After unemployment runs out: Four stories from the trenches
It’s been a tough couple of years for job seekers. Despite some recent improvement in the hiring outlook, the unemployment rate is still hovering near 9 percent and good jobs simply aren’t materializing for millions of people. Worse yet, despite several extensions, people are starting to run out of unemployment benefits — which last a maximum of 99 weeks in most cases. (If you’re bad at math, that’s nearly two years.) In fact, 3.9 million Americans ran out of unemployment benefits last year, according to the National Employment Law Project, and the White House estimates that another 4 million will hit the benefit-free bricks this year.
If you’re collecting unemployment now, you need to plan for how you’ll get by if you don’t have a new job by the time your benefits run out. Even if you have a job, you must be wondering what all these people who ran out of benefits are doing for money. Where are they living? How are they buying basic necessities?
The answers may surprise you (or not), because they really vary from person to person. The news isn’t all bad. One person’s unemployment nightmare is another person’s business opportunity. The following are four stories from the trenches.
