#12 Don’t cry off attending your friend’s party just because you think you’ll be the only one there without a fantastic job

At an unspecified point earlier this year, when the whole no job=no status thing was really getting to me, I did a shameful thing.

A lovely friend had very sweetly invited me to their birthday lunch in a lovely restaurant with lovely people. How lovely, I hear you say. And ordinarily I would have had to agree. But as anyone who has ever been unemployed for a lengthy period will know, one of the worst things about it is the crippling loss of self-esteem. I’ve seen it happen to other people, I’ve read about it in sociology books, but I hadn’t expected it so soon or so deeply. So in spite of all the loveliness on offer, at the eleventh-hour, I bottled it. I texted (yes, texted!) some feeble excuse about the kids and hid.

One day, when things are on the up again, I promise I’ll pluck up the courage to apologise to my friend (face to face). In the mean time, however, I have, as they say ‘got over myself’. I’ve given myself a metaphorical slap, and pushed myself out of the door and back into social situations.

Guess what? It turns out the recession isn’t limited to my back bedroom. In fact, lots of journalists far more talented and better connected than me are also struggling to find enough work. Ditto lawyers (an increase of 483% in past 18mths), accountants (up 377%), marketing managers (up 28%), PRs/advertising types (up 298%), and architects (up an incredible 1,115%), not to mention actors, directors, IT consultants, and more. In fact, these days it is quite unfashionable to actually have enough work.

As part of my new ‘no hiding’ rule, I’ve taken a deep breath and frog-marched myself along to press launches, professional networking groups, council-sponsored careers surgeries, and redundancy leaving dos. Even birthday parties. And everywhere the story is the same. In fact, some of these get togethers are more like AA meetings: ‘Hello, my name is Jessica, and I haven’t had a commission for five months.’ Without wanting to take pleasure in other people’s misfortune, they’re mutually supportive, therapeutic, and a good excuse for  drink.

Nowadays, instead of feeling alienated from the working society, I’m beginning to feel part of a growing, non-working society. And, financial pressures aside, just knowing you’re not alone makes it all seem somehow ok.

#11 Get a job (any job)

Ok, so the whole point of this blog is that getting a job (any job) is not so easy right now. But a friend has been kind enough to offer me a few weeks of part-time admin work in his office and with the wolf:door relative proximity getting narrower every day, it seemed like a good idea.

Although it isn’t the work in which I spent the past two decades building up expertise, it is straightforward to get to on public transport, offers a creative environment, comes with flexible hours, and pays the same as devising and editing a major book title for Time Out. It will cover Christmas presents.

I know plenty of people who, when times have been hard, have swallowed their pride and their CVs and taken on jobs such as: columnist for a self-build magazine; ‘blobbing’ (pinpointing exactly venues on a map) for Time Out; acting in a daytime TV soap; part-time childminding. Personally I was considering applying for  the job advertised in the butcher’s (an organic fair trade butcher’s, mind).

It’s been a while since I was last a commuter and now I can’t remember what to do. I’ve no idea what to wear in an office setting. I haven’t bought clothes since Easter (excluding a pair of jeans and an impulse-buy pink beret). There’s a threadbare Cacharel skirt at the back of the wardrobe, bought in Paris when the Euro was low and I had places to be. Tights feel funny and shoes (ie not Converse) look weird. I use the iron on my own clothes for the first time in months and send my children out in crumpled polo shirts. I invest 90p short of £100 in a Travelcard, make some complex childcare arrangements,  push my son through the school gates, and run.

As it turns out that very little has changed.

* the 9.15 train still comes at 20 past

* in spit of the demise of both the London Paper and London Lite, carriages are still littered with free papers full of stories about people I’ve neither heard of nor care about

* people still have far too many meetings

* however central your office, your colleagues will claim ‘there’s nowhere round here’ when you ask where to go at lunchtime

* sandwiches still don’t react well to being chilled

* offices are still freezing at the beginning of the week, and tropical by the end

* receptionists are still surly

* your office computer will still be slower than your home one

* I’m still not fit enough to run up the slope to catch the train

It doesn’t take long before I’ve reverted to my old ways, calculated where the doors open on the Tube platform, lost track of my children’s whereabouts, and eaten a ready meal. However I’m frugally avoiding breakfast stalls, and am bringing in packed lunches.

By the end of the week I’m congratulating myself on being able to interchange between train and Tube without breaking step, when I find my path blocked by an artisanal bread stall, shattering my routine (I’ve never been able to pass a crusty bloomer without at least pausing to show my appreciation). Nearby is a stall selling real coffee. I cave in and buy my first latte in months. And it’s fantastic.

There’s a law  – you probably know the name, I don’t – which determines that if someone has money, that money generates more, but if someone’s skint they’ll slide into further poverty. So it seems with jobs. Though the phone hasn’t rung since Easter, in the past week I’ve had  emails from three separate contacts asking me if I want to meet to talk about potential projects, and one bona fide commission paying hard cash. Whether anything will come of these ‘talks’ is almost immaterial; the silence has been broken and things are looking up.

[If you can beat blobbing for Time Out as a desperation job, do let us know. And student jobs don't count. Only 'proper' jobs.]

#10 Read the new unemployment statistics

Bonus post!

Although this week’s How to Be… has already been posted (see ‘Don’t watch daytime TV’), it would be remiss for this blog to let today’s quarterly unemployment figures pass without comment.

You’ll already have read about them via reputable news sources. And if not, the ONS report is here.

In brief, the big numbers are:

2.46 m people unemployed in UK (only 30,000 new unemployed this quarter! The smallest quarterly increases since March-May 2008, though little consolation for those 30,000)

21.26 m number of people in full-time employment, down by 80,000

7.66 m number of people in part-time employment, up 86,000 and a record high

1 in 5 young 18-24 year olds out of work, the highest figure since 1992

1.31 m number of people unemployed for up to six months, down  99,000

618,000 number of people unemployed for more than 12 months, up 71,000 and the highest it’s been since 1997

428,000 number of vacancies in the three months to October 2009, the lowest figure since records for this series began in 2001

The scary graphs look like this:

It must feel like a terrible time to be a graduate. Talking to work experiences, and reading the many testimonies in the media at the moment, many are understandably disillusioned, having spent years studying their arses off to get their A*s and university places. They are also terrified by their unwieldy debts. (Personally I graduated in similar circumstances, hitting what I had imagined from my northern base to be the fashionable, champagne-swilling aspiration city of The Face, Capital City and the Easy Like Sunday Morning ad  just as the 90s recession hit London big time.)

On the plus side, all those graduates being exploited by endless work experience and internships should take heart from the fact that they are probably being given the sorts of responsibilities that would, in more affluent times, normally have gone to the more experienced staff who have been made redundant. If they can stick with it, financially as well as psychologically, then their 30-year-old selves may even look back on it as career/character building.

It’s also  a bad time to be a Londoner, according to the Standard, which reports that one in five London homes has no adult at all in work.

And the record high of long-term unemployment, where the novelty and redundancy payment have worn off, is positively bleak.

However, it may, for once, be a good time to be a working parent. Any trend towards part-time employment seems healthy, especially or anyone who aspires to having some sort of life/interests outside the relentless long hours, long commute culture of full-time employment. I’ve recently encountered a number of companies cutting costs by introducing a nine-day fortnight, which sounds like a win-win situation.

But, of course, these figures ignore those of us who are not officially UN-employed but SELF-employed. Technically working professionals, but without any actual paid work. All of the journalists now in enforced freelancing (welcome to the fold ex-London Paper and London Lite staffers) but lacking commissions; the actors, directors and other casualised creatives who are at home watching daytime TV rather than making it; the independent producers and business people who can’t get anyone to buy their wares or services.

Big Merv announced today that GDP is on the turn, but with the caveat that it would be 2011 before we’re back up to where we were in 2007. Which can’t be so good for those of us in the business of selling ourselves.