Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2012, at the height of Spain’s economic crisis, when unemployment was about 24% in the first quarter of 2012 (EPA labor force survey) and above 50% among under-25s. The crisis and the narrator’s unemployment assume that context.
The crisis sharpens our wits, or at least stretches the time we spend working. More and more often, people need to find more than one job and juggle them to reach that mythical figure that pays the monthly bills and allows a decent life, with no great luxuries.
I don’t know if this happens to you, but I know who it happens to. A friend of mine, whom you’ll allow me not to name, has spent his working life juggling jobs to make ends meet. Others don’t apply for certain jobs because what companies demand isn’t matched by the pay on offer. And other jobs fall short of our skills and potential.
So the saying “there’s work out there” comes true, but… at what price?
Juggling several jobs
You study one of those degrees that make it hard to find work and throw yourself into the job market. Your hopes fade because you can’t find a job that matches the effort and years of study you’ve put in. So you pick up small bits of work that, added together, make up a wage at the end of the month, and my studies and my hopes end up broken into pieces: a few hours teaching at a university or secondary school, showing new generations the greatness of culture. I write books in my spare time. I take on the odd private commission in my professional field, and I stay active on social media in an endless search for new clients.
I split my hours among so many activities, a little from here, a little from there and a bit more from somewhere else, only to end up able to say that I’m working, but earning little.
Unfair job offers
I’m unemployed. I’ve spent my time training and looking for new opportunities, and every so often I receive offers whose terms are, in many cases, simply unacceptable: qualifications far beyond what the work actually involves, pitiful pay for what they demand, commuting costs that eat up whatever you would earn, and so on.
Job hunting becomes an agonizing search for the perfect job, one where the pay matches the effort and dedication, in a world where the competition for jobs wears dignity down and where, when need presses, you do find work, just not at the price you’d hope for.
Featured image: Lojwe, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
