My Labor Day Lament could sound like a blues song from Muddy Waters or Etta James.  It’s deep and rich and has some sweetness mixed in with all the sorrow.
The news for workers is bitter-sweet and for the unemployed and the under-employed it is as dreary as a February day in Detroit, where the unemployment rate was 15.2 percent in July
Consider these blue notes:

• -The recession and job cuts have cut a wide swath through America. More than half of workers have a family member who’s lost a job, including one in eight who say someone in their immediate family has been unemployed. That data comes from a new Rutgers University survey of 802 workers.
• For what really qualifies as a double-dip recession, one-third of current job seekers say an immediate family member has also been unemployed in the last three years, the Rutgers poll shows.
• The “99ers” are not such an elite group of Americans unemployed for 99 weeks or longer. That’s 1.3/1.4 CK million people who have spent two solid years of life without a regular paycheck or work friends. The New York Times wrote a poignant piece about 99ers (and I hope to find a link to it and add it soon).
• The U.S. jobless rate is not coming down and companies are hiring sparsely if at all. One third of U.S. metropolitan areas are stuck with jobless rates of 10 percent or higher, and 17 are really bad with rates at or above 15 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. California, once the golden state, now has 12 cities with very high unemployment.  Three cities in Michigan are at or near 15 percent. Even Ann Arbor, the city where I live and one viewed as thriving and adding jobs, has  ahas a jobless rate of 10.0 percent in July.
• When the poverty statistics come out later this month, they are likely to show more Americans at or on the brink of desperation. More than half of workers surveyed for Rutgers rate their finances as “only fair” or poor and it’s 90 percent for unemployed.
• Workers are seeing decelerating wage growth in the last two years, which is hurting family incomes and the economic recovery, according to report from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. The EPI also found that four of the five fastest growing jobs between 2006 and 2009 paid between $8 and $14 an hour – well below the median U.S. worker’s wage of $15.95.
• Almost two-thirds of workers in a Spherion Staffing survey say they feel less secure about their job, and more than one-third feel more negative about their situation since the recession began. Perhaps that negativity comes from a bigger workload: Half say they’ve added responsibilities thanks to a coworker’s layoff, and of course they aren’t paid any more for it.

The blues could go on and on, with job loss leading to health problems or lack of medical care and families split up. The anguish of being jobless for months, especially without close family to help you through, could be plotlines for many books and movies.

And what gives this Labor Day weekend some sweetness for workers? Much of it is far less quantifiable than the blues I was just singing. Many more people seem attuned to the plight of others and willing to help them with a lead on work or a few dollars for a meal. And Friday’s unemployment report does provide some glimmers of hope, as well as many worrisome signs. Factory overtime is rising and the average workweek for “nonsupervisory employees” in companies inched up too.
Hiring will continue slowly in September, with fewer layoffs, the Society for Human Resource Management reports. SHRM also reports more openings for both salaried and hourly jobs than a year ago, when things were really really blue.

Another encouraging sign: The Labor Department’s revised the job losses for June and July. Both numbers are still negative, but the declines shrunk considerably (by 50,000 or more each month).
EPI economist Heidi Shierholz called the BLS report “positive but underperforming” and suggested the government needs to step in with “bold action to create jobs and put America back to work.” I’m no politician, nor a blues singer either but I know that we’ve got a world of hurt out there, with 6.2 million workers who’ve been jobless for half a year or more.
And so we need to encourage and help the jobless – and if we have the means, take action. Many of us could hire people to rake our leaves or renovate a bathroom; tutor our children or staff up our small businesses. We also could press politicans for more help for the worst cities and more aid for long-term jobless. Then perhaps we could turn America’s  Labor Day Lament into a more upbeat song.

More information:
Bureau of Labor Statistics U.S. joblesss report and metropolitan area reports  http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm   http://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.nr0.htm
The Economic Policy Institute’s report called Recession Hits Workers’ Paychecks: Wage growth has collapsed, is available online http://bit.ly/c3WI24

Note: This WorkingKind post originally appeared on March 27, 2009. I am reposting it now as Wendy Enelow prepares for her Career Thought Leader Conference in Baltimore.

Wendy Enelow describes herself as an “old hippy girl” who lives on a 35-acre farm outside of Lynchburg, Va. And she does have long hair and dangling earrings – and apparently wears Birkenstock sandals and her PJs to work sometimes.

Enelow also is one of the great resume writers whose work helps advance and relaunch careers of executives all over the country. She spends about half her time as a career coach and resume writer for individuals – most earn well into six figures – and the other half with “career seekers,” people who want to become resume writers or join the career advice field.

So the hippy chick assists the corporate chieftain with career advice – at $2,000 to $3,000 and up for a resume redo.  And then she uses some of her earnings as a “do gooder” — someone who lends a hand freely to those in trouble. She and her husband “adopted” a family displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and helped them relocate to rural Virginia. (They’re still there and still friends and Enelow, a skinny Jewish woman who grew up outside Pittsburgh, now considers herself almost Latina from their connections.) She helped organize Volunteers for Careers after Sept. 11, providing free career counseling and advice for a year to anyone who had lost their job or their spouse to the terror attacks. They reactivated it for Katrina victims and stand ready for the next huge disaster – “God forbid,” she says, yet she knows it may come around again.

Enelow doesn’t have any specific cause or charity as a volunteer focus. “There’s always something that just appears in my life – formal or not – that is the “right” do-gooder thing to do at that exact moment in time,” she says.

Of her kindness and assists, she says, “It’s the right thing to do.”

Community service and volunteering looks right on your resume, she says, providing a “glimpse into who a person is.” She suggests steering clear of political and religious causes on your C.V. since those can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, depending on who’s viewing it. Write about your volunteering in a section called either Personal Profile or Volunteer Experience.

Now Enelow has some excellent advice on her website on making your resume into a key sales tool for your career.  (A bit of it showed up in this week’s Working in the Post. Enelow recommmends the “sell it, don’t tell it” approach to highlight achievements and quantifiable results. A good trick for this, she says, “for each bulleted point you have on your resume, read it out loud and then say and — and … .” And then fill in the result, the impact, the contribution, whether it’s new multi-media materials for sixth graders or reducing the accounting cycle by three days.)

But the biggest inspiration comes from Wendy Enelow’s choices — and her passion to make a difference – whether by creating the Resume Writing Academy with a colleague or by lending a hand for a food drive or another “do gooder” activity.

That generosity of spirit says almost as much as any resume could.

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To learn more about the Career Thought Leaders conference, check their website

You also can follow some of the key career coaches and resume writers who will be presenting there on a Twitter list managed by Chandlee Bryan.

Skip lunches out or Starbucks on the way into the office to save some cash. The latest Harris Poll confirms it: More people are “brown bagging it” to cut costs.

The survey focuses on small ways Americans are saving money, by going to hair stylists or barber shops less frequently or buying refillable water bottles. The biggest way of saving: Almost two thirds of the 2,576 people surveyed say they’re buying more generic brand merchandise in the last six months.

One cutback though comes with substantial career concerns: We mean the 45 percent of Americans who stay in and eat peanut butter sandwiches or leftover spaghetti.  Make that 56 percent for Gen Xers, those ages 34-45. Clearly brown-bagging can bring real savings. If you spend even $5 or $6 a day for an affordable lunch out, you’re dropping $25 to $30 a week on meals. The adds up to $780 over six months on burgers and fries or veggie wraps and salads.

All that time, you may be insulated from important insights and information, as well as work friends. You could miss out on important gossip or details on changes coming in your department or organization. These are often shared outside the office – at lunch or over happy hours after work. Or you may miss out on new job possibilities, or start-ups or consulting gigs that could bring a second source of income.

So no matter how much we understand and embrace the new frugality, we also value camaraderie and celebrations – and those often happen over meals. Don’t risk damaging your reputation or developing one as a staid and unsociable sort over a few dollars.

In these tough times we cannot afford to become cut off from our work colleagues – both as a source of information and as supporters of our new projects, career goals or needs for personal development.

So if you’re one of the Americans who have been eating lunch at their desk – or sitting alone in a corner of the corporate cafeteria, a bit abashed by the boring brown bag, it’s time to break bread with your boss and coworkers.

Here’s five ways to be frugal and use food for professional fellowship:

• Plan an office party at your home. Come up with a reason for the gathering – sometimes a silly idea like your 1,000th day on the job or something serious like your best friend’s promotion or new baby. Then make sure you have all the food and drink organized before the event begins so you can concentrate on connecting with the crew.
• Get with the gang every other Friday. Your new scrimping and saving is laudable, but leave room for the occasional team gab fest in your favorite eatery or bar. Be smart and selective about when to show up – and make sure you have a sweet or smarmy answer to the “where have you been?” question.
• Create a souper star support group. This group is focused on frugality and career success. Heat up some soup – store bought or homemade – once a week or every other week and warm up your career prospects too. To take this beyond a chat and chew, look for career advancement articles or tools to share. Or ask each person to find one book that may be valuable to all and report on it. My current choice: The Power of Small / Why Little Things Make All the Difference by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval (Broadway Books, $17.95, 140 pages).
• Start a bagels and bargains group. This also could also be called bagels and bravery  or bagels and balance – depending on your focus and hopes. The point is: Build your network – and your reputation for creativity and community. Be sure to share career insights along with money-saving ideas. Make sure you rotate the bagel buying, and get buy-in from your HR Department and boss.
• Produce a monthly or quarterly office potluck. These can be great fun – and great for business. They strengthen the camaraderie and connections, and give workers a chance to show off their culinary talents too. One consulting firm even created a friendly competition for the best dish from the worker’s ethnic background – and then published a cookbook from their entries. Your office might not want to take it that far, but a quarterly shared meal may mean the folks in accounting are more likely to share their expertise with sweetness. A potluck can be a great way to stage a brainstorming session, a sales meeting or a meet the new staffers gathering. And if you organize this, you’re at the nexis of information and people – and you’re seen as someone who understands motivating staff and being frugal with corporate expense accounts, both pluses for your next performance review.

Of course, there’s other ways to stay attuned to the news and gossip besides noshing on noodles. Coffee, salads, dessert, wine and cheese or an ice cream social – something I used a few summers ago for my team.

So engage your creativity along with your appetite for career information and connections.

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If you’re interested in reading more on Americans frugality, as documented by The Harris Poll, go here.

If you want some recipes for your first office potluck, I’ve appreciated several luscious dishes from Susan at  Farmgirl Fare . Or make the first one a recipe you received from Mom or Dad (even if they never posted anything on a blog, they feed us for years).