Or is it permanent gap year 🤔

Technically not employed for 3 decades now, I can't say that image fits. We love it and enjoy life to the fullest.

it took me 2 months and got very close to out-of-money-for-bills territory

That is how it feels between jobs too.

"I am self employed"

Recently went four months after being laid off and 100%. First two months were wonderful and a much needed time to relax, but by four months when my funds ran out, it became an absolute nightmare

It really really depends on the state of your bank account

I spend 6 months looking for a job. I wasn't unemployed, which meant that I could be slective in what kind of job I applied to, but I still felt like giving up tiwards the end. It's tough out there. Eventually got lucky to find a good job where I can start next month.

Me, being a pensioner because of officially being unable to work in a normal job: (permanent top picture)

Edit: I have to add that the joy is somewhat troubled. I often have bouts of bad conscience (which is mainly fueled by the primary way these things are talked about in politics, making me seem like a welfare queen) or feeling inadequate and unneeded.

Reality is, i cannot survive the current job environment - I tried for two decades ignoring my issues, and it caused a long term psychiatric vacation. Saying i cope badly with stress is an understatement, and any personal relationship is a huge amount of weight on my shoulders. I realize that going for normal employment for me means a suicide on rates. But the public conversation about people like me only seems to coalescence around abuse of the system and lazy people.

I am not lazy. I hate being dependent on someone else. I also have no other choice outside of killing myself, either slowly because of the permanent stress fucking me up or quickly when pressure becomes too much to bear (been there, can't recommend at all 1/5).

Our society really has to have a serious discussion about the amount of stress employers are allowed to put onto their employees. In a relaxed environment where i don't have supervisors in my neck 24/7 and where i wouldn't have to adhere to arbitrary performance statistics, i could be an valuable employee. In a work relationship that doesn't include my bosses calling me on every second day off to try to make me come in on overtime, i might be able to pull my weight.

Alas, these jobs simply do not exist - they didn't a decade ago when i was declared unfit for work, and they do not exist even more now.

I wished I could survive being unemployed for three decades. Like without living under a bridge.

That was me after being laid off due to DOGE.

"This is fine, I have a decade of experience and 4x letters of recommendation from the owners of my last 3 jobs."

600+ ghosted applications later

"Well, time to resume alcoholism."

it can be fun alright, but there's only so many ways to be poor

I know I'm privileged to say that and not everybody would have a choice to work.

But...if you just value peace and you know to navigate a very tiny budget (don't actually know how tiny), everyone could do that here (Germany). There's a reason we're flooded by immigrants.
Rent paid, and a bit of money on top.

If it were for me, universal basic income for everyone. Work if you want more, don't if you're fine. Studies shown it works perfectly fine. But our owners don't want that. They just want the very poor to hate and fight the slightly less poor.

Everyone is becoming more and more self employed lately..

Multiple self employments 😯

literally all of this. well said.

the US isn't being honest about the unemployment rate

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/functional-unemployment-us-labor-market-analysis/

Its going to get worse before it gets better. US bond yields are massive, diesel is skyrocketing, AI bubble is teetering. Once we hit some thresholds in the next week or two we'll have a significant wait before hiring really takes back off...

I finished my graduate degree right at the end of 2019 and spent 2020 unemployed. It really sucks.

That was the darkest time in my life.

Also, I'm pretty sure everyone wants to work, to be part of something, when they are treated well. It's just that it's hard to want to contribute when you are constantly told "contribute, or else" by how our current system works, I can't blame people for not wanting to work in our hostile society

I’ll never forget borrowing $500 from my parents in 1997 because after 30 days in the big city I still hadn’t found a job. These were the days when I was a real whiz kid for using my modem to send a scan of my resume directly to fax machines. Dice.com was not a website but a Telnet service.

I don’t think I ever paid them back…

If you've had a good life, you've paid them back already.

This world needs more of you

I agree with what you said and I have a similiar experience. I gave my back to my job and then they fired me in the end..

You're totally right. When i still had my company back then, employees could come-and-go as they please (fixed hours by law, but if they decided to spend them at home "remote" & "working" that was fine too), got profit-shares, free food and whatnot. Work from home, come in, work at the beach, who cares. And guess what, everything was done on time, noone exploited it and they all seemed happy. And double market-rate was pay. For everyone, janitor included of course. And I only got marginally more, as it was my risk and all. Just fair IMHO.

Never understood the massive greed combined with the dark triad(/tetrad) of human traits. Could I have made more money? Yes. Would I have felt good about it? Surely not.

600+ ghosted applications later

That sounds horrible, I'm really sorry to hear that you're going through this :(

My job sucks, but I am thankful to have one given the industry I work in.