomes below 200% of the poverty threshold, according to a Government Accountability Office study this year.
Since jobless people tend to spend virtually all of their income, the phase-out of benefits may cut up to two-tenths of a percentage point off economic growth over the next year, says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. Unemployment checks average about $300 a week and typically pay about half of a recipient's former salary.
Is job-hunting delayed?
The development also has renewed a debate about whether such payments encourage job seekers to stay unemployed longer while hunting for a position most to their liking. Some studies have found that extended benefits increase unemployment by a half to one percentage point or even more.
"If we start reducing unemployment benefits, I think workers will make tough decisions they have to make to either reduce their wage demands or move to states like North Dakota where the economy is doing better," says Chris Edwards, an economist at the conservative Cato Institute.
Hank Finke, 54, of Westborough, Mass., concedes that after he lost his job as a sales vice president, he was unwilling to accept anything less than a national sales manager position and 75% of his former pay. But after his unemployment benefits ran out last year, he started considering regional sales head jobs and a 50% pay cut. He still hasn't found work.
Cullinan says her job search grew more desperate after she received a notice in April that her benefits would end in June, 20 weeks earlier than she had anticipated. Michigan cut maximum benefits from 99 to 79 weeks earlier this year because the state's unemployment rate was no longer rising. When Cullinan lost her $32,500-a-year office-manager job, she first sought similar positions but quickly decided she'd settle for being a part-time cashier at McDonald's or a Starbucks barista.
"I can't even get a job doing that," she says.
Cullinan supports a partner who hasn't worked since a job-related injury four years ago. Faced with losing her benefits, "I went into pure panic mode," she says, seeking jobs as a warehouse worker, gas-station cashier, hospital janitor or food server. "I would take any job that's offered to me. You want me to dig a ditch, and pay me, I would do that."
But Cullinan rejects the idea that losing benefits makes her more likely to land a job, observing that if she can't pay her $635 monthly rent and is evicted from her apartment, she'll have no Internet service. "All the ways I have of looking for work — if I lose my home, I no longer have that," she says. "I feel like my safety net was dropped out from under me."
Till Von Wachter, a labor economist at the University of California-Los Angeles, says unemployment compensation's negative economic effects matter less in tough times when there are fewer jobs. They are likely outweighed by the financial hardships people suffer after losing their benefits, he says.
"The debate has gone a little bit too far," he says. "It's very hard to pretend that all these people just didn't want to work."
A study by Rothstein last fall, one of the few to examine the effects of expanded benefits in the recent downturn, found they boosted joblessness in early 2011 by only about 0.3 percentage points. Just over half the increase was due to older workers who kept seeking jobs, as they must to be eligible for benefits, staying in the labor force longer rather than retiring.
Indeed, many older workers who lose benefits do drop out of the labor force and retire. That lowers unemployment but also could hurt consumer spending and the economy.
Patricia Kirby, 62, is considering retiring early and tapping Social Security benefits after her $450-a-week unemployment payment was cut off after 79 weeks in May. Kirby, who lives in Studio City, Calif., lost her job as managing director of an opera training company in 2010, and has had no luck finding similar jobs or even part-time retail sales positions. When her benefits ended, Kirby largely stopped looking. "I took a break because it gets so depressing," she says.
Kirby and her husband, Terry, who does sporadic work to help film studios with location shoots, are hurting but not in dire shape. They've stopped donating to charities and dismissed the housekeeper. They're also drawing thousands of dollars from savings monthly.
Many others who exhaust benefits apply for Social Security disability benefits, which are for people who can no longer work for health reasons. In a 2011 study, economist Matthew Rutledge of the Center for Retirement Research found that the jobless are significantly more likely to apply for disability when their unemployment checks stop. That further strains disability fund reserves, which are projected to be inadequate to provide full benefits to all beneficiaries by 2016.
Joe Sangataldo, 54, of Vineland, N.J., is healthy and eager to work, making his grinding two-year job hunt even more frustrating. Sangataldo says he was more selective when he first lost his job — as an unemployment office worker who monitored benefit recipients' job searches — in October 2010.
"You try to avoid taking the worst job in the world while you have the time to shop for maybe a new career," says Sangataldo, who recently got an associate degree in accounting to go along with a bachelor's in human resources.
But his search for civil-service jobs proved fruitless. He lived off jobless benefits for about 21 months until the $407 weekly check stopped July 7. Sangataldo has sought jobs as a front-desk clerk in Atlantic City, a server at a cookie stand, and a bathroom janitor. With Vineland area unemployment at 13%, he still has come up empty.
Sangataldo, who is single and lives in his deceased mother's house with no mortgage, has applied for food stamps and will seek Medicaid. He plans to sell many of his and his mother's clothes at a yard sale.
Since abruptly losing her $312 weekly unemployment check in June, Laurie Cullinan has depleted her savings, sought food from the Salvation Army and lit candles to save electricity.
If she can't find a job this month, the Royal Oak, Mich., resident worries she'll be evicted from her apartment, an unthinkable prospect for the 52-year-old, who enjoyed a solidly middle-class lifestyle until she lost her office-manager job two years ago.
"What am I going to do if I'm homeless?" says Cullinan, who collected unemployment for 1½ years. "My mind won't let me comprehend that."
Cullinan is among about 1 million long-term unemployed Americans whose jobless benefits are phasing out this year as the federal government reels in Great Recession lifelines that provided unemployment checks for as long as 99 weeks in many states. By year's end, another 2 million will see their checks cut off sooner than Cullinan's were, because extended unemployment benefits will end beyond the standard 26 weeks that states pay for. Congress could renew the program, but many economists say that's unlikely.
The cutbacks, required by a federal law passed in February, are already taking a toll. They are nudging some Americans into poverty, straining social services just as states and localities face their own budget woes and further crimping weak economic growth as those who lose benefits spend less.
The number of jobless workers has fallen from over 15 million in early 2010 to about 13 million now, but the share of unemployed workers collecting jobless benefits has dropped more sharply. It was about two out of three in 2010, but it's less than one in two now. Next year only about one in four will receive payments, according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP).
"There's going to be lots of people without any income still unable to find a job," says George Wentworth, a senior staff attorney for NELP. "You're going to see these people not be able to feed their families and not able to pay their mortgages. It will have a devastating impact on a lot of local economies."
Wentworth, like other advocates for the unemployed, does not accuse Congress of acting rashly, and he believes some scaling back of benefits was warranted. The federal government spent $59 billion on extended unemployment benefits last year and the up-to-99-week periods of subsidies are unprecedented in any economic downturn.
The February legislation was seen as a compromise that kept payments flowing but phases them out as state unemployment rates fall from near-record levels. Yet the cutoffs are coming as job growth has slowed to an average monthly pace of 75,000 in the second quarter from 225,000 in the first quarter. Unemployment rates rose in 27 states in June. The government is expected to report today that the U.S. gained 100,000 jobs in July and the unemployment rate stayed at 8.2%, according to a consensus forecast of economists.
States eye ways to save
Some states, including Illinois, Michigan and South Carolina, have trimmed even initial benefits to less than 26 weeks, and some have cut the size of payments and restricted eligibility. Florida residents must apply online and take a lengthy skills test, keeping some from receiving unemployment insurance.
Under the federal compromise, states are truncating the second phase of benefits, which helps people unemployed from 27 to 79 weeks, when their jobless rate falls below certain levels. The reduction in so-called emergency unemployment compensation will affect about 600,000 recipients through December and 2 million more at year's end, NELP says.
The biggest impact so far has been on the final phase, known as extended benefits, which provides an additional 13 to 20 weeks to those who have been jobless as long as 79 weeks. Benefits in that phase depend on a formula that requires state jobless rates to be higher than the past three years — a tough standard to meet with unemployment falling from recent peaks. So far this year, more than 500,000 Americans in 32 states and Washington, D.C., have lost extended benefits. This month, Idaho will end the program, effectively eliminating it nationwide.
Economists worry most about the likely suspension of all benefits past 26 weeks at year's end. The average unemployed American has been out of work 40 weeks, according to the Labor Department, and there are still about three jobless people for every job opening.
"We're still in a world where you can't expect anybody to find a job within a specific period of time because there aren't enough jobs out there," says Jesse Rothstein, economist at University of California-Berkeley. "I think it still calls for pretty long extensions."
Workers who lost jobs in the recession and exhausted their benefits by January 2010 had a poverty rate of nearly one in five, and about 40% had incomes below 200% of the poverty threshold, according to a Government Accountability Office study this year.
Since jobless people tend to spend virtually all of their income, the phase-out of benefits may cut up to two-tenths of a percentage point off economic growth over the next year, says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. Unemployment checks average about $300 a week and typically pay about half of a recipient's former salary.
Is job-hunting delayed?
The development also has renewed a debate about whether such payments encourage job seekers to stay unemployed longer while hunting for a position most to their liking. Some studies have found that extended benefits increase unemployment by a half to one percentage point or even more.
"If we start reducing unemployment benefits, I think workers will make tough decisions they have to make to either reduce their wage demands or move to states like North Dakota where the economy is doing better," says Chris Edwards, an economist at the conservative Cato Institute.
Hank Finke, 54, of Westborough, Mass., concedes that after he lost his job as a sales vice president, he was unwilling to accept anything less than a national sales manager position and 75% of his former pay. But after his unemployment benefits ran out last year, he started considering regional sales head jobs and a 50% pay cut. He still hasn't found work.
Cullinan says her job search grew more desperate after she received a notice in April that her benefits would end in June, 20 weeks earlier than she had anticipated. Michigan cut maximum benefits from 99 to 79 weeks earlier this year because the state's unemployment rate was no longer rising. When Cullinan lost her $32,500-a-year office-manager job, she first sought similar positions but quickly decided she'd settle for being a part-time cashier at McDonald's or a Starbucks barista.
"I can't even get a job doing that," she says.
Cullinan supports a partner who hasn't worked since a job-related injury four years ago. Faced with losing her benefits, "I went into pure panic mode," she says, seeking jobs as a warehouse worker, gas-station cashier, hospital janitor or food server. "I would take any job that's offered to me. You want me to dig a ditch, and pay me, I would do that."
But Cullinan rejects the idea that losing benefits makes her more likely to land a job, observing that if she can't pay her $635 monthly rent and is evicted from her apartment, she'll have no Internet service. "All the ways I have of looking for work — if I lose my home, I no longer have that," she says. "I feel like my safety net was dropped out from under me."
Till Von Wachter, a labor economist at the University of California-Los Angeles, says unemployment compensation's negative economic effects matter less in tough times when there are fewer jobs. They are likely outweighed by the financial hardships people suffer after losing their benefits, he says.
"The debate has gone a little bit too far," he says. "It's very hard to pretend that all these people just didn't want to work."
A study by Rothstein last fall, one of the few to examine the effects of expanded benefits in the recent downturn, found they boosted joblessness in early 2011 by only about 0.3 percentage points. Just over half the increase was due to older workers who kept seeking jobs, as they must to be eligible for benefits, staying in the labor force longer rather than retiring.
Indeed, many older workers who lose benefits do drop out of the labor force and retire. That lowers unemployment but also could hurt consumer spending and the economy.
Patricia Kirby, 62, is considering retiring early and tapping Social Security benefits after her $450-a-week unemployment payment was cut off after 79 weeks in May. Kirby, who lives in Studio City, Calif., lost her job as managing director of an opera training company in 2010, and has had no luck finding similar jobs or even part-time retail sales positions. When her benefits ended, Kirby largely stopped looking. "I took a break because it gets so depressing," she says.
Kirby and her husband, Terry, who does sporadic work to help film studios with location shoots, are hurting but not in dire shape. They've stopped donating to charities and dismissed the housekeeper. They're also drawing thousands of dollars from savings monthly.
Many others who exhaust benefits apply for Social Security disability benefits, which are for people who can no longer work for health reasons. In a 2011 study, economist Matthew Rutledge of the Center for Retirement Research found that the jobless are significantly more likely to apply for disability when their unemployment checks stop. That further strains disability fund reserves, which are projected to be inadequate to provide full benefits to all beneficiaries by 2016.
Joe Sangataldo, 54, of Vineland, N.J., is healthy and eager to work, making his grinding two-year job hunt even more frustrating. Sangataldo says he was more selective when he first lost his job — as an unemployment office worker who monitored benefit recipients' job searches — in October 2010.
"You try to avoid taking the worst job in the world while you have the time to shop for maybe a new career," says Sangataldo, who recently got an associate degree in accounting to go along with a bachelor's in human resources.
But his search for civil-service jobs proved fruitless. He lived off jobless benefits for about 21 months until the $407 weekly check stopped July 7. Sangataldo has sought jobs as a front-desk clerk in Atlantic City, a server at a cookie stand, and a bathroom janitor. With Vineland area unemployment at 13%, he still has come up empty.
Sangataldo, who is single and lives in his deceased mother's house with no mortgage, has applied for food stamps and will seek Medicaid. He plans to sell many of his and his mother's clothes at a yard sale.
For more national and
worldwide Business News, visit the Peak News Room blog.
For more local and
state of Michigan Business News, visit the Michigan
Business News blog.
For more Health News, visit the Healthcare and Medical
News blog.
For more Electronics News, visit the Electronics
America blog.
For more Real Estate News, visit the Commercial and
Residential Real Estate blog.
For more Law News, visit the Nation of Law blog.
For more Advertising News, visit the Advertising,
Marketing and Media blog.
For more Environmental News, visit the Environmental
Responsibility News blog.
For information on
website optimization or for the latest SEO News, visit the SEO Done Right blog.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Unemployment Figures Still High
Story first appeared on CNN.
The number of people filing for unemployment benefits fell slightly last week, but was still much higher than expected. Labor and Employment Lawyers are concerned that the outcome may end in several disgruntled unemployed people.
The Labor Department reported that 386,000 people filed for their first week of jobless claims. While that was a decrease of 2,000 claims from the week before, it was only because the previous week's number was revised higher than originally reported.
Despite the slight decline, the number was still a disappointment given initial claims have recently backed off the four-year lows they were at earlier this year.
Analysts surveyed by Briefing.com had predicted a total of 375,000 initial jobless claims.
Economists: Sluggish recovery here to stay
The figure has jumped around recently. Because weekly jobless claims can be volatile, economists often prefer to look at the average number of claims over a four-week period. That figure also rose to 374,750 last week.
Meanwhile, 3,297,000 people filed for their second week of unemployment benefits or more in the week ended April 7, the most recent data available. That marks a 26,000 increase from the prior week.
For more national and worldwide related business news, visit the Peak News Room blog.
For local and Michigan business related news, visit the Michigan Business News blog.
For healthcare and medical related news, visit the Healthcare and Medical blog.
For law related news, visit the Nation of Law blog.
For real estate and home related news, visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.
For technology and electronics related news, visit the Electronics America blog.
For organic SEO and web optimization related news, visit the SEO Done Right blog.
The number of people filing for unemployment benefits fell slightly last week, but was still much higher than expected. Labor and Employment Lawyers are concerned that the outcome may end in several disgruntled unemployed people.
The Labor Department reported that 386,000 people filed for their first week of jobless claims. While that was a decrease of 2,000 claims from the week before, it was only because the previous week's number was revised higher than originally reported.
Despite the slight decline, the number was still a disappointment given initial claims have recently backed off the four-year lows they were at earlier this year.
Analysts surveyed by Briefing.com had predicted a total of 375,000 initial jobless claims.
Economists: Sluggish recovery here to stay
The figure has jumped around recently. Because weekly jobless claims can be volatile, economists often prefer to look at the average number of claims over a four-week period. That figure also rose to 374,750 last week.
Meanwhile, 3,297,000 people filed for their second week of unemployment benefits or more in the week ended April 7, the most recent data available. That marks a 26,000 increase from the prior week.
For more national and worldwide related business news, visit the Peak News Room blog.
For local and Michigan business related news, visit the Michigan Business News blog.
For healthcare and medical related news, visit the Healthcare and Medical blog.
For law related news, visit the Nation of Law blog.
For real estate and home related news, visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.
For technology and electronics related news, visit the Electronics America blog.
For organic SEO and web optimization related news, visit the SEO Done Right blog.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)