Among the Unemployed

On September 11, 2009 I was called into my bosses office at about 1:15 p.m. and was told that my job had been eliminated.  I found the fact that he chose this day to tell me to be a rather telling story.  I'm sure we all remember where we were on September 11, 2001.  I was getting ready to fly to Detroit from Jacksonville.  I had an 11:55 a.m. flight but of course by then all of the airplanes were grounded due to the horrendous attacks in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

This is the first time in my life that I have been laid off from a job.  I was not surprised that it might happen since the company was not having a good year and I would have eliminated my position too (although I would have reorganized the rest of the staff so I could stay but that's another story).  I've been working since I was 16 years old (I'm now 52) and it's a very strange situation to be in.  I received a severance and I'm also hoping to collect unemployment, but it's just not the same to not be going to a job every day.  It's now been two weeks and I'm still job searching but I'm hopeful I will be able to get a job before year's end.  But, since I'm now among the unemployed, I was wondering how many other people are in my same situation.  So, here's the latest:

I'm now one of 6.138M people that are unemployed (seasonally adjusted - whatever that means) as of September 12.  I wonder if I was included in that count????  The unemployment rate at the end of August 2009 was 9.7%  for the U.S. but it was 10.7% for the State of Florida and in the metropolitan area I live in the rate at the end of August was a whopping 11.3%.  Not exactly the news I was hoping for.

The states with the lowest unemployment rates at the end of August were North Dakota (4.3%), South Dakota (4.9%), and Nebraska (5%).  I'm actually applying for a job at Mutual of Omaha (Senior Vice President - Retirement Services).  These are not necessarily the states that I would want to move to because I've become very accustomed to not having to wear a jacket!  But, if push comes to shove, I may need to get all my cold weather outfits out of the mothballs and I 'll be ordering a new pair of boots from L.L. Bean!  I don't think I'll be joining my sister Rose in Michigan since their unemployment rate is 15.2%. And, even though I know how to administered Puerto Rican retirement plans, I don't think I'll be moving to the island since their unemployment rate is 15.1%.  Hawaii's unemployment rate is only 7.2% so maybe there is still hope that I can find something in a warm climate!

I'll keep you apprised of my progress as I move on to this next chapter in my life.  I was watching the show "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery channel and from what I can tell, there are plenty of "dirty" jobs available that I can try.  But, I'd rather not be the person who works on the Stiped Bass and Tilapia fish farm out in the Mohave desert.  That's just a little too warm of a climate!