If you’re unemployed, you have a good sense of the job market. But things are actually worse.  My wife sent me this Bloomberg story yesterday afternoon…

U.S. Payrolls Post Biggest Annual Drop Since 1945

This morning I saw a similar story on the front page of the New York Times…

Jobless Rate Hits 7.2%, a 16-Year High

CNN ran their version of the story while I was at the gym this morning, complete with partisan bickering. (It hurt my head just to watch, even with the volume turned down.) And I saw some homeless guy peeing on an office building wall – no doubt, his personal commentary on the state of the economy and the companies that put us here. Needless to say, this is a big story, and everybody’s talking.

Here’s the situation. The U.S. lost more than half a million jobs in December, pushing the total number of unemployed up to 11.1 million. This figure almost doubles if one counts the underemployed (part-time workers seeking more hours) and those who have given up looking. Consumers are scared, so they’re not spending money. Employers are scared, so they’re reducing payrolls to stay liquid. Norm is scared, so he continues to blog away his fears. The incoming Obama administration is eager to implement a multifaceted stimulus package, which may boost confidence immediately but will otherwise take months to show any real effects. The outgoing Bush administration has its collective thumb up its collective ass. Experts see unemployment reaching 10% in the second quarter and plateauing there until well after the recession ends.

It seems like any job search is a futile waste of time in this climate. So the question the jobless masses may be asking is, “why bother doing anything at all?” I’ll tell you why. Continuing a job search provides the chance to find something, while doing nothing leads to nothing. There are still jobs out there – maybe not good jobs or relevant jobs, but jobs. The education and healthcare fields, for example, both enjoyed modest job growth last month. It may be worth focusing your efforts there. The Economy is in a recession, meaning economic activity has slowed somewhat but not stopped altogether. Companies still need people to work.

This is also the perfect time to do all the necessary job search legwork – the stuff that reveals openings and puts you in the position to apply immediately. Here’s a list of activities that could yield results…

• Research jobs and fields of employment beyond what you’re used to.
• Create different versions of your resume and cover letter for those jobs and fields.
• Explore all the general and company-specific job boards you don’t normally use and create applicant profiles.
• Reconnect with people in your network.
• Become (or remain) active in LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networking sites to expand your network.

When the job market improves, you’ll be prepared, or already gainfully employed.

Unless you’re in dire financial straits, looking for work all day is overkill, even in a good job market. Some time would be well spent learning new skills or practicing hobbies which could theoretically lead to work. Ever wonder how writers become employed writers? You have the time and hopefully the inclination to improve yourself. And online resources are abundant and cheap (or free). This is a great time to become more employable, and expand the realm of opportunities.

A bad job market is a terrible excuse to do nothing.  But it’s a perfect opportunity to get your ducks in a row and improve your skill set.  And when the recession clears, you may find yourself in a better position than before. Turn off the news and get to work, you unemployed slacker!

Businesses continue to fail in Jackson Heights. It’s sad to watch. Every walk down Roosevelt or 37th Ave. reveals a recently vacated store. Some I’m happy to see go – like all the cell phone places or the shop at my corner selling cheap umbrellas, NYC t-shirts and an assortment of useless junk. My wife and I get way more enjoyment out of speculating what businesses could fill the voids in a perfect world (New York Sports Club, Barnes & Noble, are you out there?) than we ever did out of the now-closed stores. But there are no new stores coming in, just padlocked security gates and “For Rent” signs. I’d rather have the crappy stores back.

The KB Toys on 82nd St. is in the process of closing. There’s something extra sad about a toy store going out of business. It’s downright depressing when that toy store goes out of business right after Christmas, the biggest shopping season of the year. And it’s almost suicide-inducing when you have to watch its demise – from Christmas through New Years – from your bedroom window while looking for a job yourself.

Were sales so bad that even the holidays couldn’t keep the store afloat? In a neighborhood swarming with kids, did that few parents buy presents? Did the owners just delay the inevitable long enough to make what money they could? As it turns out, the company is bankrupt and shuttering all 460 of its stores. I’ve been watching the sale signs get more and more desperate day by day. Now they’re up to “everything must go.” Before too long they’ll start selling the furniture and fixtures.

One day soon it will just be a KB Toys sign and an empty store. And that’s how it will stay, for a very long time, or at least until a mega hair/nail/eyebrow salon takes over. The toy store’s employees will venture into unemployment or, if they’re lucky, other employment. I’ll be in my apartment searching the internet for a job. And when I look out the window, I’ll see that depressing reminder of my neighborhood’s struggling economy. I’m not looking for work near where I live (yet), but it doesn’t make me excited about my prospects.

It pains me that I can say this with authority, but getting laid off is different every time. Though the end result is always unemployment, each occasion has peculiarities that make it oh so memorable.

My first layoff was extra special (the first time always is). I was working for an Internet startup, in the heady days of the dotcom bubble. The company focused on live music, concert reviews and listings in particular; whether or not this could be monetized was another issue. When we weren’t skateboarding around the office or playing touch football, I was a content editor.

The company’s offices were in some raw space on the top floor of a loft building in the then industrial and now chichi DUMBO neighborhood in Brooklyn. This was a huge step up from the previous office – a big room over a paper disposal plant a few blocks away that doubled as the owner’s apartment. The new space had huge windows with fabulous views of the Manhattan Bridge and downtown Manhattan, some prefab desks and a bunch of computers. That was it.

Things went along swimmingly for the first part of 2000. I got to go to a ton of shows for free, and then write about them. Sometime in there I even got a raise. It wasn’t enough to retire on, but I was happy with it.

Along about September, the company started to run out of money. The CEO called everyone together and said he had enough in the bank to cover the next month or so of operating expenses. (Pizza from Grimaldi’s was probably involved, as every meeting involved pizza… another perk.) He had meetings set up with venture capital firms and was confident he could secure additional financing. But the dotcom bubble was deflating and investors were no longer throwing money at everything. If the trip secured anything, it wasn’t much. I was still getting a check, so I continued to show up every day. It didn’t occur to me that this wouldn’t always be the case. Oh to be young and naive.

After the trip, the plan changed from securing additional funds to selling the company. There had been talks with a couple of suitors in previous months, and those talks were renewed. One even sent a representative to review the company’s systems. It seemed that I would continue to have a job and could net a small windfall from my stock options. Things were looking up, and then they weren’t. In fact the one serious suitor was only interested in bringing the company’s technology in-house, not in carrying on the company as it was.

The paychecks stopped but the talks continued. The CEO was confident that a deal was still possible and encouraged us to continue working to keep the site viable. I showed up for work for a couple days after the company missed my last check. Others didn’t. I worked from home for a few more days, doing the bare minimum. The potential deal fizzled and the company basically ceased to exist, except online. The site remained live on the off chance that another buyer came along. I was unemployed.

My last couple of checks depended on additional cash in the form of more financing or a bridge loan from a new owner. That cash never materialized, so I was essentially out of luck. Needless to say the stock options became worthless too. Over the next week or so, while management was clearing out of the space, some of my co-workers helped themselves to computers and furniture as compensation. I can’t say I blame them.

In this layoff, there was no official meeting, letter or really notification that I was laid off. There was no severance package or continuation of benefits. No one walked me out of the building or FedExed my belongings to my apartment. The CEO just told us that he was no longer able to pay us, so I stopped working. To his credit, he was upfront (if overly optimistic) throughout the whole ordeal, sharing information as he got it. It still would have been nice to get my last two paychecks. I guess I’m just funny like that.