14 Million Jobless in America. How Do You Get Help?

Gruesome unemployment numbers (9.2%) reverberated across the country this week.

Odds are good that you know one of the 14 million folks who aren’t working. Here in Minnesota, our state shutdown just added 20,000 more people to the UE lines. And Treasury Secretary Geithner says hard times will continue.

So how do the unemployed find work in such a dismal market? Or do they?

Friends of mine are returning to school in droves, gambling that an MBA or a Ph.D. will pay off down the road. Some are retraining, networking, learning new skills, living on monster.com and careerbuilder.com, and interviewing for whatever comes up. MortgageKeeper’s database offers searchers programs for training, resume writing, interviewing, and job sourcing. It also offers links for unemployment claims filing in the searcher’s local area.

One Facebook friend of mine–a trained nuclear engineer–summed up the current job search frustration in a post a few weeks ago:

“Somebody hire me….” it said.
Comments on his post were as follows:
“Somebody hire me too…”
“I wanna get hired too!”
I could only comment, “I wish I could hire all of you!”

Are you searching for work, or have you been successful finding a job? What search methods worked for you?