Good news and bad on unemployment front in U.S.

By Kathleen Kenna and Hadi Dadashian

To paraphrase Charles Dickens, it was the worst of years, it was a better year.

It was the worst year, because we’re both still unemployed, despite hundreds of job applications, job fairs, informational interviews and more.

It was a better year, because we resumed full-time job searches after growing our own company, Ocean’s Edge Media.

Good news: Our small business made more money in 2012 than in 2011.

Bad news: Our revenue still puts us below the poverty line — even before expenses.

Best news: We landed our first cover story for a Canadian magazine, and Kathleen landed her first major magazine story (Condé Nast). Our newspaper and online assignments ranged from mental health research to travel stories in California, Arizona, both Washingtons, and Canada.

Our public speaking and photography gigs increased.

It was a better year for three reasons:

1.  We expanded our reach with writing and photojournalism, tapping new markets and making a lot of new contacts. Already, our advance assignments portend a better financial year in 2013.

2.  We cut costs by moving to a smaller city.

3.  Kathleen finished her training as a CTP (Certified Trauma Professional) and became a U.S. citizen.

The latter is key, because she began to get interviews from dozens of job applications after her citizenship ceremony. In the previous 18 months as a Green Card holder, Kathleen had only a couple of interviews in her rehabilitation counseling field, despite more than 200 applications.

Investment in lawyers, paper work, etc. for Green Card and citizenship: About $7,000.

How we know the economy is really recovering

We both had more serious job interviews in the past four months than we’ve had during job searches in the past two years.

Kathleen was so excited after an Oregon state interview for vocational rehabilitation counselor, she posted at living in gratitude that it was “the best job interview in my life.”

Hadi is encouraged that there appears to be more growth in his field, optical, possibly because Americans are feeling confident enough to spend money on their health and eye care again.

(While some analysts were heartened by a dip in consumer spending on health care during the recession, we suggest it’s because people who are unemployed stop spending money on doctors, medical tests, dentists, and filling optical and other prescriptions because they’ve lost insurance. Other essentials — like food and shelter — claim any household funds before health care. It’s astonishing that 47 million Americans survive on Food Stamps, a U.S. record.)

The White House soothes some Americans with the news that the economy is recovering, and our success in landing more interviews confirms that it’s improving.

But it’s such a slow improvement that we believe the U.S. is still in a recession — a psychological recession. GDP growth of 2-3% makes us, as President Barack Obama likes to say, “cautiously optimistic.”

At job fairs this fall, we spoke to other job seekers in our age group (40s, 50s), and realized that long-term unemployment is, sadly, far too common still for people who have worked decades without ever being jobless. (In Hadi’s case, that’s working decades without any sick days or “personal time” off!)

So we’re encouraged that the national unemployment rate has dropped to 7.9% after starting 2012 at 8.3%. As we’ve written many times before, however, those stats don’t mean much to people who haven’t collected unemployment benefits and aren’t on national rolls.

Those stats don’t reflect so-called “discouraged workers”, who aren’t conducting full-time job searches either. Washington defines discouraged workers as people who have stopped looking for work. Since the Labor Department also defines discouraged workers as people who haven’t looked for work in four weeks, we don’t fit that official definition either.

Judging from the comments of other job fair participants, we’re all discouraged — no one is filing job applications full-time when they land freelance work (like us) or temporary, under-the-table work (like many engineers, carpenters and others finding sporadic work as housing starts improve). Even 23 million unemployed Americans have to pay their bills somehow.

Unemployment has decreased to 8.4% in our state of Oregon, so we’re at #40 in the U.S. All the new jobs are in the midwest, from the Dakotas to Iowa and Wyoming. North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, at 3.1%, followed by Nebraska at 3.7%.

Worst unemployment? Nevada still leads the country at 10.8%, followed by Rhode Island at 10.4%, California, 9.8%, and New Jersey, 9.6%. Our state, Oregon, is ranked #40 out of 51, with an official jobless rate of 8.4%.

Corporate cash stockpiles at $5 trillion

Given the severity of this country’s continuing high joblessness (it was only 2008 when the U.S. rate was 5%), we had hoped the November election would help calm markets and spur corporations to start creating jobs with their estimated $5 trillion in cash stockpiles.

But “fiscal cliff” negotiations have agitated markets and affected consumer and business confidence. At Hire Your Neighbor, we want to be certain that unemployment benefit extensions are approved for those who need them most.

We’re optimistic that 2013 will be a better year for us and other under/unemployed workers seeking real jobs. We’re not so optimistic about Washington overcoming its partisan divisions to tackle the real issues affecting job growth in this country: deficit reduction, government spending, and significant tax reform.

We are certain that the next debate, about the U.S. debt ceiling, will do little to calm fears of Americans, employed or not.

NEXT: The good news about full-time work after 3 years of unemployment

It’s not about us and them, it’s about sharing — just ask Mark Zuckerberg

By Hoover Wind, Kathleen Kenna and Hadi Dadashian

It’s not about us and them.

As much as we honor the peaceful intentions of the Occupy movement, it’s not just a simple formula of 1% versus 99%.

It’s about all Americans, as Sarah Palin reminded us at the CPAC convention this weekend.

Let’s look at Mark Zuckerberg, sometimes reviled, sometimes beloved founder of Facebook.

It sounds outrageous that the social networking giant could raise $5 billion in its public stock offering.

We want all American companies to raise that kind of cash in their IPOs.

We want all American companies, all Americans — from the wealthiest to the lowest-income  — to share.

Zuckerberg, hopefully, is about to show us how this is possible.

Say Facebook raises $5 billion.

This means as much as $1 billion for the rest of California.

How? That five-letter word in the current election campaign: T-A-X-E-S.

The non-partisan legislative analyst’s office in California estimates this single IPO — the largest ever for an Internet-based firm — could bring California millions, and perhaps even $1 billion, in taxes.

This has so excited California’s governor, the sometimes reviled, sometimes beloved Jerry Brown, that his staff has offered to mow Zuckerberg’s lawn in exchange.

“If it is as big as it is being billed, then on behalf of a grateful state, I will go to Mark Zuckerberg’s house and either wash his windows or mow his lawn,” says H.D. Palmer, Brown’s finance spokesman.

This is the great part:  The non-partisan legislative analyst’s office and the Democrat governor’s office have both put one of California’s richest entrepreneurs on notice.

Pundits are crowing that Zuckerberg will pay the most taxes of any American in history.  This is good news, no matter where you stand on tax reform, tax breaks for the rich, or tax hikes.

California is broke.  With a deficit of more than $9 billion, its schools are falling apart, and its streets and highways are filling with garbage.  Social services — for veterans, elders, people with disabilities, children and low-income families — have been squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.

Slashbacks across all levels of government have hit all public services, from policing to economic development, like a tsunami.

To international visitors, it appears that California’s homeless population is growing, in major cities and small towns.

Politicians will fall all over themselves with a windfall like this. Watch for national politicians to argue about how Zuckerberg’s tax contributions should be spent — more prisons/less prisons; more affordable housing/more campaign contributions.

We’ll be watching Zuckerberg and his Facebook workers, many of whom are counting on becoming millionaires as a result of this IPO.

Will they park their new profits outside the country to avoid taxes?

Or will they share, by paying full taxes — however that is defined — to help California’s most vulnerable?

Will they, as Republican minority leaders in California insist, use this newfound tax wealth to “protect our public school students … and pay down the state’s debt service.”

You know — the debt that everyone shared in accumulating during the so-called “good years”?

Writing pays off, co-founder of this blog matches the money: $1551 total

By Kathleen Kenna

Tromping through the woods on a dry afternoon yesterday, we were discussing this venture and trying to decide how much of our limited funds we would invest in it.

“Sometimes, you just work for a good cause, and the money comes,” I said, with surprising confidence.

Sunshine in Portland has that effect.

Then we stopped at the mailbox, and voila! (this is a French term for, ‘will you look at that!’).

There was a direct deposit note from Canada for $741.99.

(The Canadian dollar, for once, is at par with the beleaguered American buck.)

This is important money, the kind a writer lives for — royalties!

Look at me, Mom! I get paid for writing!: Kathleen Kenna

I wrote a non-fiction book once.  Look it up, you can snag it new, hardcover, for $15 or less.

Used? Paperback?  Only a cent.  No kidding — check it on Amazon.com.

A People Apart has paid a modest sum in annual royalties, about $12 or so, for years.

Honestly, it made so much money at the start, when it was co-published in the U.S. and Canada, that I rewarded myself with a long-coveted possession — a big, blue kayak.

Full disclosure:  It’s not the money;  it’s never the money, for most professional writers (i.e. those fortunate to get paid for their words).

This is a good thing, because the direct deposit note shows my share of the royalties, shared with photographer Andrew Stawicki and our agent, Nick Harris, is down to $1.32.  For a year.

Writers are such humble, grateful wretches, this seems like a queenly sum.  (They’re still reading my little book!)

The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency knows this.  It has fought for years to get schools and libraries and other entities to pay writers and artists for the privilege of “lifting” their work.  It’s fighting the education system still, on our behalf.

Photocopy our stuff; use it in your classrooms; paper the walls with it; and we’re grateful, truly grateful.

But many writers live below the poverty line, so access, as it’s known, distributes the fees to its ever-thankful members.

I collect because I’ve written so much for decades for the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulation paper.

On occasion, some kind teacher wants her students to read my old stuff (you won’t be surprised to learn that U.S. sex laws were a big draw during Bill Clinton’s presidency.  Sex scandals:  the journalism gift that keeps on giving.)

It’s nice to know there’s payback — literally.

My access payback is $741.99 this year, covering a few magazines and other papers that have published my freelance work.

It makes me proud to be a writer.

It made Hadi Dadashian so proud, he matched the payback by donating $810.01 from his savings to Hire Your Neighbor.

That gives us $1,551 to spread our  job-creating message, and encourage Americans to have a national conversation about hiring their unemployed neighbors:  Get Occupied!

Watch this blog for a regular accounting of how that money is spent.

TOMORROW:  Why I blew $3 on a chance to have dinner with First Lady Michelle Obama and the President of the United States of America