how gen-xers became has-beens

this article made me feel a little better and also a litttle disheartened. it makes me feel better because i know at least i'm not the only one out there. it makes me feel sad because i may very well be doomed in today's job market. perhaps i should rethink my postgraduate studies. i've only posted snippets, as it is a lengthy article ... well, too bulky to paste in here anyway. the article can be found here.

"After a good five years in the workforce, having progressed nicely through the ranks of management, I decided to do postgraduate studies at one of the more notable business schools in NSW - even obtaining a highly-valued (so I thought) MBA (Master of Business Administration)."

"Regardless of our background, how much we studied, how privileged we may have been, we are all the same at the Centrelink. We are just people looking for work. In the wonderfully sterile space at Centrelink, where walls are adorned only by the odd piece of butcher's paper giving worldly advice such as "smile when you are on the phone" and "be polite", you can find the ultimate job seeking tool - the computer."

"In the facility that I attend, you can have up to 30 enthusiastic and hopeful jobseekers all vying for the half-dozen computers lined up against the wall. For those of us who haven't quite yet had their soul destroyed by being unemployed for three months, a couple of weeks of scrambling for a computer like a shark in a feeding frenzy will take care of that for you."

"Everyday I continue with my full-time job of looking for a job, a process that just keeps reminding me of our economic conditions. I am unable to get some jobs because I am now over-qualified and employers feel that I'd simply be taking a job just to have one and would leave as soon as the market picks up."

"For other jobs, I am under-qualified. And the competition for all jobs is ferocious. Where some jobs previously had 50 to 100 applicants, they are now receiving up to 300 applicants. Preference tends to go towards those already employed."

"To be the pessimist that I am now becoming, it doesn't seem that things are going to get any better in the near future. Today I heard that the prediction for Australia is that we will have almost a million people in my position by 2010."

source: news.com.au