CONSIDER: Moving To Where Unemployment Is Low, Improve Your Odds.

Lowest Unemployment in March was North Dakota with 4.2%. Not far behind are South Dakota, Wyoming and Nebraska. All under 5% and Iowa has just exceeded that 5% but has been in the general midwest area of low unemployment rate..

This compares with Michigan at 12,6 and Oregon over 12%. South Dakota and North Dakota, namely Fargo and Sioux Falls have attracted a lot of Credit card and other clean industries that pay in the $15.00 hour to start rate. Since credit card deliquencies are up, it would seem they should be hiring additional people to ring them up. But with normal turnover and under 5% unemployment you have a much better shot of landing something in these areas. Even if local firms are not currently expanding..

Housing, much lower cost, car insurance in this midwest area about half what it is in other areas so the big salary may not be as big a factor with a lower cost of living.

You might want to look into going to where the jobs are One state figures I recently looked at had 120k drawing unemployment and 3,000 job listings.

Hardly the kind of odds needed. The last recession, you had tech jobs that shrank in the dot com implosion, but there were other jobs you could go to. This time likely, in your area there are no other jobs to go to.

Retraining for a different skill. You are hard pressed to find a skill you could traun for years to obtain that is currently hiring. What's the point of switching fields if there is no assured work in the other field.

However, maybe you always wanted to be in a certain field and this would be a good time to be out of the job market and reschooling.

The training for "green jobs" that do not exist does not look like a good bet since no one knows for sure what skills you are going to need to do any part of that.

Best Bet may be to hire yourself. Some people can not manage them self. You may need some "self management" training to succeed. We will be taking this up in future articles and our newsletter since this is your editors area of expertise.

Having worked for himself for sixty plus years, about 25 different businesses, including still operating 8, even after just closing last of six stores. Many of the others sold and still operated by others.