by: Brian Johnson

Writer, All About Business

According to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary, “unemployed” is defined as “not put to use; not applied to some end or purpose.” As one of the many unemployed Americans, I am highly offended by this definition, but I’m not as offended by dictionary.com’s definition of “unemployed,” which is “not productively used.”

I utilize myself very productively, perhaps more so now than I did when I was employed. Job interviews, follow up phone calls and e-mails, scouring the Internet and newspapers for job openings, and networking – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg regarding my quotidian efforts to find employment. Is that not a productive application of self? Regardless of how productively one applies himself or herself, and regardless of how qualified, experienced and/or educated one is, finding employment is an extremely difficult task in America circa 2010.

When I go on job interviews and I’m sitting in the designated waiting area, I often strike up conversation with the other applicants to pass the time as well as to feel out the competition. What I discovered in doing so is startling and somewhat disturbing: there have been instances when it was an entry level position, and the guy waiting beside me has a Master’s in business management, has just finished grad school or has ten plus years experience in the field. The most mind-boggling of them all had to be when I went to be interviewed for a Security Supervisor position, and there was a guy there for the same position who had a Master’s in criminal justice from John Jay School of Criminal Justice and was currently enrolled in Harvard University law school earning a Ph.D. At first, I thought, “how can he find the time to work a full time job while going to school full time to earn a law degree?” Then, I thought, “how the hell can I compete with this guy? He’s qualified enough to supervise the person who’s going to interview us!”

Undoubtedly the lack of employment opportunities in this nation is critical when people spend tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on education, which we are taught as children will guarantee us a good job or the career of our dreams, only to graduate in debt and to have to settle for a salary of $36,000 a year.

This makes it even more challenging for someone as me – who does not have a degree – to find employment, not that it wasn’t always a challenge to find suitable employment without a degree. Prior to the drastic rise of unemployment, however, degree holders tended to apply for positions which required a degree. Now, degree holders are applying for jobs which do not require a degree – jobs that I tend to apply for, and generally stood a good chance of getting until the level of competition elevated. I went from competing with a person with a high school diploma or GED and comparable experience to competing with the next Johnnie Cochran for a position offering a starting salary that the real, late Johnnie Cochran would have turned his nose up to a few years ago.

Considering the unemployment epidemic in America, any employment is good employment. Naturally, the initial reaction would be “well go back to school and earn a degree.” I might be inclined to agree, although I would add that you have not properly absorbed the situation in its totality. A close friend of mine told me of an old high school classmate of his whom recently graduated from Columbia University that contacted him asking if he knew of any employment opportunities. I should also mention that my close friend is unemployed and does not have a degree himself. My point is that it is becoming, or perhaps has become, equally difficult to find employment, regardless of whether you have a degree.

At my former job, pay raises were denied and people were let go due to a lackluster economy. This put a strain on remaining workers who were expected to produce equal results with less manpower. So now we have to work twice as hard for the same pay because pay raises were being denied indefinitely. However, despite my department being downsized by nearly 50%, we managed to meet quotas and expectations. That’s a good thing, right? Well, what corporations and local businesses have learned during this rough economic time is how to operate with less labor and still produce equal results and turn a profit. So now I ask myself: is it difficult to find a job because of the economy, or have companies adopted an attitude of “why hire more employees, when the handfuls of employees they have now are able to produce just as well as the multitude of workers they once employed?”

Some of you who read this will probably combat what I say with statistics and fancy graph charts that I would probably need a degree to comprehend. I could have easily done some research and provided endless (and irrelevant) statistics to support my claims, however regardless of what the statistics say, the fact is that I and many others are still unemployed and are having an extremely troubling time finding employment.

Brian Johnson is a freelance writer based in New York City who attended Brooklyn College and was an English major. He has written and edited bylined articles for print publications and websites. Brian’s articles range in topic from addressing issues of public concern to thought provoking editorials.