So, if your employer has a blog, check on it occasionally to see what is posted.  If the company is large enough to have an independent blog covering it, check that too – looking for the layoff info.

This is being viewed as a more “personal” way to make the announcements and, obviously, an attempt to try to control the message spin.  Other interpretations will happen, none-the-less, but at least employers are trying to be more communicative.

Overall, I think this is a good thing.  We’ll see how it develops.

On the other hand, the “long term” number has climbed to over 20% of those currently counted as unemployed. The “seasonally adjusted” rate for September is 21.1%, a 1.5% increase over August’s seasonally adjusted rate of 19.5%.

[Note: when the U.S. Department of Labor talks about "long-term unemployment" in the October report on unemployment, they are referring to the people who have been unemployed for more than 6 months ("27 weeks and over" in DOL jargon).]

In addition, the seasonally-adjusted number of people taking part-time jobs because they couldn’t find full-time employment also increased, by nearly 6%.

So, while some indicators are clearly not headed in the best direction for job seekers, all the news isn’t bad.

While that is definitely an increase in the average length a typical person is unemployed, the good news is that, STILL, nearly 80% of the unemployed find new jobs in FEWER than 6 months. Wise job hunters will take that information into account, and while expecting that their job search will last fewer than 6 months, they will plan and allocate their spending as though it will take much longer. 

Best Job Search Strategies:

Check Indeed’s database of jobs posted to find promising smaller employers in your area who are hiring.

Check the online business news for press releases or press coverage of these employers.

Set up Google Alerts on the organization’s name.

Use the Internet to research those employers -

What do they do, and how well do they do it?

Are they growing? New contracts, new big customers, new locations, or new divisions announced on their Website or in the business news?

Reputation?

Financial standing?

Contact members of your network (family and friends, former colleagues, other alumni/ae of your college, etc.) for points of entry into the target employers’ organizations.

If at all possible, find that job BEFORE you become unemployed.  Waiting for the proverbial “ax to fall” (or waiting to collect a nice severance package) before you begin your job search is a gamble that may or may not pay off for you long-term.

4 Layoff Facts:

1. Layoffs should NOT be taken personally, except by the CEO. For everyone else, a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time – not bad performance!

2. A job seeker is more interesting to another employer when still employed (a.k.a. “passive” job seeker). Unemployed (a.k.a. “active” ) job seekers are less desirable.

3. Employers are NOT be happy to discover that an employee is looking for a new job, and that can hasten the  job loss.

4. Once the layoffs have begun, the longer an employee stays in that situation, the greater credibility gap they will have with potential new employers. The logic is that the people who leave earliest are the best performers with the most salable skills while the ones who stay until the end are the poor performers with few options (or they’d have left sooner).

3 Layoff Survival Strategies

1. Run a “stealth job search” so the current employer doesn’t terminate employment for “disloyalty.”

2. Practice Layoff Self-Defense -

Set up a job-hunting-only e-mail account at Yahoo!, Google, MSN, etc.

Print (or have printed) job-hunting “networking” business cards with personal contact information on it, like the job-hunting-only e-mail account, and even the new job target.

Start collecting the personal contact information of co-workers, “just in case” the workplace relationship disappears.

Increase networking outside the employer’s organization –  attending professional, industry, local association meetings.

Expand the LinkedIn network; set up (or revise and update) Facebook, Twitter, etc. profiles and visibility.

3. GET FOCUS! – Figure out what the next job should be and who good potential employers would be. An unfocused job search (”Oh, I could do anything you need…”) is a VERY long job search.

For more information and practical advice from a 2-time layoff “graduate” (me), see Job-Hunt’s Layoff Center

Good luck!