Lately I’ve been getting lots of emails from women who left their careers behind to raise their kids and are now having second thoughts about the decisions they made.

The main driver of their doubt seems to the bad economy. Many women are desperate for work now because their husbands have either lost their jobs or had their incomes cut during this painful recession. Given their years of voluntary unemployment, some of these women are finding it difficult to get back into the work world.

This from one reader:

I’m a displaced house-wife (homemaker) all my kids are grown, one still at home (19 yrs. old working w/ his dad) I want to, do something now with my life, besides stay home and keep house. As of now my husband is working by the hour at a fourth of what we are used to make because of the building slump. I need to go into the work force or go back to school, get into something with benefits or do something, but I DON”t know what? Help!!! I 53 years old soon to be 54. I haven’t worked outside the home in so long, I have NOTHING to put on resume or application, no work history or references. When I look at the information on the applications, I think I don’t have anything to even get my foot in the door. I wish I could get some sort of on the job training. I feel I’m to old to be thinking of career at my age. I just need to find someone who would be willing to train me. I’m so confused!

It’s a heartbreaking story, but one that’s replaying itself around the country. The recession may be making things worse, but women who decide to leave their careers behind often end up at this cross roads.

I read an essay recently in Newsweek by a stay-at-home mom who wondered why her daughter’s role model was her father even though she was the one who did everything around the house and for the family.

This question of a mother’s identity when she stays home is one that’s been debated for years. I’ve written about the economic price some women may pay for choosing this path, and I’ve encouraged my own friends and family members not to go down it, at least not for too long.

I admit it’s women like me that may also be feeding into the identity issue.

That’s why I wanted to give voice to a stay-at-home mom for a change. I asked a friend of mine, who was a school teacher but decided to take time off to raise her daughters, if she would share a bit about what she’s faced given her choice.

This Is My Career, Dagnabbit!
By Angela Holodick

Shortly, I will go back to parenting 50-180 children each day (yes, much of teaching is parenting, like it or not), but in the meantime I will just be proud of sharing my skills with my own children. And, when that time comes, I will watch my response to other women who choose to work in the home.

What’s your take? Have you given stay-at-home moms “the look?” I know I have.

Part-time workers are people too!

For years, the smart people in our country have been talking about expanding unemployment benefits to add part-time workers. In most states, jobless individuals who work part time and are canned don’t get an unemployment check, even though they essentially paid into the system because their wages were taxed to finance the unemployment insurance program.

President Obama wants to change that and he’s offering incentives in his proposed stimulus package to get states to start opening up the jobless piggy bank for those poor souls who toil away for years in part-time gigs but see nothing for it when they’re handed a pink slip.

Basically, he’s offering billions in incentives so that states expand unemployment insurance laws.

This from the Wall Street Journal last month:

President-elect Barack Obama plans to offer states $7 billion as incentive to permanently change their unemployment-insurance laws to cover part-time workers and prevent other laid-off workers from falling through cracks in the coverage.

The proposal, which is set to be included in the president-elect’s two-year economic-stimulus plan, will seek to use short-term aid to cash-strapped states to force long-term changes that the Obama team believes are overdue.

The incentives would be paid to states if they update their laws to include everything from covering part-timers to not penalizing workers who had to take time off for a family illness, for example.

Such changes would bring the 75 year old unemployment insurance program out of the dark ages.

This from industry trade publication, Workforce Management magazine:

Changes to unemployment insurance woven into the package can’t come too soon for observers who say the nation’s safety net is showing its age. At a time when legions of Americans are losing their jobs and the economy is teetering, critics say the jobless benefits program is fraught with problems, including inadequate funding, skimpy benefit payments and fusty eligibility requirements that haven’t evolved with the workplace.

An update to the system is a win-win for workers and employers, says Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, who has been a leading advocate for unemployment insurance reforms.

“We can’t adequately help the unemployed and our economy just by pumping resources into an unemployment program that is not designed for today’s crisis,” McDermott said in a statement this month. “When we enable more unemployed workers to qualify for the unemployment insurance program, we put cash into the pockets of struggling families who will spend this money in their communities, supporting local jobs and businesses.”

There’s a compelling reason to allow part-time workers to collect unemployment today. More and more companies have opted to hire part-timers as a way to get out of paying benefits, and all the other costs associated with having someone work full time.

Given that, mass layoffs, as we’ve experienced during this recession, will hit the part-time workforce and the economy hard because there are so many of you out there.

This from a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic report put out last month:

In December, the number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) continued to increase, reaching 8.0 million. The number of such workers rose by 3.4 million over the past 12 months. This category includes persons who would like to work full time but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time jobs.

How do we get our economy back on track when hard-working Americans, be they part-timers or full-timers, don’t have some sort of safety net to weather the economic storms?

I know it sounds bad. Yesterday was a literal layoff blood bath.

From MSNBC.com yesterday:

A slew of American heavyweight companies, including Caterpillar, Pfizer, Sprint Nextel, Home Depot and General Motors, announced cuts Monday adding up to 45,000 jobs lost. What’s more, a group of business economists predicted many more job losses in the year ahead.

Even IBM, is cutting nearly 3,000 sales jobs, and Philips Electronics is slashing 6,000 positions.

This type of news can dash almost anyone’s hopes that they’ll find a new job or keep their existing one. But you need to look at the reality of these layoff numbers.

The job cuts are coming in industries and at companies that most everyone expected to shed jobs. The bulk of these recent reductions came in the construction sector, which has been hurting bad for more than a year, and who has money to buy electronics lately? Other firms are looking at this downturn as an opportunity to cut fat and sever ailing divisions.

So, you need to do a little bit of your own research. Do you know how financially sound the company you work for or the unit you work in is? This would be a good thing to find out so you’re not jumping every time someone taps you on the shoulder at work.

If your company is public this is pretty easy to find out. Just Google the company name and earnings, or sales. See what analysts are saying about your employer.

If the company is private it may be time to ask the boss to lunch or for a cup of coffee. Nothing wrong with asking how the firm is doing and what your employment outlook is and what you can do to help out. Employees that are proactive make a good boss happy.

Research is also key if you’re looking for a gig, and I’m talking about research beyond what jobs are offered. Have you checked the financial soundness of any of the companies you sent resumes to recently? If you’re not your wasting time folks.

Time to concentrate on growing industries and growing companies. If you need some retraining because the job you were doing is becoming a dinosaur, now is the time to do it. If you have marketable skills but you can’t find a job then you may want to rethink the companies your applying to, or even the town where you live. There may be few opportunities in your own backyard right now, so relocating may be your best option.

There are jobs to be had folks, no matter how huge the layoff numbers are at certain companies. You just have to figure out where they are and if you have to skills to land them.

A while back I asked an economic historian how people were able to survive through The Great Depression given the high rate of joblessness.

His answer: family.

Parents took their adult children back in and helped support them. Cousins helped struggling cousins. Sisters helped brothers and vice versa.

Yes there was help from the local government and eventually Roosevelt’s New Deal, but the backbone of the economy was simply love.

I know, not everyone likes their family members but there’s a love you’re stuck with when it comes to your kin. And we need to tap into that love right about now if we know of relatives that are heading off a financial cliff.

What got me thinking about this was a great 60 Minutes story last night about Wilmington, Ohio, a town ravaged by the downturn. If you have time take a look at this, but a warning for you, I cried through a great deal of the program.

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There’s a scene in the piece where a mother talks about how she and her family are struggling. “Where you gonna go to next?” asked Dorothy Faulconer, a Wilmington resident. “We got two families livin’ in my house right now. My husband, and my youngest daughter and her husband and little baby and another one on the way. They can’t make it on their own, and we can’t make it.”

Faulconer is crying while she shares her story. She and her husband are doing what they can to support themselves and their family.

This couple will be among the real heros of the eventual turnaround.

People are expecting a lot from our new president, and I am as well. But many of the plans he has laid out for stimulating this economy won’t impact average people in the economic trenches immediately or even in the months ahead. It will take a year at least before any of the billions in government spending will trickle down to workers in towns across the country.

It’s a great hardship to have to support family members you expected to be on their own by now, or to help your three-headed brother who used to tease you. But the bottom line is we may need to step up to the family plate if we’re going to weather this as a nation.

I’ve been asked to review some resumes recently and I was amazed at how sad and uninspiring they were.

One resume included the fact that the job seeker was laid off recently, and that they organized a manager’s files. Another said the person answered phones and acted as a sales clerk. The resume also included a temporary and permanent address.

First off, no one wants to know the soap opera of your life in your resume. Leave off the layoff story and the variety of addresses. Pick one address for god’s sake. And come to think of it, don’t include your address on the resume at all. Your phone number and email address is just fine.

Secondly, you need to juice up the descriptions on your resume. ‘Answered phones’ isn’t going to cut it in this job market.

Are you reading the news? Thousands of layoffs were announced just this week — Microsoft, Williams-Sonoma, Huntsman Corp., Sun Microsystems, only a few of the companies slicing and dicing.

You need to stand out people, not put the hiring manager to sleep.

Am I advocating lying on your resume? Not quite. But let’s put on some rose-colored glasses and describe what you did in more flowery terms, even if you were bored to tears while you were doing your job.

Remember the character Dwayne Schneider from the 1970s sitcom “One Day at a Time”? He called himself a “custodial engineer”, aka, janitor.

Here are some examples of flowering up your resume:

“Organized a manager’s files” could read: “Office organizational expert”.
“Answered phones” could easily transform into “information and communications disseminator.”
And “acted as a sales clerk” should be trashed for “handled hands-on customer interaction and boosted company sales.”

You get what I mean, right? No lies, just a bit of fine tuning.

I’ve also seen many of you using numbers on your resume when they actually work against you. Don’t say you worked on three projects, or wrote ten stories. This does not sound great if you’ve been with a company for some time. Leave out the numbers unless you can say something like, “I managed a staff of 500″ or “I saved the firm $3 million by revamping the communications system.”

In a recession, any reference you can make to saving a company money will get you moved to the top of the resume pile.

It’s time to put yourself in the interviewer’s shoes. Will your resume bore him or her to tears? Come on, read it closely right now.

Would you want to hire you?

Michelle Obama chose a working-family and women’s rights crusader to help her tackle workplace issues.

I’ve interviewed Obama’s old classmate from Harvard, Jocelyn Frye, the general counsel for the National Partnership for Women and Families, several times over the years.

Once when I wrote a story on pregnancy discrimination for the New York Times:

Lawyers specializing in labor law as well as leaders of women’s advocacy groups around the country say they have detected an increase in pregnancy discrimination cases in recent years. And at the federal level, claims of discriminatory treatment during pregnancy filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have increased 39 percent over the last 10 years, to 4,714 in 2002. That is a tiny fraction of the number of working women, but Jocelyn C. Frye, director of legal and public policy for the National Partnership for Women and Families, a nonprofit advocacy group for women in the workplace, said that this was because pregnancy discrimination cases rarely reach the federal level. Many complaints are handled by state agencies, settled or simply dropped.

‘’Most women are not inclined to go to court, especially with a baby coming,'’ she said. Even so, the number of women calling her organization for information on how to handle discrimination has increased over the last two years, she said.

And for my MSNBC.com story on worker retaliation:

If the Supreme Court sides with the employer, says Jocelyn Frye, general counsel for the National Partnership for Women & Families, it will have a chilling effect on individuals who are victims of sexual harassment.

“This has broader implications for women in the workplace,” she says, because it creates a disincentive for employees to participate in internal investigations.

Frye is a tough cookie when it comes to workers rights, especially as it relate to working parents.

Obama has tapped Frye as her policy director. Her official title: Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady.

That’s a good sign for all you moms and dads out there struggling to keep work-life balance from plummeting hard onto the ground.

One of the key family friendly policies the Partnership is supporting is giving workers paid sick time, something that’s not mandated in the United States. There are also recommendations to expand family and medical leave to all workers, and give employees more control over their schedules.

You can read an overview on what might be on the new administration’s worker plate at the group’s website under “Valuing Families at Work: Priorities for Federal Action in 2009 and Beyond”:

The 21st century reality is that most parents are in the workforce, most families need two incomes to be financially secure, and workers have care giving responsibilities for extended family and community members. As a result of this mismatch, too many workers confront the impossible choice between being a responsible caregiver and a conscientious employee; too many workers must put their economic security on the line in order to meet their family’s care giving needs.

It’s hard to say right now what the Obama administration will do for working families in the country, but at least they have someone like Frye advising them.

Barack Obama’s inauguration speech centered around we the workers, and he seems to be asking a whole lot.

Obama’s vision for America just doesn’t seem to jive with America right now.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

…For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

So who the heck is going to do all this?

He’s talking about building things, and toiling hard, something that’s frowned down upon in this country.

Working with our hands isn’t something many of us aspire to. And most parents want their kids to get a college education so they can spend their days toiling in an office, not a factory or on top of a roof installing solar panels, right?

But the reality is that only about a quarter of people ever finish a four-year degree, and the rest flounder around trying to make the best for themselves and making excuses if they choose a blue-collar path.

It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.

Alas many of us have come to prefer leisure over work, no?

A lot of what he seeks sounds great on paper, but who the heck is going to make solar panels, wind turbines, and who the heck is going to pick up a hammer and rebuild are aging school? Outsourcing all this to China is probably not an option, especially if the goal is to create U.S. jobs.

What do you all think? How can this charismatic, hopeful man pull it off?

While Baby Boomers are falling all over themselves to get Botox and look younger, they may actually want to highlight their wrinkles and gray hair.

Turns out the unemployment rate among the under 30 crowd is well above people in their mid thirties to mid fifties.

According to yet to be published labor data on age from U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate for 20 to 29 years olds in December jumped to 9.8 percent, and is nearly 20 percent for the under 20 crowd. That’s well above the 7.2 percent overall rate. And among the 30 to 39 population that figure was 6.6 percent, and under 6 percent for individuals who were 40 plus.

Why? Turns out experience rules during crummy economic times.

It makes sense. While companies are seeing sales slide they want more seasoned employees, maybe ones that have weathered a past economic downturn, to help them emerge from the recessionary ashes.

I write about the high jobless rate among 20 to 29 years old on MSNBC.com today, and while I was researching the piece I was worried if I’d be able to find enough jobless Gen Yers to talk to.

Well, I was inundated by emails from job seekers under 30 who were wondering what ever happened to the promise of career nirvana for this coveted generation.

Mehgan’s story is pretty typical:

I just turned 26 last month and I have been unemployed since the beginning of November. I graduated from USC had a great job out of college, moved up to LA, switched jobs and definitely thought this could never happened to me. I have learned some valuable lessons and luckily had been taught some good ones prior to this so that I am not yet living on the street. Pride is out the window as you apply for unemployment and tell all your friends and family you were let go hoping that someone has a lead on a job opportunity.

Indeed, pride is out the window for many out-of-work individuals out there right now, no matter what age. But younger folks seem to be struggling the most, and seem to be the most surprised about it, especially if they have a college degree.

“College teaches you everything EXCEPT how to get the job,” says workplace consultant J.T. O’Donnell. “A college degree only gets a Gen Y to the career starting line, but nobody is teaching them how to close the gap on their self-knowledge and career skills so they can add more value and get on track professionally to achieving their goals.”

Dr. Debra Condren, a business psychologist and author of “Ambition Is Not A Dirty Word,” says younger workers tend to want results immediately, without a lot of work.

She shared an example of an email she got from a 22-year-old client after just one week of job searching:

“So I am having ZERO luck locating a job. I have already had 2 interviews and both didn’t hire me and I am getting a little depressed. I printed off 20 resumes and just went around to places handing them out, almost handed every single one to different businesses and filled out application after application, and NOTHING. I’m getting a little depressed.”

Alas, people of all age groups are going to have to be a bit more patient than this.

She offers some great insights for all you Gen Yers out there:

I think that some job seekers in the under-30 group need encouragement to understand that a successful job search requires tenacity, nerves of steel–especially
in today’s environment–and, a secret weapon: coming up with an informal advisory board and asking those people for help, being very specific and strategic with what you are asking.

Getting a foot in the door takes time. Get started today. Open your mouth. Let people know that you’re looking, what you have to offer. Get on their radars. Float your resume. Talk with folks in your network, friends of friends, new acquaintances. Put out feelers through your college alumni association. Polish your resume. Build your KaChing! File: print old and new e-mails praising your work; record (writing down) verbal compliments from bosses, clients, colleagues. Write down dates and specifics—projects you spearheaded, internships you thrived in (giving specifics on what you accomplished and the value you added), money you saved your department, clients won—and file it. Tracking your accomplishments as you go makes it easier to sell yourself on paper—and while networking your way into interviews where your story will land a meaningful, challenging job.

Whether you’re employed or unemployed, investigate gold-standard advanced training to be more competitive. Research an advanced degree. Or simply sign up for weekend intensives or short-term accelerated certification programs. Subscribe to your industry trade publications to learn the ins and outs and who’s who of that world; learn to speak your industry’s language with fluency.

Bone up on movers and shakers you read or hear about; study what they’ve published, their accomplishments and what’s written about them. Then phone or e-mail these folks saying, “I admire your work. I have talent and ambition. Would you consider speaking with me for ten minutes on the phone about tips for breaking into your company or about other opportunities you know about?”

Be proactive and patient. You owe it to yourself—and the world—to make the contribution you were born to make.

Words to live by.

In 2007, the Supreme Court pretty much said “screw you” to victims of long-time pay discrimination in the workplace.

But a bill being considered right now by the Senate will change all that if passed.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act would counter the Supreme Court decision to put time limits on how long an employee had to claim they were paid less because of gender, race, religion, etc.

That’s what happened to Lilly Ledbetter, for which the bill is named. She was a longtime supervisor at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.’s plant in Gadsden, Ala., and she came to suspect she was underpaid compared to her male counterparts. No one disputed her claims but the company made a case that she had waited too long to report the discrimination.

A dumb argument since most victims of pay discrimination take a long time to figure out they are being shafted, if they ever figure it out at all.

The justices interpreted existing labor laws, which include a 180 day window to file, as starting when the first payroll decision was made to pay an employee less. That meant, even though Ledbetter was unaware of the pay discrimination going on for decades, she was out of luck.

Many Democrats vowed to pass legislation that would give employees two years to file a complaint, and that’s why the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was born to amend title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

The bill passed in the House, but a Senate version, co-sponsored by Barack Obama failed.

Now it’s up at bat again and this time around with Obama in the presidential seat.

In a speech on the Senate floor yesterday, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) said:

“The truth is that all the laws we pass guaranteeing rights have little meaning if Americans don’t have the ability to challenge discrimination in court. This case could set a terrible precedent. We run the risk that anti-discrimination laws will grow weaker – not stronger – if we don’t act.”

In a press release distributed after her speech she made some key points to all of those out there who don’t think pay discrimination is still a problem:

What we’re talking about today isn’t just a philosophical issue of rights and discrimination. The truth is that although we have made tremendous progress in civil rights, there is still a lot of work to be done. The pay gap is just one example.

Women still make less than men even though they’re doing the same work. On average, they earn just 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male co-workers. And the pay gap is even wider for African-American and Latino women. African-American women earn 67 cents, and Latino women earn just 56 cents for every dollar that a white man makes.

Pay discrimination like this has real and harmful impacts on families – and for our nation as a whole. It hurts an individual’s ability to earn a living, care for her children, and contribute fully to society.

The bottom line is most workers will never file a pay discrimination charge in court. It’s just the way it is folks. Most people don’t have the time or inclination to spend years dragging something like this through the court system. But when one individual stands up and says she’s not going to take it anymore, we can’t put up an arbitrary road block and knock her down.

Ledbetter became a poster child for the scourge of pay discrimination. Let’s finally make her a hero.

UPDATE
I went online this morning and applied for a reporter’s job via a job board. I picked Monster.com just because that seems to be the one many of you use.

Don’t worry. I haven’t been fired from MSNBC.com. I’m conducting an experiment.

I’ve gotten so many emails from you guys lately about how lame you think jobs boards are that I decided to get on one of these sites and figure out what, if any, benefits they provide.

Full disclosure here: I’m not in the habit of lying so when I sent the email to the hiring manager I told her who I was and that I was sort of conducting an experiment. I also asked her how many email responses she receives; if she’s able to respond to them all; and what she has to see in an email or resume before she schedules a phone interview?

I hit the send button on my email at around 8:54 a.m. EST. I’ll keep you posted on what happens.

I know, it’s not the same as you all sending a random resume out into cyber space. But it may give us some insight into the frustrating process.

UPDATE:
2:10 EST. No reply yet.

UPDATE:
7:20 P.M. EST. No reply yet.

UPDATE:
8:23 A.M., 1/15/09. No reply yet.

UPDATE:
2:17 P.M., 1/15/09. Crickets.