The last week of the year was a forced week off for Steve from work. During that week he was informed that due to lack of work, out of the first 8 weeks of the year, everyone was required to take off 4 of those weeks. None of those weeks were paid. He worked the first week of the year then was off last week. On Friday, he was informed he was laid off completely.

I have varying feelings ranging from “we’ll be just fine” to the staring into space “oh. my. gosh. What are we going to do?”

Applying for unemployment is a pain in the butt. Apparently you have to do this every week or at least within 2 weeks. We’d first applied almost a year ago when he had to take his first forced week off, right before my water broke. He had his waiting week then, or so we thought (the week you have to wait before you will start getting payments when you apply). We didn’t do anything with it again until this past fall. He’d had a couple of other weeks off in between then, but I think he took vacation pay then. Since it was longer than 28 days and no other claims were made, we were told we had another waiting week. Then we filed for the last week of the year and no payment ever came. Come to find out, the “case” went stale when there was no activity on it yet the site continued to take and verify his information, but nothing would progress. Steve talked to a guy on the phone and sorted it out, at least I think it’s taken care of. But unemployment… that’s going to be an adjustment. I need to sit down and budget it all out. And do my business sales tax. Ugh, I’m behind this year (but not late yet thankfully).

But as far as going back to work… he’s #755 on the books which means there are 754 guys in front of him waiting for a job. They estimate a period of 18 months to two years before a job would get to him. Unemployment lasts, what, a year? And the prices of things keep rising and the brains of the people running our country keep going down the toilet… it’s not going to get better. Two years is probably a best-case scenario.

It ticks me off, all the work and money leaving this country because of the morons we have in office who either can’t see or completely don’t care how this affects the little guy. Bring back the jobs, idiots, and the economy will pick up.

This sucks.