The government-reported
low unemployment rate paints a misleadingly upbeat picture. The job
market looks far less rosy when you add two huge groups not counted in
the “unemployment rate:”
There’s the under-employed: People who wished
they had a full-time professional-level job and are working part-time,
for low-pay, on a job they could have done straight out of high
school---Uber anyone? Then there are the millions who have given up
looking for work. They, somehow, are not counted in the “unemployment
rate.” The more accurate statistic is the underreported Labor
Participation rate, which is within ½ of 1% of the lowest since early
1978. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate A record 95 million Americans 18-64 are not in the labor force.
And with the U.S. having the highest percentage of college graduates in history, that degree is a mere hunting license for employment beyond a McJob.
The ideas I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today may help. They’re widely applicable, not aimed at stars.
The year is 2050 and 2017’s optimists
were pretty much right. People only work if they elect to. That’s
because technology has made everything so inexpensive that corporate
taxes can afford to support everyone at a middle-class level. Would you elect to work? Would most people?
I explore that in a short-short story that's my PsychologyToday.com offering today.
If you’re fortunate enough to have a child who, from early on, is all
about sharing and caring, wonderful.
But what if your child tends to be
mean: the kind of kid who’d pull a cat’s tail, root for the villain,
make fun of a fat child, beat up a weakling, spread rumors about a
popular person, or coax someone into getting high or into having sex
when reluctant.
As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer tips. They’re aimed at parents but much is applicable to relatives, teachers, and other influencers.
I noticed a couple walking with a school-age boy and girl. The boy was
wearing a non-descript shirt but the girl was wearing one that said,
“Girls Rule!”
That motivated me to do some research on the extent of anti-male versus anti-female products. I summarize what I found in my PsychologyToday.com article today.
Many people love grandparenting. Others don't. Of course, some of that is that they're hardwired to be nurturing or otherwise are good at at.
But an under-considered factor is that happy grandparents stay conscious of grandparenthood's many rewarding moments. As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer some examples in hopes they'll increase your enjoyment of
grandparenthood.
In an attempt to avoid how-to articles' pontification and aridity, I've written over 100 short-short stories that offer life lessons. I've collected my 60 favorites in a book, which has just been published. It's called Modern Fables. HERE is its Amazon link.
One of life’s bigger decisions is whether to retire. Of course, many
factors should be considered.
As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer an an internal dialogue that may help you
clarify
Some people’s priority is balance: work moderately, play moderately.
Other people, whether by choice or need, want to go the extra mile. But
many of the latter don’t do so. They might not even know what that would
entail.
For such people, as my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer a self-assessment questions may help.
To avoid having to pay, give benefits and legal rights, many employers use interns and volunteers.
Equally sad for job seekers, too few of those no-pay "opportunities"
get converted into paid work. Often, it's use up the free labor until
they quit, whereupon the employer finds a new freebie. That’s
particularly likely in sexy fields, for example, fashion, sports, entertainment, and the environment.
My PsychologyToday.com article today offers ways to boost the chances of converting an internship or volunteer gig into paid work.
My wife and I have had a wonderful experience with my previous doggies
Gherkin, Cookie and an even better one with my current doggie,
Einstein.
As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I share tips on choosing, training, and living with doggie.
Sometimes the advice we give isn't what we ourselves would do. For
example, we might ask a client to do more than we ourselves would be
willing to do.
So, for my PsychologyToday.com article today, as a long-time career counselor, I thought it might be helpful if I described what I'd actually do if I had to look for a job
Many of my clients, colleagues, friends, and I wonder about the
future of the world. We do it just for the fun of conjecture or for a
serious reason. For example, some people wonder if they want to bring a
child into the world s/he’ll spend the next 100 years in.
So it might be instructive or at least interesting to explore
possible futures. To that end, my PsychologyToday.com article today offers a debate between the optimist and pessimist within me.
In the 5th and final installment of a five-part series aimed at helping professionals improve their vocabulary, I offer 41 words that are more precise in their meaning than their more common synonym. And to encourage the reader to learn them, I offer one of the few tasks I remember doing in school that I liked: writing a story that used all the words. And lest I be guilty of asking my readers to do that which I wouldn't, I wrote such a story. That's my PsychologyToday.com article today.
As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer self-assessment questions for older workers to help them decide how ambitious they should be on the continuum from aiming higher to retiring. I then offer specifics for what one might do.
Of course, even a professional career counselor usually takes multiple sessions to provide adequate guidance.
But counselors, social workers, teachers, parents and relatives often have the opportunity to provide a bit of career help. My PsychologyToday.com article today offers sample dialogues and a career-finding chart that can be used to provide a first-step to people who don't know what career to pursue or how to land a job.
As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I ask six questions of people considering a sales career. The profession is underrated when done right but it's appropriate only for a special kind of person.
As my PsychologyToday.com contribution today, I offer a short-short story called An Ordinary Life.
Want to come
see my one-man show Odd Man Out tomorrow (Saturday June 3) at 10:30 AM at the Rockridge branch of
the Oakland Public Library? It's free.
This is the final installment in a four-part series designed to help professionals take their vocabulary to the highest
level likely needed.
In it, I describe 17 examples of pairs or trios of words that are often
thought to be interchangeable but aren't.
