It turns out I’m not the only person who thought Stein went too far with his commentary dissing the unemployed as lazy.  Media Matters for America was critical of Stein. ThinkProgress.org points out that unemployment didn’t double during the recession because of lazy workers, but because of a bad economy.

The American Prospect takes it a step further, pointing out Stein’s ethical lapse by shilling for a credit company that tricked people into thinking they were getting a free credit report. Labor demand, not supply, is causing high unemployment, the website says.

Read Stein’s commentary in the American Spectator and at AOL News, and then read my story at WalletPop, and tell me what you think.

I know that the day I was laid off is one I’ll never forget. The Lemonade documentary, however, focuses on much more than that and is an enlightening story.

I’ll post the WalletPop link here when my story runs, hopefully within a few days or early next week.

June 8, 2010, marks two years since I was laid off, and I’m still without a full-time job. It was an anniversary I hoped to avoid, but I keep plugging along with part-time work to help keep a roof over our heads.

Soon after being laid off, I started this blog as Tales of an Unemployed Dad to detail the job hunt while raising a child while my wife returned to work full-time. She still works full-time and we still have health benefits, and our daughter is now 5.

It has been a long two years, probably the most stressful of my life. Here are a few of the things I’ve learned during those two years:

1. After being a freelance journalist for the past two years and enjoying all of the freedom that comes with it, I still think I’d prefer working at a regular day job with set hours and steady income. I enjoy the work I do, but having my income being determined on whether I have a good day and find stories and have sources get back to me makes a nervous start, and end, to every day.
2. I’ve got a new appreciation for the underemployed. I didn’t even know what the term meant until 2008, but now feel like an expert on it. Underemployment describes people who seek full-time work, but can’t find it and must take many part-time jobs to make up the difference. They often work without the benefits, such as health insurance and vacation days, that full-time workers get.
3. Looking for work is a full-time job by itself. I’ve spent hours each day looking for jobs, talking with people, preparing for job interviews and doing other such tasks, all while working 20-30 hours a week and trying to keep a 5-year-old out of trouble.
4. I enjoy writing. This may be the best benefit of the layoff. I was an assistant metro editor at the Contra Costa Times, a daily newspaper in the Bay Area, and had also worked there as a copy editor for years. It had been years since I worked as a reporter, and while I continue doing some editing and working with reporters on story assignments on a freelance basis, I quickly found that it was great to be back writing again.
5. Every day is exciting, but still a struggle. I look forward to the work I do, but the tentativeness of it makes every day stressful. I realize that’s a part of life and that it occurs even with a full-time job, but as I said from the top here, I need some steadiness to keep me sane. I don’t expect any job, whether part-time freelance work or a career at one newspaper, to last a lifetime, but I’d like to find something that I know will be there for me to do a year from now. Maybe that’s a goal I’ll never achieve in this economy, but it’s something I keep looking for.

That’s enough for now. I could probably write for days about what I’ve learned these past two years, and I’ll continue to blog about it, but those are the highlights.

Comment and let me know what you’ve learned from being laid off for a long time. After all, almost half of the unemployed have been without a job for six months or longer, so the numbers of the long-term unemployed are only going to grow.

President Obama must not have been too happy when he saw a billboard with “I Need a Freakin’ Job” on it when he went to speak about the administration’s efforts in job growth.

INAFJ.org is reminding the president that creating jobs should be the most important goal before the government. I agree. Health care, the war, and everything else should take a back seat to job growth.

I was contacted last week by someone I’ve worked with before to see if I wanted to do some writing for an SEO project the company is doing. I’ve done plenty of Search Engine Optimization writing during my two years of unemployment and underemployment, and was looking forward to writing a handful or so of stories on an interesting topic and making some money.

After agreeing with another editor on a price and being told that I’d be assigned stories in a few days, I looked forward to hearing from yet another editor on what the assignments were. I planned on doing the work early this week and, as always, ready to beat deadline like a rented mule.

But it didn’t come to pass. After waiting all morning for the assignments, I e-mailed the third editor, who told me that I didn’t get the work because so many writers were interested in the job that the editors decided to hold a lottery to see who would be assigned the work.

I was kind of amazed that there are that many freelance writers available and clamoring for work that a lottery had to be held to pick the winning writers. I know unemployment is high and that companies can pick and choose who they want to hire, but leaving my fate to luck seemed like an odd way of doing business.

When I get in the position again to hire writers, a lottery will be the last method I use to pick people. It will be based on skill, and all things being equal, I’ll look into their experience and find the most qualified person for the job.  I don’t want to leave someone’s financial future to chance.

I don’t want to turn this blog into a daily list of how writers are getting screwed on pay, but here’s another example of someone trying to pull a fast one on writers. I think it shows how the unemployed, or underemployed, are being preyed upon to write.

It was forwarded to me by my former Contra Costa Times colleague Sara Steffens and can be found on Craigslist. The “publisher” is looking for ghost writers to write a sample for his novel, and he makes work submissions into a sort of contest. The person who wins and will be hired will be paid $1,000 and the four runner ups will each get $250.

The work becomes his property, and since he’s paying for it, that makes some sense. But asking job candidates to write for what is essentially a contest seems like another publisher trying to get job applicants to write his book for him without getting the job.

Here’s the ad:

Ghost Writer Wanted (san rafael)

Job Description
Candidate should be a free-thinking southerner, an experienced writer, with some legal knowledge, adept at dialog, and have the expertise in research skills to accurately portray courtroom procedure. He or she should be able to incorporate the style of the original author, and work closely with him on development. For examples of his writing go to his website (not current, due to illness): http://tralalapublishing.com/

Compensation is liberal – but negotiable, of course.

To Apply
Please submit a résumé and sample of your writing in the form of a character study of no less than 1000 words depicting an honest agnostic senator in conflict with his conscience over his public declaration of faith to achieve his reelection. $1,000 will be awarded to the hired candidate for this study, and $250 to the four runners-up.

Caveat: Any and all work performed by the winning candidate and the runners-up, either in the course of application or for inclusion in the final work, is considered “for hire” work. Any and all intellectual property rights to this “for hire” work, including, but not limited to, copyrights or trademarks, shall become the property of the person or publishing company hiring the writer. Should the writer’s submissions be included in the final work confidentiality as to that contribution shall be required of the writer as a term of employment (thus the term “ghost writer”).

Emma and I have made the jump to Spongebob Squarepants in yet another sign that my 5-year-old is growing up and expanding her sense of humor to “bum” jokes.

It’s the type of transition that every parent sees sooner or later — from sweet, innocent child to the kind of kid who laughs when a cartoon sponge passes gas under water.

I’m not proud of it, but the transition has been made. After years of watching Dora, the Backyardigans, Special Agent Oso and other cartoons that I had no interest in, we can now watch cartoons together as a daughter and father were meant to — laughing hysterically.

Yet another reason to enjoy being underemployed with a 5-year-old.

After my recent call for help finding a virtual assistant to help me find a full-time job, a firm called VAssist has reached out to me with a rate plan offer of 40 hours for $500, or $12.50 per hour.

I countered with $6.25 an hour. I’m not thrilled paying upfront for 40 hours. I’d rather give it a try for 20 hours or less and see what happens before proceeding more. Although 40 hours at $6.25 an hour sounds much better and something I’d pay ahead for.

If I can get the price down it will be a worthwhile investment to see how it works and to see how much a VA can help me land a job.

I’ve got to give them some credit: They e-mailed me at both of my e-mail accounts, and sent me a note on Facebook. At least they’re pushy, which is what you want in a VA.

I might wait until I can get an online business off the ground before hiring a VA, but it’s an intriguing idea to get me to work fulltime.

I’m looking for the unemployed people from Detroit who were in this movie and interviewed as real-life examples of what happens when you lose your job.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” is the first thing many people say when they’re laid off. It’s those people I’m looking for.

“Up In The Air” is a fantastic movie that looks into that issue.  I want to look into it more for a story for WalletPop.

I’d like to interview a few long-term unemployed people in Detroit about their job search in such dire unemployment, and what it’s like living there. If you know anyone who would be like to be interviewed for this story, please contact me.