And still no job......

You would think, to look at the on-line job postings, that anyone could get a job.  There are hundreds of them posted every day.  Dozens posted every hour.  Trust me.  If you go to craigslist, just open up the general SF Bay area page and click on one of the categories, then click on a job near the top of the list.  Then step away from your computer, or leave that site, for about a half hour.  Then go back and see how many jobs have been added above the one on which you clicked.  Lots of them.  And look at all those job  categories they list!  There is a category for everything and everyone, even one for ETC.  That's just one website, think of all the others, like monster and career builder and sfchronicle and so many others.  Pages and pages of jobs. 

Yet here I remain, jobless.  Take a closer look at the listings, especially on craigslist.  I pick that one because it is the most accessible and you can see the most jobs in a short period of time.  For the admin / office category, you can just go from one listing to the next and you will notice that many of them are part-time jobs.  Many of them are contract jobs.  Some of them, not too many, have very particular requirements, usually regarding being bilingual or having a license of some sort or very specific work experience.  Most of them pay nothing.

By nothing, of course I mean they don't pay a living wage.  $10, $12 dollars an hour is not going to cut it here in the bay area.  $30,000 a year means you make less than $14 an hour and that is gross pay, not take- home.  Take-home would be closer to $11 an hour or even less if you have no dependants.  That is less than $1800 a month.  The number of jobs paying more than $45,000 in that category is very small.

I have begun applying for jobs that offer less than what I would normally need to live on.  I don't know why, maybe it's just to see if I actually get a response.  Would I take such a job?  I don't know.  Depends on whether or not the company pays health insurance benefits and you would be very surprised at how many do not. 

Oh well.  I just keep on applying, keep on creating new and scintillating cover letters, keep on telling little white lies on my resume, changing dates, changing duties, changing my address depending on where the job is located, changing everything but my name.  Have I lost hope yet?  No.  I still believe that there is a job out there for me.  It's just getting harder and harder to be optimistic.  Glass half empty or glass half full?  How about bank account half empty or bank account half full?