Income Security Amid Layoffs

Tis the season to get laid off. And you thought this time of the year was the best time to get a job!

Well, sure, it is a great time to get a job.  But layoffs are still happening.  And they will, forever. Autodesk lays off 925 people, BP will lay off 7,000 people after a “damaging fourth quarter”, and  Yahoo will recorrect with a sayonara to 1,700 people, to “revive company growth.”

Those are just some of the big ones.  There are gobs of little layoffs.

As I talk to job seekers and JibberJobber users I realize that many of them have the same feeling that I had in my job search: why work so hard just to land a job that you might not like, at a company that might have a crummy culture, working for a boss who really should be your employee, and having the promise of job security that is as solid as vapor.

Let’s reconsider what a job is.  A job is simply one revenue/income stream.  We really should have multiple income streams.  When you have, say, three income streams, and you lose one, it hurts, but it doesn’t hurt as much as much as losing one income stream… if you only have one!

When I was hitting rock bottom during my job search, I came to terms with this idea. I figured what I really needed was money to pay my bills.  I didn’t care if that mean I got a paycheck every other week, or once every 10 years… as long as it was legal, moral and ethical, I was open to it.

Realizing this helped me realize that any future jobs I would have would mean I had another revenue stream… but that that didn’t have to be my sole revenue stream.

See where I’m going with all of this?

HOW CAN YOU CREATE OTHER REVENUE STREAMS?  I guarantee you that the people who have multiple revenue streams have different feelings, and are further ahead, than people who don’t have other income streams, when the layoffs come.

I’m not talking about job security, which to a large degree is out of our control. I’m talking about income security.