The job hunt continues...

You know for all the talk about the economy picking up, and how the job oultook is better and yada yada yada...I am wondering why I still can't find full time work. I have to believe its because the competition is extremely fierce these days. I am a college graduate with a degree in computer arts, I have been building computers and networks for over 10 years...but I know for a fact there are people out there that have been doing the same thing as me for over 20 years, and who have just been laid off or downsized or whatever you want to call it. That's who I am up against. I am also not willing to work for minimum wage anymore. I live in a city where the cost of living is at least 3 times that of minimum wage. The funny thing is 10 years ago minimum wage was $4.25 an hour...and you could rent a one bedroom apartment for about $750 a month...lets do some quick math here and compare the cost of living now to ten years ago.

$4.25 x 40 (hours in a week full time) = $170.00 - tax = $130 net per week.
4 weeks = $520.00

now this was 10 years ago and you still end up being short $200+, so supplement that with your spouse/girlfriend/wife whatever...ok then say you are pulling in $1000 take home a month...that leaves you with just about $100 for leisure spending, movies, dinners etc. The part where you actually have a life.

Fast Forward to today, 10 years later.

minimum wage = $6.25 an hour.
$6.25 x 40 = $250 - taxes = $200 net take home.

Now, unfortunately that one bedroom apartment has ballooned from $750 a month to $1150 a month...that's an increase of $400 over 10 years, or $40 a year more each year. Now, at $200 a month you are making $800 a month take home, supplement that with your significant other's income, and now we have $1600 (still talking minimum wage here). Subtract the cost of rent = $450 left over, with bills etc, the average cost is somewhere around $350 for those expenses...which leaves you with VIOLA $100 left over for saving, spending whatever...

As you can see, in the case of minimum wage, it's designed to just be the bottom most level of poverty. A single person educated with a college degree working minimum wage is only earning $7200 a year...that's seriously fucked up. At best you can hope to just barely survive, and that means living with other people or being married. The truth of the matter is most of the jobs here are either min. wage, or around $9 an hour. It's a vacation town, lots of restaurants, bars, coffee houses, and an amusement park. The tech industry that used to be big here got swallowed up by the 2000 "dot bomb". A lot of companies were absorbed by other companies or simply left town. TI one of the biggest employers here laid off their entire staff of about 2000 people in 2001 and closed up shop. Thus an influx of people that had good jobs are suddenly competing for the very job you figured you would easily get out of college...it's still a dog eat dog world out there, and unfortunately its not only the strong that survive, it's those that are willing to accept a lower pay for a job you know is worth a lot more...just to work.

What all this means to me, is yeah, the competition is tough but I know that I can do quality work, and I can learn to do anything. I am modest about what I need t live on. $40-50k a year is fine, and leaves me with plenty of money to pay all my bills and even pay back my student loans which are a bitch at $254 a month, top that off with $538 each month for my wife's built up debt. What I am saying is I need some help. What if everyone that read this page helped by donating $1 to my cause of repaying all this accrued debt? I would be eternally grateful, and I can guarantee would never go into debt again. Won't you help? Click on the paypal button below in my previous post and help me out.

Peace.