Still looking for work

I have received fewer job leads during this period of unemployment than any other. Normally, I would have had a couple of phone interviews and at least one on-site interview by now. I don't think I am doing anything different in this job search. Through Linked-In and Facebook, I have contacted more people about my job situation than I have in the past with fewer results.

This is a sign of how poor the local economy has become. Silicon Valley is one of the drivers for the global electronics industry. The only other downturn that comes close, from my perspective, was the crash after the dot com boom. I was out of work for nearly seven months before I found my next permanent engineering job.

At that time, I knew people who switched to the building trades because they could find work and needed the money to support their families. Now with the real estate market in the dumper, I suspect trade work will mostly be in the form of repair and staging homes for sale. The days of people borrowing against their homes for renovations are over, for now.

Thankfully, we have unemployment checks coming in and the Obama administration has a program where the unemployed can qualify for Cobra payment subsidies. We are receiving both. Even so, our expenses are in excess of our combined incomes. At least we have some savings so we are not dire need of good paying work.