MediaEnthusiast

I have good news, and I have bad news.  On my upside, I have free time these days to publish here again.  On my downside, I was laid off. 

I don’t want to dwell on it with a sob-fest; there’s plenty of that going around.  Despite the shame and disappointment I intermittently feel, it’s easy to hold my head high knowing that I went with a lot of good company.  From both my beloved advertising industry and across the country, an astounding 467,000 cuts were made in June, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.  That takes the total unemployed in the U.S. to 14.7M, and brings the National Unemployment Rate to 9.5%.  Of those, 4.4M (or 30%) have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer. 

There are lighter sides to those statistics as well.  It was only a 0.1 percentage point change from May, showing that a lot of those unemployed (312k of them) have found new jobs.  June may have been down from the month prior, but it was still a little up from April.

There’s certainly a fight out there, and it’s stronger than ever.  As an agency professional, I felt it in the passion of every new business pitch.  From an outsider, even one not looking for a new gig just yet, the fierce competition among that mob of unemployed is enough to surge anyone (even modestly motivated) towards (perhaps) the unknown.

While part of me still mourns belonging to the agency I no longer contribute to, another part of me is refreshed.  Exhilarated.  Confident.  And, for the first time since graduating from college and moving South, free to go and do whatever fate allows.