Gen Plus

Hi all — I have a request from a major US newspaper.  A top columnist is looking to interview folks who are at or near retirement about the challenges of looking for a job in this economy, even a part time job.  He’s particularly interested in chatting with folks who had retired but are now [...]

CNN Money’s Fortune has a great columnist, Anne Fisher.  In answering questions, she finds ways to pass along some great tidbits of helpful advice.  Today’s column was a winner.    A reader asked about the pros and cons of moving to find work in a different city.  Her response was good and even-handed, but what caught [...]

When you have lost your job (the unemployment figures coming out this Friday aren’t going to have anyone smiling), and your unemployment benefits are running out, or have already run out, when your safety net has just too many holes in it…face it.  Your back is against the wall and you are either going to [...]

Some days I feel like I’m a character in a 1945 black and white depression story, where there are food bank lineups, girls with holes in their socks and boys with holes in the toes of their shoes.  Characters meet on the streets and rather than greeting each other with the typical LA style, “Hey, [...]

I subscribe to the newsletter put out by Weddle’s (a career consulting, research, and publishing firm), and today, a very good article caught my eye.  This one is all about micro-careers.  I’ve referred to the shiftin the past as “career-chunking”, but I like the term “micro-career” very much.  The concept is simple — we will have many careers [...]

Not since 1941 has California hit such a high unemployment number.  If you had money, now would be a great time to buy up properties, stocks, artwork…if you had money.  But in addition to the 11.2% on the dole rolls, there are another few percentage points of the unemployed who don’t show up on these [...]

The fact that I’m old enough to remember watching my friends lose homes in the mid-eighties is scary enough.  But I wasn’t old enough then to understand global economic impact as I do now.  There are currently about 25 million Americans out of work and looking for work.  That is almost the population of Canada [...]

Times are SO tough.  I get a lot of emails and questions from Boomers and 50 Plussers who, literally, are down to the pennies in the cookie jar in order to put food on the family table.  I got a question yesterday that got to me.  Not because it is any different than so many [...]

It is tough to blog consistently.  Like any writer, you have days of inspiration, where you don’t have enough time to write all the things you want to say…and then…like any writer, you have days with total, unwavering, heart-rending writer’s block.  It’s never that I don’t have something to say.  I can always talk and [...]

Globally, many countries are having to take stake in life-blood companies — in the US, banks like Bank of America, Citibank; in the auto industry, Chrysler and GM — and, well, you’ve read the news.  The more money that gets infused into the failing businesses, the  more nationalization will be taking place.  As an ex-pat [...]