Crash Survival Zone

If you are looking for ways to earn extra money online, you may have responded to a help-wanted ad on craigslist.org or another free ads site. Working small gigs can be a good way to put away some extra cash when times are tight, and although it’s increasingly competitive with so many people out of [...]

…There are no hard statistics on how often a trip to an organized job-hunting soiree leads to employment. But some job seekers say they can be a lesson in futility during these tough times because many gatherings are overcrowded, so applicants get lost in the shuffle.

And many employers have few or no jobs to offer, [...]

…The fact is this recession has made high echelon jobs in the financial sector less desirable for women. Once venerable brand-name organizations are losing their luster amid sagging revenue, mass layoffs, bailouts, cost cuts, bad PR and low morale. The psychological and emotional perks that once helped balance the time commitments of high pressure “extreme” [...]

A college diploma has long been the ticket to a good job, but the deepest economic slump in decades has dampened the dreams of many U.S. college seniors.

They face a hard reality upon graduation this spring: stiff competition from the growing ranks of the unemployed, from those forced out of retirement or delaying it because [...]

The unemployment rate hit 8.5 percent in March, the highest in 25 years, and the misery shows no signs of abating. But it’s not doom and gloom across every sector of the economy. Some industries are actually rife with openings: The health care sector, for example, added an average of 17,000 new jobs each month [...]

Experts expect fewer manufacturing jobs, more  health care work
…The deep recession that began in 2007 is doing more than costing millions of jobs. It is transforming the economy and forcing many workers to seek entirely new careers. For many, that will mean moving away from blue-collar jobs and toward white-collar work, perhaps with a trip [...]

The current economic slump isn’t just squeezing people’s incomes. It’s also jolting the ways we think about money. Household budgets are tightening up everywhere as people scramble to save cash and guard against hard times. The frantic race to keep up with the Joneses has been put on hold. And as layoff notices and foreclosures [...]

In the Depression, smart college students flocked into civil engineering to design the highway, bridge and dam-building projects of those days. In the Sputnik era, students poured into the sciences as America bet on technology to combat the cold war Communist challenge. Yes, the jobs beckoned and the pay was good. But those careers, in [...]

Unemployed workers ages 45 and over form a disproportionate share of the hard-luck recession category, the long-term unemployed — those who have been out of work for six months or longer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

On average, laid-off workers in this age group were out of work 22.2 weeks in 2008, compared with [...]

As the economic slump persists, companies are becoming stingier with the severance packages they offer laid-off workers. At the same time, more employees are asking their firms to tweak the terms of their parting pay — a shot to get more as they head for the door. “The packages are smaller than they have been, [...]