a thread for underemployment

I accidentally started this thread on IRE and it could not be moved so I am c/p'ing my posts and starting over. As I have done so many times! Sad lol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underemployment

With the exception of the years I spent giving my heart and soul to the school that employed me for >10 years, I have been underemployed for the remainder of my adult working life. For the last 2 years, I have worked 2 jobs and I thought I had secured a third. but it fell through yesterday. The disappointment was crushing; it was a chance to work in my field and for reasons utterly beyond my control, it is not happening.

I could go on and on about the deleterious effects this has had on me, but it doesn't bring me any relief. There is a long-running thread for complaining about your coworkers, there's another one for complaining about working from home and I thought it only fair there be a dedicated thread for me and people like me who are trying to survive the wide and wtf world of underemployment. You're not alone <3

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Saturday, September 2, 2023 9:27 AM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

whoops I didn't mean to put this in I Rate Everything -- will ask mod to move it to ILE

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Saturday, September 2, 2023 9:27 AM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Found in the wiki posted above, what the actual fuck is this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underearners_Anonymous

It's an org designed to blame yourself for your underemployment?! That's monstrous. As if people aren't already doing that to themselves every exhausted waking minute.

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Saturday, September 2, 2023 9:42 AM (one minute ago)

i definitely have struggled a lot with underemployment and underachievement in general for most of my life... it's a complicated thing. i don't know if i'm underemployed now, what the intersection of underemployment and "bullshit jobs" is. i _feel_ underemployed. i feel the same way i did when i worked as a "data entry clerk" for seven years, alternating between doing the work of a data analyst and listlessly scrolling through tables for hours on end trying to "look busy". when i started this job five years ago it felt meaningful and fulfilling... it doesn't now...

It's an org designed to blame yourself for your underemployment?! That's monstrous. As if people aren't already doing that to themselves every exhausted waking minute.

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera)

ouch, the framing on that is fucked... i definitely look at it more from the standpoint of disability politics. it's complicated for me because the particular struggles i face with underemployment stem in large part from being methodically taught that i was a worthless human being... even though i'm in a society that measures our worth as human beings by how much money we make, i don't believe that, personally, i think that's outrageous and false. having said that, you know, "if i am not for myself, who will be for me", and i have trouble being for myself.

underemployment, i think there are lots of reasons for it, inside and outside people's control. in my case, for instance, i do think unacknowledged and unaddressed gender dysphoria was a major factor in my being underemployed for such a long time, and honestly there wasn't anything i could do about that, the material conditions were pretty much outside of my control. in theory i should be a lot more able to advocate for myself professionally now...

I've been underemployed for almost 22 years and I'm not sure I could reacclimate myself to fulltime work. I definitely don't have any desire to. When I left NoCal and the printing company I worked for, I took their best client (a livestock industry magazine) with me and did part time work for full time money until it shuttered at the end of 2021. That overlapped for about 1.5 years with my bartending career, which started in June 2020, right in the full bloom of covid, lol. Right now I work three bar shifts a week, and that plus my wife's Soc. Security miraculously covers our bills. (We don't have a mortgage/rent or car payment.) I made under $16K last year tending bar. (We won't discuss c@$h t!ps, mainly because they're shitty.) We have some savings because we live in just about the lowest COL area of the country (thanks, I hate it) and I was able to sock away a fair bit of income from the magazine client over two decades.

A friend of mine (who did the grind as a CPA then CFO of a largeish medical practice until he retired at 68) told me repeatedly that I needed to find other design clients, don't put my eggs in one basket, hustle and save etc, and I was just "ehhhh, but I don't wanna."

I spend a lot of time reading the internet and wondering what I'd do if I was rich, not so much time wondering how I could get rich.

I have never identified as a slacker or underachiever or whatever self-assigned epithet to connote a lack of ambition — I went to graduate school and worked my way through (full time at a website, coincidentally when I discovered Ilx) and wound up with a situation that was the best I’d ever known. I’m a hard worker and dedicated.
What I will admit to, however, is a lifelong fallacious belief that I should be able to achieve my dreams of my own accord, on my own juice, independently of any one’s assistance. And that’s because this is what I was taught and told.

I refuse to accept that I am somehow less worthy of healthcare, sick days, and professional satisfaction than the people who have secured those things. I’m not especially interested in publicly interrogating my failure to secure basic full time employment. Mostly I wonder if the underemployment will ever end or if this is my fate for life. The question of why is beyond me — there are personal and structural reasons — I just idly wonder if this is it.

Like is this as good as it’ll get for me??

I guess where I'm at is ... seeing a distinction between underemployment in terms of "wasting your brain/talents" and underemployment in terms of financial compensation. I feel like I'm kinda at a point where I'm actually not wasting my brain professionally ... or less of it, idk ... but the amount of money I make compared to people who do similar work for institutions / businesses ... is very sad, if I cared more about how much money I made. I think part of it is that I'm almost 50 and my brain hasn't adjusted to inflation lol.

though for me, some of it is a trade-off for autonomy. Still ... I had a client that I quit working for in the summer of 2022 ... they made multiple efforts to replace me, and paid people $65 and $75 an hour to do work I was charging $30/hr for ... and those people were incompetent or refused to do the actual job. Which ... really wasn't/isn't that hard and shouldn't require someone getting paid $75/hr to do because it's basically data entry + a bit of background knowledge and logic.

underemployment of skills/abilities and underemployment in terms of time seem like very different things to me but the wikipedia definition seems to somewhat group them, is the thread intended more towards one or the other (or other meanings covered under the term im missing maybe)

I feel like if you’re satisfied w the work situation you’ve reached, you’re not actually underemployed. It’s a choice. And everyone is free to choose the life that works for them. And that’s great.

For me at least it’s literally under-employment: desiring more/finding it impossible to reach. And feeling judged (rightfully or not) as a person who doesn’t want more as well as materially deprived of basic social safety net things like employer subsidized healthcare or the ability to be sick and not lose or imperiled my jobs. I realize this is bc of the country where I live but that’s not likely to change probably ever. So with that in mind, my main question for the cosmos is “is this it?”

And l mean GENUINELY satisfied not just saying so to avoid negative feelings or judgement.

Last I checked 70% of the college classes taught in the USA are taught by part time instructors/adjunct instructors/contingent faculty.

That’s me. It’s a massively overeducated underclass.

yeah it's super shitty. I guess I shouldn't complain ...

Acc to Google search for “underemployed government definition”

Underemployment is a measure of the total number of people in an economy who are unwillingly working in low-skill and low-paying jobs or only part-time because they cannot get full-time jobs that use their skills.

This is the definition I’ve been operating under in my estimation with focus on “use their skills” by which I mean professional skills (for example; not simply my natural tendency to enjoy working with people)

it all just seems so arbitrary. in terms of financial compensation i'm doing better than most of my friends. i'm working, i have benefits, i have access to medical care. i'm not in a structural deficit.

i got in a codependent relationship with someone who had a poverty mindset like me and we never spent any money on anything and even though we were underemployed, we were able to keep working full-time jobs and the money piled up. when we moved out to the west coast, there was a lot of sticker shock, it was a lot more expensive, but my dad had just died and left us a lot of money, and i was able to get a professional job and we bought a house. we could've had one where we came from, but my impression is that it was important to both of us to be able to get the hell out of there at any time, which eventually we wound up doing.

and then what? you know? where do you _go_ from there? when you're financially secure and emotionally insecure and every day feels like it could be the end of time? neither of us ever had much in the way of goals. the more we had, the more there was to lose. easier to do as little as possible and have as little as possible.

i don't know what it would _not_ look like to be underemployed. i could go through the grueling and demoralizing process of the job search, and maybe get somewhere with it, despite being possibly one of the least resilient people on the planet. i could get a job that supported me as a queer person, a job that didn't, i don't know, kill my soul, maybe. this job didn't kill my soul when i started it, and it does now, and i gave up everything else, walked away from everything else.

the truth is that right now i need a job i can do when i'm too depressed to get out of bed for two months, and that's the job i have now. i don't know if that's "underemployed" or not. maybe if i didn't have a soul-killing job i'd have been able to get out of bed regularly. if you already have money, they just fucking throw money at you, not enough to, like, help other people, not enough to make a positive change in the world. enough that it's a _burden_. enough to buy all those little distractions that maybe work for other people? but never really worked for me.

so when i had a job i didn't hate, it was easier for me to look for other jobs i didn't hate, easier for me to get those jobs. a situation like this, though? i don't know what it would look like to _not_ be underemployed. i can't imagine having a job that feels meaningful, a job that gave me a sense of _accomplishment_. i dread the weekend. it's a three-day weekend and i dread it, because it's one thing or the other. i'm worn down by the pretense of work, the hypervigilance in the event somebody sometime might actually want me to _do_ something, and when that's over and i don't even have that, i just have the exhaustion, the emptiness, and the sadness. work is a poor distraction, but it's still a better distraction than i can provide for myself. at work, i'm not _supposed_ to enjoy myself, and that makes it ok. i don't have to be happy. i'm getting paid. that's the important thing. i could have it worse. most of my friends have it worse.

i spent a long time trying to, i don't know, hope for change. thinking it can't go on like this forever, and it can't, it won't, but when it changes, it won't be on my timetable. there's nothing meaningful i can do to prepare for it.

when covid hit, i tried to find meaning outside of work, i tried to build community. the classic trans thing. dual-role. being underemployed in a skill sense was fine. it gave me the resources i needed to do the things i really cared about. all i had to do was not care about or value myself.

in retrospect it's pretty easy to see why that didn't work out.

i just have a lot of complex needs in terms of employment. a job that leaves me enough to live on, a job i can work and still respect myself at the end of the day, hell, a job i can _work_, where i have tasks to do and some combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation gets me to do them. i don't have that now, to be perfectly honest. i spend half my life in mental health treatment because i hate my fucking job. you'd think it would be easier for me to just find a new job, wouldn't you? i've seen the jobs out there. jobs that have meaning on purpose have a tendency to eat up every second of your spare time, to become your life.

i don't know anybody who has a job that meets all of these qualifications:

1. enough pay to live on
2. enough free time to pursue personal interests
3. doesn't leave you feeling like your soul has been sucked dry at the end of the day

maybe there are people who have jobs like that. i just don't know them.

I work for myself, tutoring music to school kids at a local Catholic school and from a home studio. I work around 20hrs, but charge enough that it gets me the equivalent of getting minimum wage for a full time job. My wife and I live within our means and don’t feel much financial pressure as a result. I did the first round of what would be considered graduate school in australia in philosophy/theology, got some top marks, but made a conscious choice that pursuing that was going to be a lot of crazy hard work for not much more security or financial payout than I am getting right now. So for my the equation was

+ enough to live on
+ enough free time to do what I enjoy
+ full autonomy, no boss
- not fully using my brain and so being bored for much of that 20hrs

Vs.

+ enough to live on
+ brain activated
- no free time
- demands of a boss
- move cities
- years more grinding before reaching the same financial place I’m currently at.

So I picked a version of underemployment (based on the wiki you linked) rather than slave towards a traditional employment that felt elusive and not quite worth it.

I acknowledge I’m a lucky one to have this choice. I think (for the moment) I’ve picked the “happier” path

Except for the year doing medical editing, when I felt like I was being fairly compensated and was doing somewhat specialized work that utilized my skills, I have been underemployed for my entire life. I have quite literally dug graves by hand and have also spent hours on tall orchard ladders contorting my body to prune massive weed plants. And that’s just the interesting stuff.

I currently teach the equivalent of 5/4 teaching load during the school year and work bar once or twice a week in the summer, when I also teach a summer course.

Do I think I will ever get a permanent teaching job? No, and I am always depressed about it. Am I also glad that at least I can spend my time reading weird stuff and talking with young people and getting paid for it? Absolutely.

I am trying to figure out ways to make it work, but it gets harder every year. I’m applying to teacher certificate programs so I can teach high school. I think that will change a lot about my life, but also make the money and solvency thing better for me.

i also will frankly say that being underemployed has made it much easier to achieve what I want artistically— fourth book coming out next year, major overview of first three books in a major publication this fall, readings at fancy galleries and etc.

the issue is that none of that achievement translates to fair compensation.

i also will frankly say that being underemployed has made it much easier to achieve what I want artistically— fourth book coming out next year, major overview of first three books in a major publication this fall, readings at fancy galleries and etc.

This is the thing with me, too. I am not "underemployed" in the hours-in-the-day sense; I work a full-time job (meaning I bill an employer for 8 hours a day M-F) and a part-time job (I bill an employer for 3 hours a day M-F); I work as a freelance ghostwriter and editor for a literary agency; I write for magazines and websites; I run my own website/newsletter which has a few paid subscribers; and I'm writing a book. Those latter three things give me creative/life satisfaction, and if I traded them in for a single full-time job that paid decent money I would be "financially stable" (which I already am, but, you know, more so) but miserable.

Part of me wants to do mentorship work, because I feel like 30 years of doing it has given me a lot of insight and advice I could pass on to people who want to become freelance hustlers, but again, hours in the day.

I spent 13 years in one job (2005-2018). Unfortunately since then I've been hopping, with periods of freelancing, consulting, underemployment, and a few short-tenure jobs.

Something went very wrong for me career-wise, and it wasn't just covid weirdness. There's, like, a fog that comes over my brain sometimes, and I can't focus. It seems to stem from anxiety and depression, which I am addressing.

I still have a killer resume, with 25 years of experience, and I interview well. There is a lot of demand in my field, so I'm able to get jobs quickly, but keeping them is another story.

Apparently I can be charming for an hour, but I have had some trouble sustaining it and delivering. For whatever reason.

Great thread and very appreciated. Hard to talk about this stuff sometimes.

My wife is currently babysitting part-time, the other part-time medical office admin job having ended when they went back to the office and hired someone else for 50 hours/week. It's been hard for her since losing the music industry job she had for 20+ years -- she has no degree but a lot of work experience, but record labels don't need sales people the way they did in the past. She's taken coding classes, art classes, swimming classes, just to fill her time and try to better herself, stay busy, but it's been incredibly hard at various points for her/us since 2018.

Myself, I'm a college drop-out who has worked in the used record business full time since 2005. I don't hate my job or myself but I don't make much money. Quality of life has improved since I switched from working in record retail to online sales - better pay, paid vacation, flexible hours, no punishing customers to deal with. But it's not satisfying, it does not feel like I am making any kind of headway in my life and what I want to do. What do I want to do? Fuck knows.

And still, we're on medicaid for health care and unless my partner finds work soon we will begin eating into what meager savings we have.

We have a spare bedroom in our apartment, and our summertime tenant just left to go back to school, so potentially we can rent it out again to help make ends meet. But obviously we'd rather not have a stranger in the apartment, so that's in a sort of limbo until we find someone we trust/like enough, who is in need of a room for whatever reason.

It's all very depressing but it helps in some ways to remember that other people are struggling here too, and that its not personal failing but the reality of living under capitalism. Hard, still.

Yes — I found myself wondering if I had made a huge mistake in identifying underemployment as the main issue making me feel like a piece of shit. I mean, it seems like lots of ppl are basically ok with it (even thriving within the chaos?) which is great but I can’t seem to manage it? I don’t feel like I’m thriving. Maybe the problem is me? Maybe I’m overreacting to something that other people don’t overreact to? It wouldn’t be the first time.

But then I remember that quite honestly there’s nothing wrong with me or my work ethic — this type of precarity feels unsustainable and as i get older I find myself wondering over and over “is this all there is??” like Peggy Lee. I’m not ok with it.

Yeah, the problem is definitely not you. And you're not overreacting - everyone has different thresholds for this kind of thing and different needs and wants that are not being satisfied. Other people get along fine in plenty of situations I think I would find intolerable, and just because other people might seem to be doing better, that doesn't make YOU the problem.

It is entirely unsustainable. I don't know about anyone else itt, but I can barely put away any money to save and since a significant chunk of my income is cash, am not going to be able to count on social security or anything else in my old age.

I've tried to pursue more creative endeavors the last few years (writing, making collages, playing RPGs) but honestly they just make me resent the struggle we all have against time. Working against time, as they say.

(To be clear there are plenty of things wrong w me but I don’t believe my lack of employability is primary among them)

Yes I don’t feel like my time is mine to use — thank you for the kind words too, it helps!!

I'm basically unemployable on paper, but actually very smart & a hard worker. But I'm almost 40 I'm not going back to undergrad now, getting into debt, just to have a marginally better chance of finding a marginally better job.

xp - the struggle is real bud <3

everyone has different thresholds for this kind of thing and different needs and wants that are not being satisfied.

yeah ... i thought about what you said about teaching and adjuncts and part of why I think that sucks is that the expectations were not met. Like, a generation ago (putting it that way for simplicity's sake) there was tenure and full-time employment and these were good jobs that you didn't really have to worry as much about re basic subsistence, and now ... no. Meanwhile people have spent years of their lives and lots of money to qualify for these jobs that have been taken away.

I, on the other hand, just didn't really have a plan for what exactly I was going to do to make a living or have as a career ... I just kinda "rode the whirlwind" and ended up in this weird place professionally and financially that doesn't entirely suck, but would probably not be feasible for someone who had kids or who wanted more security and less stress.

I, on the other hand, just didn't really have a plan for what exactly I was going to do to make a living or have as a career ... I just kinda "rode the whirlwind" and ended up in this weird place professionally and financially that doesn't entirely suck, but would probably not be feasible for someone who had kids or who wanted more security and less stress.

This is exactly how I feel. And of course the path I took doesn't exist anymore, so what I said upthread about wanting to potentially mentor people might be worse than useless. "Well, answer an ad in the print version of the New York Times from a porn magazine, you can be an editor there for 3-4 years with little or no experience, that'll be enough to get you on staff at a small music magazine, and after a few years doing that you can work for a record label doing editorial content for their website..."

in the past year or so a couple people asked me if I would mentor them and I was like ... no, I would not be good at that. Probably the biggest difference between me (at almost 50) and someone in their late 20s/early 30s professionally is that I finished college/grad school with only $6k in debt, and rents were fairly low at that time. I did a lot of volunteer work and pro bono stuff to "get my foot in the door" and "learn my trade" that younger generations can't really afford to do.

Like it is rare that someone wants me to mentor them or ask me to be on some professional development panel or workshop because what is desirable in "the field" is full-time job security/institutional support and higher income -- largely due to increases in cost of living and student debt ... and I am so not a model for that. Also the weird mix of things I do ... most people I talk to are interested in only doing "the creative stuff" as opposed to the other things that are "not fun" that enable me to do the creative stuff with a greater degree of autonomy than a lot of other people in the field.

a key element of capitalist societies is that the system needs to have a surplus of talent, more skills than it wants to employ in any given moment, because that keeps wages down

but it also wants people to feel guilty about not being used to the extent of their ability, because that guilt helps to drive down wages

that's generally true ... but there are jobs that more people want to do and jobs that are not as desirable. Thus "wages" (or supply/demand which translates to wages) get driven down because there is a surplus of people who want to do said jobs. Like, one thing I struggle with in terms of looking at things from a purely Marxist and/or structural approach is the fact that there are way more people who want to be musicians, writers, artists, actors, designers, etc. than there are "jobs" for them.

Like if structural engineering was as appealing a profession as being a musician, it would greatly reduce the cost of housing but that's not the case.

my point here sarah is if the system is structured to drive down wages for the jobs that are most essential to maintain a functioning society then it's the system that's the problem, not the individuals wracked with guilt trying to fit into that system

but for some reason that's not how it plays out at the moment, for you, for me, for anybody really

this piece from the 1950s is a really important pointer imo

https://archive.org/details/sparrowsnest-8962

I guess there's a question for me underlying underemployment, and it's a challenging one. What do I _deserve_ as an individual, what am I _worth_? What do we _all deserve_ as human beings, what are we worth?

We fall so grotesquely short of any reasonable answer on the second count that it's hard for me to even ask the first question. Sometimes I feel like the way we talk about "privilege" can be a little misleading. There's this distinction in poly between, I think, jealousy and envy, where jealousy is wanting something _instead_ of someone else - I guess "covetousness" is another way of looking at it - and envy is _also_ wanting something someone else have.

In the past, I was sort of taught to think of "privilege" in that sense, things other people have that they _don't deserve_. That's not how I view my own privilege these days. Like, as a trans woman, I'm extraordinarily privileged, by which I mean that I'm not homeless and I have access to healthcare. That's setting the bar real, real low, if you ask me, but that's where it's at, that's where we're at. My girlfriend was envious of my privilege when I was too depressed to get out of bed for two months and didn't lose my job. I guess that's one way of looking at it. I tend to look at it in terms of how hard I (and she) had to work to get any reasonable level of care for my illness, in terms of what I had to actually _do_ to get care. It's pretty monstrous what I had to do. Not monstrous of me. Monstrous of...

But what am I going to do, right? Every single one of us has individual stories of how we've been denied things that we have a fucking _right_ to by institutions of power that are either actively hostile or exhibit depraved indifference. Yet these injustices are beyond our ability to individually remediate, and the same forces that perpetrate these injustices work very, very hard to keep us from working together for our _collective_ benefit, work very hard to encourage us to be covetous of each other.

I'm envious of other people's privilege. Not covetous, but yeah, I'm a really envious person. Envious of the stupidest things. I feel like I don't have the right to be envious because other people are envious of me for things that are, at best, double-edged swords. I have a professional certification, I work a professional job, I have a fair amount of job security, I have access to resources that other people don't because of those things. It's a bullshit job that I've grown to loathe but am afraid of leaving, because I've seen what happens to my friends who lose their jobs.

62 quit, just over a year ago. She was underemployed and the job was going fine for a while but things got so bad so fast that she didn't have time to find another job before she quit. I've been there. I worked for a small company for seven years in Indiana, I was underemployed but it was the most stable long-term employment I had. I did that until the company got bought out by a minor member of a prominent Indiana Republican family who ran the company into the ground while embezzling from employees' paychecks, and then I quit, and then I couldn't find another job in Indiana for a year. Those are the choices a lot of the time, underemployed or... not even unemployed, right? Because when you _quit_ it's not unemployment. You're just not working. That's all.

People thought I could've worked harder trying to find a job. It was 2016. I was depressed and terrified. I went to see a psych, paid cash, told him about my anxieties, told him I didn't want any benzos because of my addiction, he gave me a benzo scrip and said to see him next week and he'd make everything all better. That's the resources I had available to me, in Indiana. Well, it was OK, I could afford to throw away a couple hundred dollars like that. Privilege.

The only question it's safe or healthy for me to _ask_ is the first question, the question of what I'm worth as an individual. Asking the other one just leads into a spiral of despair, doomscrolling, learned helplessness. I feel like the only way I can make the world a better place is to keep becoming a better person. It's not something I want to do. I'm tired of becoming a better person. Becoming a better person, though... that's a genuine fucking privilege. It's something I've chosen to do, over and over again, in a lot of ways. Even if I'm only doing it out of fear, which, most of the time, I am...

That's the insidious thing about underemployment. When I look at the radical changes I've made, mostly they're because the alternative I saw was a horrific one. I spent 20 years not graduating from college until a co-worker of mine had something bad happen to her and I looked at what happened to her and decided if I didn't change, if I didn't quit that job and get a degree, the same thing would happen to me. I spent six months not asking out the woman I wound up marrying until the dating site we were on crashed and I had to face the prospect of never talking to her again. I lived in Indiana, a state I hated, for ten fucking years until Donald Trump got elected and I panicked and said to myself, if I don't leave I'm going to _become like_ these people.

Not all of these fears were reasonable or well-grounded but it's the only way I ever changed in the past. Transition was the first thing in my life I ever did mostly because I _wanted_ to. Even then, even then it felt like fear. It felt like I transitioned because I was more afraid of _not_ transitioning. I still haven't managed to figure out the difference between fear and desire.

All this is definite First Question stuff. This isn't stuff other people have to deal with. It's a big part of my underemployment, though. I'm underemployed in large part because my sense of my own self-worth is extraordinarily low. I wanted to be a professional writer, for instance, but I wasn't ever able to do it because my self-esteem was too low. (My self-esteem is also too low for me to make it as a stand-up comedian, a profession that's fueled by low self-esteem and dick jokes.)

Anyway. It's a question that's at the uppermost of my mind right now, so I hope y'all don't mind my writing so much about it. I'm trying to value myself as a human being, but it's not something I've ever really done before and it's pretty difficult. I can't really think of anything else to do with my life at this point, though.

xp - idk what you are trying to convince me of? I am not arguing that the capitalist system is free from "blame"

i felt like you were arguing that some jobs are naturally, inevitably more desirable than others and i think that's only true if you ignore the structures that make that case?

like the joy of "creative" jobs is at least in part a construct of the economic system that restrics the number of jobs that seem creative

I am aware of those structures AND I am saying that some jobs are inevitably more desirable than others because human beings aren't blank slates.

that's generally true ... but there are jobs that more people want to do and jobs that are not as desirable. Thus "wages" (or supply/demand which translates to wages) get driven down because there is a surplus of people who want to do said jobs. Like, one thing I struggle with in terms of looking at things from a purely Marxist and/or structural approach is the fact that there are way more people who want to be musicians, writers, artists, actors, designers, etc. than there are "jobs" for them.

― sarahell

to me, it's creative work that most points the way to a post-capitalist future... the whole "supply/demand" model just fundamentally doesn't apply to creative work, imo. and i don't think it applies to bullshit jobs, either! what's the "fair market value" of me lying in bed for two months being paid to do a job that i _can_ do adequately while i'm suicidally depressed? at a certain point maybe it becomes beneficial to look at work from standpoints other than market value!

xp - Does the fact that someone wants to do "underpaid" creative work mean that they should suffer and not be able to afford food or medical care or safe, dignified housing? No. I don't believe that.

xxp

that's where i disagree because i don't think desirability exists outside of the context of the system that designates the job

i don't see a platonic world of jobs where some are always more or less desirable. don't pay and hours and conditions have more of an effect on desirability if we live in a world where earnings and free time are scarce? and wouldn't those things look different if precarity didn't exist?

But structurally, outside of capitalism, even ... there are things that more people are going to want to do than there are "essential" roles and there are going to be "essential" roles that are undesirable or at least are challenging enough to obtain competence/skill at that there is going to be a scarcity.

Off topic - but can underemployment figure in your personal life as well as work? On a particularly boring Sunday, that seems even more of a pressing problem to me: why don't I have more interesting facets of my personal non-work life ? Why haven't I developed those more?

i don't think desirability exists outside of the context of the system that designates the job

unless you are going to construct novel job descriptions like, 50% sewage treatment specialist / 50% DJ ... which, hey, why not? Maybe that's capitalist hegemony at work.

but what makes something desirable isn't just a personal, aesthetic connection? the remuneration, the social status, the degree of how much of yourself feels beaten down by a job - that's all stuff that impacts on what we think makes a job desirable, so if those things changed then our notion of desirability would change i think

that's not to say people wouldn't always value self-fulfilment or self-expression, it's just to say that those feelings aren't automatically tied to specific kinds of work because every kind of work is shaped by the economic conditions around it

apart from being slow to type out my replies here :D i think i'm saying in brief

"structurally, outside of capitalism, even ... there are things that more people are going to want to do than there are "essential" roles and there are going to be "essential" roles that are undesirable or at least are challenging enough to obtain competence/skill at that there is going to be a scarcity"

is doubtful to me because there's no work outside of a socioeconomic structure that makes it work

The other issue with "the system" is that certain jobs require particular systems and structures to be functional. And part of the appeal of creative work is the aspect of play and the relative autonomy of it. Like, if your job is in housing construction, you aren't going to have that because of what is required to build housing in a contemporary society.

did Robinson Crusoe hate mondays?

is a question

xp - are you using the term "work" in opposition to "play" or ... I just want to be sure I understand what you're saying.

xp - Garfield did ... and he is a cat so idk

Garfield is a huge liar! he doesn't have to go to structured employment so why would he hate Mondays?

i feel like you're accepting that some kinds of work are more desirable precisely because they give people more creative juice *within this specific economic system* and i think my original point was take away the iniquitous system and desirabiliy - and "underemployment" - looks very different, if it even exists

It's always shocked me how absurdly bad and ad hoc hiring practices are universally, especially in the midst of supposed job shortages -- so maybe try to factor actual employment and employment practices out of the equation of what people need or have a shortfall in?

For example, between something like woodworking, electrical wiring, plumbing, or car repair, what do you think skill-wise would have personally saved you the most money (versus thinking of it as a money-generating vocation)?

take away the iniquitous system and desirabiliy - and "underemployment" - looks very different, if it even exists

sure! I agree with that. "Underemployment" the term is very much a value judgment and is contextual. I guess I was on a tangent related to "work satisfaction" (desirability) that isn't necessarily the same thing.

xp Philip - personally, some of that (re personally saved you the most money) is also about "licensing" and "accreditation" which is another systemic/structural thing that NV and I could discuss at length probably!

I mean crusoe certainly liked Friday so

i read that word as a special kind of meanness that criticises people for not being able to do the things that would fulfill them even tho they'd really like to do the things that fulfill them

also lol wins

i read that word as a special kind of meanness that criticises people for not being able to do the things that would fulfill them even tho they'd really like to do the things that fulfill them

I didn't mean it in a cruel way. I am sorry if you read it that way. It is "mean" in that human society is "mean" and people can't solely do the things that would fulfill them.

It isn't the "failing" of those people as individuals (as in, people shouldn't feel guilty about it).

I guess where I'm coming from is that you are positing this hypothetical of "precarity not existing" where precarity has always existed for at least some segment of society.

nah i didn't mean *you* were being cruel as such. i think you're arguing for a "life is cruel" thing maybe? that i have to push back on even if i don't have a ton of faith in this particular iteration of cruel life being overturned any time soon

but i have to believe in the possibility and necessity of overturning it

even if i don't have a ton of faith in this particular iteration of cruel life being overturned any time soon

yeah ... I have no faith in that tbh ... at least not on a major scale ... I guess that's where I'm coming from. Though I was reading about "classic organization theory" awhile back and the fact that there aren't jobs that are 50% sewage treatment / 50% DJ ... this is a product of the Industrial Revolution / Capitalism / organization theory a la Taylor.

I mean, you are right ... now that I think about it ... jobs could be made more creative!

It sort of is being overturned? But in pretty unpalatable ways -- the entire gig economy / informal grey market / hustle culture you could think of as a rebuke to the traditional structures and licensing/accreditation for doing things.

There probably are hybrid sewage treatment DJs out there!

not so much that you could make every job creative but you could think of all the factors in work on a sliding scale - creativity, fulfilment, remuneration, time - and try and balance the scales out

i wouldn't need to express all of myself thru emptying dustbins but if me contributing to a social need left me enough time and money and brain-space to do other things

Would a different system be more punitive on the other end -- e.g. pro golfers paying lots of money to play since what they're doing is largely leisure and requires serious grounds upkeep etc...?

the entire gig economy / informal grey market / hustle culture you could think of as a rebuke to the traditional structures and licensing/accreditation for doing things.

There probably are hybrid sewage treatment DJs out there!

yeah ... it's "interesting" ... though there are certain things where licensing/accreditation is still required and looking at that and where that happens and how is useful for understanding the system/structural aspects.

These will seem odd considerations when AI shortly powers fully automated luxury communism, and we’re all subsisting on a generous universal basic income.

the idea that there's any kind of rational relationship between a job's "desirability" and compensation is kooky and demonstrably false looking at even a small data set

it's pure ideology

This turn of convo reminds me of one of my favorite lines from the Threepenny Opera, an inescapable truth: “the world is mean, and man uncouth.”

Brecht otm

What do I _deserve_ as an individual, what am I _worth_? What do we _all deserve_ as human beings, what are we worth?

Call me crazy but,
Housing
Healthcare
Education
Food
Clean water

To Kate's point, there are always people who have it worse than you and always people who have it better than you. The cliché is something like I wept because I had no shoes until I met a person who had no feet.

As I have said probably too many times, I have a child who will likely never speak, or work, or go to college, or date, or marry, or live independently, or be a parent. But at the same time, I know a girl his age who will likely never walk or feed herself or use a bathroom independently. It's not a competition; everyone is dealing with the situation in front of them, which is probably as it should be.

Re: creative work, there is the old IBM thing about how machines should work and people should think. Some aspects of automation are getting close to replacing human creative labor. Personally I don't expect my profession to exist in 25 years. But in the meantime, I am selling myself as a layer of discernment and judgment. I hope it will be enough.

Call me crazy but,
Housing
Healthcare
Education
Food
Clean water

I know it's simplistic but I really do think that a functional social contract/safety net would make it much easier for people to pursue the things they really want to pursue and are best equipped to do. So much of employment revolves around "stability" (which is mostly an illusion anyway, because jobs can disappear with no warning) and benefits, all to keep yourself fed and housed and with access to health care. If we provided those things as a societal baseline, it would dramatically change people's relationship to work. It doesn't mean everyone would magically find their dream job or that those jobs would pay enough etc., but it would take some of the endless grinding stress away.

It's the biggest thing missing in all the buzzy talk around "entrepreneurship," it's presented like it's this big bold scary thing to step out on your own but that's only because we've made it actually pretty risky in all sorts of ways. We don't have to, that's a choice. At the same time, not being able to offer decent health insurance is a major drag on a lot of small nonprofits that do really good work and where a lot of people would probably like to work because of the sense of mission, but they can't afford to.

Call me crazy but,
Housing
Healthcare
Education
Food
Clean water

― ian

you're crazy. where's "gay sex"? i'm not going to accept a list of what we have a birthright to as human beings that doesn't include "gay sex". and don't try to tell me "oh but i'm straight", doesn't matter! i'm asexual, and they can have my right to queer debauchery when they pull it from my cold, dead...

well, shit. OK, NOT EVEN THEN.

i don't want to super get into direct anticapitalism, but i am opposed to capitalism, i am opposed to "full employment", i am opposed to any ideology that someone's value as a human being ought to be dependent on performing activities that provide _value_ as measured by capitalist markets.

i would be a better, happier, more functional, and more fulfilled human being if i had, you know, freedom from want and freedom from fear. if i could spend my time pursuing those things which _i_ found of most value without having to worry about doing things i hate for companies i hate in order to survive. so yeah, for me, the ideal job wouldn't be one where i was "fairly compensated" for doing something i loved, but some sort of gay luxury communism thing where people paid me money because i have inherent worth and value as a human being and i did the stuff i wanted to do for fucking free.

are there jobs that need to be done by humans? yes. are there enough meaningful jobs to reach "full employment"? no. if someone wants to be a surgeon, by all means, they should be rich as croesus, if that's what they're into. i fully believe that, absolutely surgeons should have more money than me. is my work of any more value than that of a greeter at wal-mart? no. no, i don't think it is. why? because our jobs are both fundamentally _bullshit_. these fucking assholes twist their heads into knots trying to justify jobs that serve no purpose other than to perpetuate an outmoded and unsupported ideology that is directly detrimental to most of us who suffer under its yoke.

by the way, if you ever need a t-slur with borderline personality disorder to make incendiary speeches denouncing capitalism, give me a call. until then, i'm gonna play zelda or something.

i think that frankly, part of my issue is that I am very resolutely “fuck a fuckin’ job” in the depths of my soul. it might explain why i am not great at getting jobs!!

meeee too. big love to yours and kate's posts in this great thread.

The framing of underemployment in the OP looks a bit past its sell by date. At a time when our focus is now increasingly on likely impending ecological catastrophes caused by industrialisation, maybe we need less employment across the board - and less growth - before capitalism eats the natural world up.

in the meantime, people need to eat and there is no “full communism” button so maybe shut the fuck up

like, what a patronizing, bullshit thing to write

thank you table -- i read that post and was like "is this person telling me to drop dead or ??"

i don't see what it adds to the conversation to focus on systems that (in all honesty) won't change before we all die from old age or overwork. i just read an email about the job i thought i had for a week and it said i was deemed ineligible for the job bc "it would have tipped you into fulltime employment" and in my head i was like "yes that is why i wanted it" It didn't come with any of the benefits of ft employment but it would have been suitable hours and money. they "overlooked" the person who had been doing exactly this for years until he moved on to...full time employment and the job became available. Or not!!

ugh

i’m sorry, LL. that sucks!

as far as the post in question, the idea that LL (or any of the other people posting their stories to this thread) could possibly have a major effect on strategies for degrowth or depopulation is ridiculous. any of us starving or becoming homeless isn’t going to do much to save the planet, but it will cause us a great deal of misery. perhaps the offending poster could turn their attention to those with resources and the governments that aid and abet capital’s cancerous growth and role in ecocide— scolding individuals and acting like an asshole is not the way to go!

. The framing of underemployment in the OP looks a bit past its sell by date.

Just for clarification it I was referring to the Wikipedia definition of underemployment - no criticism of LL intended.

that's fine -- i still don't think it's helpful to glibly blame systems in a space where people are talking about their individual issues with surviving under those systems.

like it's easy to sit here and blame capitalism and i have done more than my share of it but that makes no difference in my individual life experience or the individual life experiences of people who are not able to enjoy the fruits of full time employment *in their field* *using their professional skills*

this situation at my workplace felt like i was drowning, briefly came up for air and tasted the life-sustaining properties of air, and then had my head pushed or my legs pulled back underwater because in the water's estimation i don't deserve air. if i dwelled on how bad it makes me feel, i would be even more miserable than i am!

Out of curiosity, if compensation were exactly the same, would most people prefer to work a steady 3-6 hours a day (the supposed maximum productive range for people), 4-5 days a week, or do one month of hell a year with the rest of it completely free and clear?

are my basic needs covered under either scenario? (including employer-subsidized healthcare)?

if so, i don't care honestly

i would do either, though i think 3-6 hours/day 4-5x/week is technically going to be more time spent working than one difficult month because no one can exist for a full month without rest/sleep so i think that would be the obviously easier choice. but a few hours a day sounds like more of a sustainable life. i am not built to be a lobsterman!

omg hell month sign me up

ultimately though i don't think the answer to that question matters very much

omg hell month sign me up

there's reality shows about fishing for crab in Alaska, see if it'll work for you

When I am working, I check email early (like 8) and see if there's anything I need to address immediately. Then I may do a bit of concentrative work in the middle of the day. Then I just monitor things through evening.

I could not do my sort of work in a hell month (as these are collaborative and iterative projects with deadlines spread throughout the year).

I have tried to float my idea of hybridness (in the office maybe 10 - 2, otherwise just being responsive when needed). No one so far has bitten. Most companies structure hybridness as "X days a week," where a "day" means an eight-hour day.

I always imagined movie-making (and I guess a lot of creative endeavors) to be closer to a hell month scenario with droughts in between but apparently a lot of it is just waiting around.

ive learned that a hell day affects me a lot longer than a day, hell month can shove it

there's reality shows about fishing for crab in Alaska, see if it'll work for you

Seems that honeymoon is over: https://alaskapublic.org/2022/12/19/alaska-crab-fishery-collapse-seen-as-warning-about-bering-sea-transformation/

And the Ukraine war has the arse gone out of the Newfoundland crab market, price-wise. Have to figure another plan.

also everything in Alaska is so expensive that the “excellent money” in those jobs often goes to rent, food, etc.

not if you fly in for season and gone again tbf which a lot of that type of work involves

but then a lot of these guys do a few "seasons" or follow orher different quota seasons around places or have other work

im not sure its the example sought tbh

yeah, i mean if you are out on a boat during the season you can make some serious money, but there are flights, and also the time needed on land during break days— and really being on the boat is the only job that’s worth it, i know tons of people who’ve done canning and boxing at the fishhouses up there and it is miserable work and many people don’t really make enough to justify the hassle.

to state the obvious: going to Alaska to do heavy labor for a month is not a cure for underemployment nor is it an option for most people. Congrats and kudos to all able bodied men able to do hard labor for a month but that’s a small proportion of people.

Kate Beaton's Ducks is about her mostly miserable time in a oil fracking camp doing mostly office work to pay off student debts. There's a lot of "did you really go to college for this?" in it and some super-dark episodes but... she did end up paying off her student debt.

to state the obvious: going to Alaska to do heavy labor for a month is not a cure for underemployment nor is it an option for most people. Congrats and kudos to all able bodied men able to do hard labor for a month but that’s a small proportion of people.

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Wednesday, September 6, 2023 8:08 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe you could lay out everything we are and are not allowed to talk about itt?

i keep typing up posts based on all the interesting things that ppl are saying but it seems like you have a particular vision for the thread so i don't want to step on your toes

This derail is right up there with “just get a different type of job if you can’t get a ft job in your field” or “just take the stairs/stop buying starbux” type of bs

I don’t have a vision or parameters aside from please be respectful toward those of us who are underemployed

Anything not universally applicable is viewed as a direct insult to those to whom it does not apply. ("Breathing air is good!" "Yeah, well, some of us have COPD or black lung, you elitist prick!" "Drinking water is good and life-sustaining!" "What about those of us with crippling hydrophobia? What about the children of Flint, Michigan?")

Whatever — if you can’t think about or be minimally conscious of where you’re saying what you’re saying or to whom I can’t help you.

Posting to a thread for hydrophobes with “water is good!” = who does this???

im not sure how we can determine in advance what range of roles or specific types of work wouldnt exclude some section of society, it seemed quite an unfair jump to make given the discussion was a natural offshoot of a theoretical question raised on the "underemployed in terms of time spent working" aspect imo

but i think we had stopped discussing it anyway.

im interested in the other type of underemployment (if im right that theres a time/ability split in the two main usages of the term but again i may be wrong here). does it cover "i can do more than i am showing here" or is it itt more held to be "there is not enough demand for the talents i have/the work i would like to do?

again im not very sure exactly how the term is being defined for thread purposes and the definitions in the wikipedia page dont imo really clear things up?

Posted this early in thread to clarify


Acc to Google search for “underemployed government definition”

Underemployment is a measure of the total number of people in an economy who are unwillingly working in low-skill and low-paying jobs or only part-time because they cannot get full-time jobs that use their skills.

This is the definition I’ve been operating under in my estimation with focus on “use their skills” by which I mean professional skills (for example; not simply my natural tendency to enjoy working with people)

To clarify what I personally meant by it and how the US government measures underemployment

ty i had missed that

This derail is right up there with “just get a different type of job if you can’t get a ft job in your field” or “just take the stairs/stop buying starbux” type of bs

I don’t have a vision or parameters aside from please be respectful toward those of us who are underemployed

i also think ll is fostering a really good convo here, i think there's a good discussion to be had about the crab fishing industry but it's not really what i'm here for fwiw

I have gravitated towards the “hell month” type work in the course of my life… vs having to do work that is bullshit several hours a day for an indefinite duration… now I have more of the long slog type work and I feel underwater

It seems like most jobs don't have a good path towards seniority -- the bad version is you're always treading water or on the edge of being let go and the "good" version is you get pushed into management instead of doing the thing you've gotten really good at, because there's no way they can just pay you more for being extra good at it. Has any industry lucked upon a good setup? It's definitely not academia...

the bad version is you're always treading water or on the edge of being let go and the "good" version is you get pushed into management instead of doing the thing you've gotten really good at, because there's no way they can just pay you more for being extra good at it. Has any industry lucked upon a good setup?

For many years this was me - advocating for staying put and getting better at doing my role, rather than being pushed into managing that thing. Every time someone offered to hire me an assistant, I said something along the lines of "how about you hire me a boss instead?" only more politely. The term in my professional orbit is "individual contributor." Lots of people just want to be a kickass individual contributor without any urge for promotion/advancement. For a long time (as a consultant) I got away with it.

But (as noted) I lost my way a few years ago and haven't performed up to my usual standard in quite a while. I will still probably get away with it, but my confidence has been shaken by my recent slide into underemployment.

Anything not universally applicable is viewed as a direct insult to those to whom it does not apply. ("Breathing air is good!" "Yeah, well, some of us have COPD or black lung, you elitist prick!" "Drinking water is good and life-sustaining!" "What about those of us with crippling hydrophobia? What about the children of Flint, Michigan?")

― read-only (unperson), Wednesday, 6 September 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Where is poster "the late great" to castigate posters for displaying a minimum of literacy and reading comprehension?

*not

Water not being at all accessible to many people is a problem. Sorry you think this fact is only ever used as a gotcha in the online discussions you've seen.

how do you even move on from a post like that? thread is over now

Water, him no get enemy

Mostly I wonder if the underemployment will ever end or if this is my fate for life. The question of why is beyond me — there are personal and structural reasons — I just idly wonder if this is it.

Like is this as good as it’ll get for me??

After some time and our current descent into fascist hellscape that this is indeed it. I don't see myself being employed full time in my field of choice anytime in the future. I am compelled to express gratitude for having what I do have, which is two steady part time jobs. Maybe I've just gotten used to it and am not as angsty about it anymore? IDK.

well, if you're getting by and not super stressed about it? maybe that's all we can expect in life

I haven't gotten a raise in years and the nonprofit that employs me has been struggling, so now is not a great time to ask for one. But my rent is cheap and I'm not big on acquiring any more items other than groceries and socks and stuff, so I manage and even manage to save a bit for whatever comes next, though I imagine I'll be working well into my late nineties

getting by - yes
stressed -- depends on my schedule, which changes from semester to semester and week to week.
i envy the predictability of knowing when i will be working, but again see no end in sight, so i have to find a way to not stress myself to death about it.

Stress really wears one down in a way that’s harder to pinpoint than physical exertion imo…. For most of my working life I have had a combination of part time jobs, on-call gigs, self-employment and while I am comfortable with it, I totally understand how it would feel precarious or stressful to people!

I am starting to really grapple with having been underemployed (in terms of pay as well as status/prestige) for a long time. For most of my 20s through most of my 40s, I seriously dgaf about these things, as long as I could pay my bills and have time to do all the meaningful things I did for “fun.” Now I am seeing (or at least feeling) the results of that: not being taken as seriously in professional contexts as those who followed the appropriate path from college onwards. Even when I have more knowledge or experience or skill… it’s only so much about those things, even when on a functional level, in terms of “the work,” it’s about knowledge, experience and skill.

I am sure many of you reading this are saying, “well well if it isn’t the consequences of your actions” and laughing. It’s ok. You have the right.

As a person with a stress disorder, I can see how stress has contributed to me being underemployed. I don’t blame myself for it, growing up in a pressure cooker did that.

I am newly underemployed, hours cut from 40 to 30. mixed feelings.

I could go round your boss’ place and have a word lol

xxp no i'm actually thinking "fuck those people with the *right* resumes," because similar to you, i also lived my life. those goodie two shoes will never respect you, so fuck em! like, do your best not to get entangled too much with them. if you have to interact with them regularly, treat em like strangers passing through who deserve pity, and guard yourself against them. my 2 cents.

<3 map… also, LL, I am certain that your underemployment is their loss, because you are an excellent worker/teacher

I also feel like I missed the boat re: professionalism/playing the game/careering

and also like map says, yeah fuck it I have really lived

so many people are in the exact same boat right now. a lot of people are fucking struggling.

The thing that is pissing me off rn is people in my nonprofit field who don’t seem to understand or at least seem to have planned for this fucking struggling. Like, they built things that cost too much to build and now people are struggling to afford them. … As opposed to trying to build things as affordably as possible.

Xp to map
Agree — that’s why I’ve fallen on the side of riding it out as is, to stop striving when there is minimal fruit to strive for

yeah, that is kind of where i'm at too. tighten my belt and hold on to what i have. nb i am full-time but my salary barely covers my bills and for a while i felt like i needed a side hustle.

in a lot of ways i'm doing pretty well. it's all relative, isn't it? it makes it easier to not be miserable during work if i have that attitude.

it feels good to let go of the itch to do careerism, and the feeling of failure for meaning to do it and not doing it, or not doing it good enough or whatever. realizing that right now the job market and "advancement" is all austerity and bullshit all the way up, so why not focus on other things - the things that workville demand that you put aside, but are actually much more fulfilling to the life that we only live once. for instance - and i'm very lucky i can do this in my low-supervision workplace - going on a trail run before i go into work, arriving at work a little before 9, early enough that i'm in before most everyone else, so i can claim that i've been there since 8 on my calendar with no issue. taking back my time when i can. that is the sort of "opportunity" i'm always on the lookout for!

Xxp to sarahell thank you for acknowledging that. Makes me feel like I do know what it’s like to have a calling even if it doesn’t sustain me.

Even when I have more knowledge or experience or skill… it’s only so much about those things, even when on a functional level, in terms of “the work,” it’s about knowledge, experience and skill.

I am sure many of you reading this are saying, “well well if it isn’t the consequences of your actions” and laughing. It’s ok. You have the right.

Actually i was nodding along in agreement and saying to myself “fuck that"

when I got laid off in Jan 2023 I remember telling my mom "I feel like I'm being punished for not playing the game" and I stand by that, but also it was worth it!

oh i see, i'm just adding to the “fuck that” chorus :)

we are stronger together :)

realizing that right now the job market and "advancement" is all austerity and bullshit all the way up, so why not focus on other things - the things that workville demand that you put aside, but are actually much more fulfilling to the life that we only live once.

been there a long time and i feel i have come out way ahead of the ones who played the game, but i mean fuck this still feels like struggling mindlessly against a tether at times.

i had a second round interview for a job today, i think i did well. the pay would be a slight increase from what i make working two gigs at the moment, plus the health package is insanely good. still wouldn’t be breaking 50k a year. i have just resigned myself to never having quite enough money to feel comfortable

(i really hope i get the job tho)

good luck!

Yeah good luck!

<3 table

Working for the Post Office is the first time in my life I feel vaguely secure, not quite three months in and still getting used to it. Firmly lower middle class but the fear that one day I'd have to choose between homelessness and death is receding.

HR has repeatedly fucked up my healthcare selection so I still haven't really had that so at least it's not an entirely new experience.

that's good to hear :)

feel this thread in my bones. i just want to say don't give up. i decided i was done at a place a few years ago, for my well-being. the resulting search and interview process was painful... and i have nothing intelligent to say about how i landed the highest paying thing i even applied on. nothing. keep on.

no i wasn't aiming too low or anything. really nothing to say lol

i feel like i'm in this weird liminal space. privilege means i'm not working and i'm not in desperate financial straits. my last job nearly fucking killed me, and when i look around... nobody i know is making it. it's fucking impossible. for-profit jobs are all fucking blatant grifts, and trump has destroyed most nonprofit jobs. i got a friend who worked her ass off for a year finding a decent nonprofit job. she worked there a month and got laid off a week ago.

i got one friend, one friend! who has a job that is paying the bills. was paying the bills. cuz it turns out in two months, she's gotta start repaying her bullshit "student loans" to a fake university she was enrolled in.

it just feels stupid, you know? finding a job shouldn't be this hard. i'm talented, experienced, i have valuable skills... it's just that nobody seems to be interested in paying me for my valuable skills. because nobody is actually doing anything valuable. i genuinely do feel that america, at least, has a potemkin economy. playing the game, whether that's "working" or looking for jobs... it's so fucking rigged. even if i win i feel like i lose. it was fucking killing me.

so i gotta find things to do with my life other than getting paid, because nobody's fuckin' getting paid right now. for a while i wanted to use the money i had to help other people, and i just didn't ever have enough. it's too widespread, too systemic, for anything i had to be more than a drop in the bucket. i've started caring for myself emotionally because, well, what else was i gonna fucking do? spend my whole life being miserable and blaming capitalism for it? substance-abuse myself into oblivion?

it is still pretty boring, though. and stressful. everyone i know, our bodies are falling apart from the stress. "weathering". the science is there - going through bullshit like this fucks up people's bodies. and everyone's going through bullshit right now. i'm a lot more emotionally stable than i used to be.

the hardest thing is just... feeling idle curiosity about things that i used to be hugely emotionally invested in. a couple years ago i was very upset about how wrong things were, and now? now i'm fascinated. how long can an economy last when nobody's getting paid, when we're doing all of the essential tasks of society for either free or for so little money that it might as well be free?

I’m only working 16 hours per week now mainly due to a vocational program I’m doing during the day. I would like more hours but a year from now I’ll have all the hours I want, in a growing field. It’s fucking stressful, though. Money.

Still duct taping. I took yesterday off so I worked today on this grant application that isn’t explicitly a grant application but is basically a grant application… most of it entailed describing the duct taping I do, the value of the duct taping, the fact that other organizations are selective about who they help and thus there is a large population not being adequately helped for whom duct tape can keep them from getting evicted in the near future.

Working for the Post Office is the first time in my life I feel vaguely secure, not quite three months in and still getting used to it. Firmly lower middle class but the fear that one day I'd have to choose between homelessness and death is receding

Oh nice, you did it! Do you have a route? Or something else? I sometimes think of trying to get a postal route in the city, i uh, “like” (as in tolerate better) jobs where i don’t have to interact much with anybody. i keep kicking the homelessness vs. death can down the road, in the back of my mind the plan is to drop out of society completely or join an intentional community or something.

I’m in maintenance in a plant. From everything I hear I don’t know if I’d want to be a carrier despite the pleasure of being on your own for so much of the day - the supervisors and postmasters seem to treat carriers like absolute shit.

Also I started as a career employee, most carriers start as technically part time for $20 an hour and can be worked up to 60 hours a week.

Yeah, shitty treatment from superiors is the thing i would be most concerned about. I take it this hasn’t been an issue with your plant job (i fucking hope not)?

most carriers start as technically part time for $20 an hour and can be worked up to 60 hours a week.

this is true, I had a friend who tried and had to give up after his lack of sleep made him clip two vehicles in one day

(they didn't care about the near-accidents, to be clear, but he did)

and iirc he was more like 80 hours a week, this was in Seattle

Yeah, 60 is a new limit with the new contracts I think. And there may be lots of wiggle room to work people past that. All the rules change near Christmas. Right now I get double time if I work past 10 hours (hasn’t happened) or 56 hours in a week (ditto) and absolutely cannot work more than 12 hours. After Thanksgiving all OT is time and a half and I think the only rule becomes having at least 10 hours between shifts.

My job is easy and quite pleasant. The quality of supervisor varies but they’re all nice and collegial, half of the nights are pure boredom (reading for six hours of eight), the half we get things breaking non-stop and time flies rushing around to fix them.

I haven't had a fulltime job since late 2001. Not sure I could even physically manage a 40-hour week. I need more income to cover insane health insurance premiums when the ACA subsidies go away in January, but I'm about to turn 62 and the idea of job hunting just makes me want to go to sleep.

xp that sounds really great! are you working only night shifts? i work a lot of them and it is very boring with a lot of downtime (i avoid reading because i’ll get fired if i fall asleep). i had a coworker once who used to play flamenco guitar very quietly to himself for 6 of the 8 hours.

carrier job sounds like a lot more hassle for only a little more money than i’m making now.

I was working graveyard but I moved to 3-11 a month ago. I may move back to graveyard - I was struggling with time management (trying to eat two real meals at home in the not working or sleeping window) but I’ve adapted to eating a real meal at work. I’ll just have my shredded chicken and rice at 3am like god did not intend.

Man this thread is full of people who u see stand my struggles. I too find myself eating weird meals at odd hours.

Ugh UNDERSTAND

Most of my friends are 9-5ers who have weekends off and it’s heartening to be among people for whom that’s not the case.

Is some of your frustration and anxiety related to the relative security and comfortable financial positions of your friends?

I mean, it’s normal to compare oneself to others, and if your perceived peers seem better off than you, you are more likely to feel like you are somehow less. Like you aren’t succeeding.

It’s like Alumni Magazine Syndrome

It has always been so, and it doesn’t really bother me anymore aside from peole assuming I have the same schedule as they do.

I think the frustration and anxiety of contingent work is kinda baked in

I mean, it’s normal to compare oneself to others, and if your perceived peers seem better off than you, you are more likely to feel like you are somehow less. Like you aren’t succeeding.

― sarahell

lol i'm in the opposite camp

the people i perceive as my peers (not y'all, i perceive y'all as my betters), uh, often have some pretty serious problems that i don't.

it's not that i feel like i'm _better_ than them. my not having a lot of their problems is inseparable from my privilege. i'm choosing to live my values over working a job that was fucking killing me, and most people don't have that choice. i mean i am going to have to get a job again at some point. just not right now.

it's more like... i don't regret making the decisions i did. i was fucking miserable and i wanted to die, and now i love myself and i'm happy to be alive. it's more... shit was working out for me, and then the world got worse and a bunch of shit stopped working out for me. there are a lot of things i'd like to do, but i don't have a stable enough social support network to do them. if i judge myself for anything, it's for not having access to a more stable social support network. i don't judge myself for it, really - shit's fucked, not anybody's fault. it just sucks, is all.

most carriers start as technically part time for $20 an hour and can be worked up to 60 hours a week.

can't believe i put up with that when i started, there were a few 70+ hour weeks the first winter. but no longer. have had a medical restriction for 40 hours for the last few years :)

I initially accepted a Rural Carrier Associate job while I was waiting on the maintenance process. Lucky to get my offer two or three days before orientation, I’m pretty sure the carrier hours would have killed me.

Seriously, fuck that.

I sleep 2-3 hours a day on average, down from 4-5 hours. With catch up days where i sleep 14+ hours with interruptions. Some days i am surprisingly enrrgetic but live most of my life in a stupor.

Xp - if you aren’t a morning person, yes. My mom was a rural carrier associate then got a regular rural carrier job when I was a kid, but she would normally be up at 5am regardless of that job so it was good for her.

welp, i didn't get the job, though a good friend of mine did (also an internal candidate) and since i will be her assistant— which is my current position— i am happy they chose her rather than one of the other candidates, whom i don't think i could have worked with. one of them might have made me quit!

on the bright side, the company is opening another facility much closer to my house next spring, and the GM and COO both believe i would be an excellent candidate for managing that location. the issue is apparently that i am too much of a hardass— there are legacy employees at the current facility who have really fucked shit up, and their bullshit is tolerated in ways that i would not be okay with— and that they need someone who wouldn't summarily fire half his staff. that is, they think i could build a good team who know how i play, but taking over the current team would be difficult. which, fair!!

that's tough breaks but good to hear you have open and positive communication with management and a possibility on the horizon.

this isn't the climbing gym, is it? understand if you don't want to disclose that here.

today for lunch i enjoyed two pieces of gnocchi + veg leftover from our family meal at the restaurant last night that i padded with noodles i made at home and added extra cheese. i ate it alone at a borrowed desk with a combination spoon-fork (not a proper spork, more a hybrid) that i keep in my bag at all times for moments like these.

bringing my own lunch is where i'm a viking.

lunch and dinner at work in one day: galaxy brain achieved

i will say that it has made me extra grateful for the times i am free to cook and eat meals with my boo. it's one of my simple joys in life.

It’s like Alumni Magazine Syndrome

― sarahell, Sunday, September 7, 2025 5:28 PM (yesterday)

i need to add: if i had this problem i would not have made it this far. i stopped giving a shit what my college classmates were doing right after graduation. it was obvious to me they had connections and access i did not have. my guess is most of them forgot me completely. i have my 5 friends and that is all i need. in sum i do not suffer from alumni magazine syndrome tyvm

(not trying to be hostile, i was at work last night and couldn't post)

this isn't the climbing gym, is it? understand if you don't want to disclose that here.

it is. had a bit of a 180 in the past few hours and now i just want to quit

i just really need to be given a chance

<3

Hear u, know the feeling

Applying for jobs was a soul crushing experiences. Things I would say I’m overqualified for and you just never hear back. I have an application for a city parks department job that’s still “in review,” I check on it every so often for the lulz. All of the jobs (pest control, city and school district jobs, printing press work) I applied for paid ~65% of what I make now so I feel like I lucked out but I’m just going to sell drugs if I ever have to do it again.

Also the way the process works and the expectation you’re at their beck and call. I applied with Ecolab, did a phone interview and then three weeks later they finally contacted me wanting me to do an in person interview the next day at 7am an hour away. (Again, luck in the interim to get my current offer so I could ignore the assholes.)

I recently applied for a job, booked an online appointment for the initial call, went on a trip, and got an email while on the trip asking if I could move the initial call up to the day I was supposed to be flying home. The email said if I wasn't available for the earlier time slot they were going to move on to other candidates. I didn't even reply. Fuck 'em.

milo, my old fallback was porn— i am in great shape. alas, the whole colostomy bag thing kinda put the end to that. i still look good tho, which is of course its own reward

My falllback has been waiting tables since I was a fresh young filly of 16

Also the way the process works and the expectation you’re at their beck and call. I applied with Ecolab, did a phone interview and then three weeks later they finally contacted me wanting me to do an in person interview the next day at 7am an hour away. (Again, luck in the interim to get my current offer so I could ignore the assholes.)

― Lady Sovereign (Citizen) (milo z)

It's the PROCESS. They want me to jump through hoops for them and they haven't done the most basic fucking shit. Broken forms, stuff that only works in certain browsers, just... People always tell me when I'm applying for jobs, "Remember, you're interviewing them, too." If that was true, most of these fucking places flunk within the first five minutes of the process.

milo, my old fallback was porn— i am in great shape. alas, the whole colostomy bag thing kinda put the end to that. i still look good tho, which is of course its own reward

― czech hunter biden's laptop (the table is the table)

I never wanted to do SW when I was younger, but these days... it's just, you know, doing creative work is fucking soul-crushing for me. At this point my dream job is doing sissy hypno for a living, but my high school guidance counselor never told me how to break into that field.

the issue is apparently that i am too much of a hardass—

had a bit of a 180 in the past few hours and now i just want to quit

This is how i lost the only normal-ish job i've ever had (the shift was still unfortunate)

I neither had the temperament to assume responsibilty for other's mistakes, nor to stay on at a job where i've been passed over for a promotion i felt i deserved.

I mean the job also sucked a lot of ass in general

I’m just going to sell drugs if I ever have to do it again.

LOL i couldn't do this anymore, without the coterie of drug enthusiasts to accompany me everywhere i once had. Now i'd have to, like, hustle.

I was the top performing person by a longshot in a small department and had lost the promotion to someone more personable (which was actually good & smart of them) and they later told me the other reason was they thought i would quit sooner or later (which was also smart of them and entirely correct)

All worked out for the best

I’m just going to sell drugs if I ever have to do it again.

I have (jokingly) brought up the idea to my wife of opening a dispensary. She is vehemently opposed. (There are already too many dispensaries in my little town anyway.)

One of my bosses already raised the idea of me being interested in moving to the supervisor/management track. I didn’t say hell no but I was thinking it.

i will say this: my current manager, whose job i wanted, basically told me it ruined her life— she worked at a climbing gym but hardly had time ti climb. but that said, the manager before her found plenty of time to climb, but that was because he was also a mountain guide for the company so he was always off on trips.

i am still going to go for the new facility opening next spring, but in some ways i dodged a bullet: i would have had to quit teaching, which would have foreclosed the possibility forever at this particular institution, and in addition, that means that i wouldn’t have the opportunity to teach the honors sections of Dissent in America next spring, which is honestly a class i was built to teach.

now, i can still go for the position while keeping possibilities for teaching open. i also might finish my library degree in the meantime, which, great!

My fallback was always clerical/office temp work (once for a few months at Ecolab, coincidentally!) but my sense is that fewer of those jobs exist now and that (maybe I'm wrong) agencies likely wouldn't want to send someone in their 50s to fill in.

Lucky to get my offer two or three days before orientation, I’m pretty sure the carrier hours would have killed me.

glad that worked out for you. i've known a few carriers who went to maintenance and are much happier.

Seriously, fuck that.

fortunately this is my attitude now. i accidentally went a couple minutes over 8 hours today and was fairly annoyed.

Finish the library degree! I don’t remember if you were interested in doing archiving work or not, but I think it’s definitely a growth field. Like, I could totally see you being an archivist for radical queer writers and artists who are dead or dying, and being able to design/create the archives in a creative way.

Lol… good thing I never went into career counseling

I'm reading this thread before starting a few applications. It's my first month being unemployed leaving my job which was both comfortable and meaningless. I decided I was too young to enjoy the flexibility from being underused, having limited responsibilities, and growing a tolerance for bullshit. It's probably also because I haven't completely lost hope for a "career", although I realize it will come down to luck and the next months will be hard. I have my partner to loop up to as a contrast: she's now (by accident) in the same field (project management) but she's making a killing. She has the discipline, patience, tactical sense and attention to detail to ensure things align even in competitive, corporate-minded environments where 90% of the mess is internal - while I tend to have sub-optimal reactions and grow frustrations. Even if, in fairness, our environments were never equal and her organization is both more competitive and functional.

I'm also trying to look forward to the period. I was surprised at the amount of support I received from colleagues who also dreamt about leaving or said that unemployment can be a great period. I get what they mean - still doubt it as for my own case but I do need the positivity.

look up to*