Rarely will you find me with a serious blog entry and I mean RARELY. But I’m seeing something that is troubling and it’s getting worse.

Chances are that you have a job. You might hate getting up for it. You may develop a case of “Friday-itis” often to get away from it. It’s possible that you want to quit and look for something better. Take a look at your pay stub or last direct deposit. How would you feel if it disappeared? Have you thought of what you would do? How would you handle it both emotionally and physically. How would it handle you? You better not leave that job before you have a great replacement lined up. The good jobs are few and far between. 

Shockingly, I personally know 7 adults over 30 years old, from all different industries, that are unemployed. Seven. Make that tally eight, since I don’t gather a check from a big fat company anymore as well. Fortunately, I have always been an entrepreneur and had my hands in several things. That being said, I am “unemployed” but this is not about me. I am fine with my status. This is about several friends I have that are in bad situations without a cure. These seven I write about are not high school drop outs that were delivering pizzas, these are highly educated people who were in serious positions with their companies. These people all made over 7 figures a year and worked hard. They all had jobs where they had great input and expertise. Their choice now is to take a job making about 25% of what they were making or sit and wait for the “right” opportunity to get back in the game. The game is bad right now. Get a comfortable chair. 

These 7 figure casualties are becoming more and more common. The economy is claiming victims in many ways. Could you ever imagine in your wildest dreams that we would ever have to pay 4.50 a gallon for gas? Where will that end? Will it ever go back to sanity? Where is the airline industry headed? Will the housing market regain its gusto? Will these ugly fiscal days ever turn around? Optimists think so, but it has yet to show any signs of goodness.

To be over 30 and unemployed is much different than losing your job in your 20’s. You have all that debt, maybe kids, a mortgage, and so much more. At twenty, you just go crash at a friends place until it blows over. Image having a 7 figure rug yanked out from under you. At first, you’ll feel relief as you rest up. Then it sets in when you go sign up for your health insurance family plan. Oh wait, I forgot about that. Don’t forget and get ready to plop down a grand for crappy insurance. The house payments seem to come much quicker now. It starts to take a toll.

I’ve watched several of these people try and stay above water as the character is slowly drained out of them. They lost their jobs for not a specific reason, but because they were highly compensated, highly expendable employees. More and more, you are seeing the worker bee hired in positions, a worker that shuts up and takes 30k a year. They are much less experienced than you, much less educated, and much more expendable. These companies will hire 1 executive that makes all the calls and distributes the orders to all the workers bees. Headquarters mandates a decision and the pen pushers carry it out and keep their mouths shut. Remember when people actually had power and input in companies? You actually went to a meeting and skilled people made decisions that helped the company. Those days are gone so they don’t need smart people anymore. Let’s hire a stub and they’ll do what we say or they will be gone. 

One of my unemployed friends took a bus ride the other day with his small child and had an interesting thought. This bus ride was because his kid likes to ride a bus and it happened a day after losing his job. As he watched the bus driver, he thought about how this guy comes to work every day and drives in circles probably not to be ever interrupted from his job. He’s probably been there 30 years and never been brought into to the office for any reason. He leads a simple life and is doing just fine. He never has to answer to anyone and probably wouldn’t know what to do if he had to.  He has a point. We strive to create a great life by educating ourselves and climbing up that corporate ladder only to find ourselves driving in circles…without a paycheck. Appreciate the job you have because it could happen to you. I hope not.

Welcome to the all new SteveBarnes.net from Barnesology headquarters in Atlanta. I suck at blogging (among other things!) and have been bad about keeping up with my website. On this new site, I hope to use this News Blog as a bulletin board to drop random thoughts on everything from technology to Hollywood.There will be no scheduled pieces here, just whenever they happen. It is a hub for Barnesology and hopefully a way for you to waste some time when you are bored at home or work. Stop by from time to time and keep note of the terribly long run on sentences with lots of ellipsis… I never wus very good in English class!