Around here, the economy really tanked in 2001 and it has not yet recovered. The Great Recession has been a decade-long phenomenon where I live. I have managed to be employed in just 16 out of the last 84 months. And in more than half of those months, the employment was only part-time. These were all professional positions, but except for one brief 3-month stint, none of them provided any benefits such as health insurance or paid sick leave. Only once in the past seven years have I held a job during Christmastime. At the end of 2002, I could look back on an unbroken streak of full-time employment that stretched back 26 years, in jobs that all provided a full array of benefits and in a career that exhibited progressive advancement. I never expected to ever be unemployed. It has never been that way since. Being out of work for 5 years and 8 months can have a really corrosive effect on a man's soul.
Happy new year.
MarkII