So like I mentioned a few months prior, I wound up getting laid off from my last job. The time was stressful, of course, but not nearly as much as it had felt approaching it. Life felt relatively normal, having saved up funds for just this sort of occurrence, but I knew I had the underlying unease through it.

Unemployment in my state was a joke. I created an account and remitted all the necessary information, but the next time I tried signing in to report the jobs I had applied for, it would error out with no real explanation as to why. I had called state office a handful of times, and each call I would just be left on hold till the automated system told me ‘Sorry. We have no one available at the moment. Please try again later’. The system would then just hang up. No voicemail. No hint as to when they might be available.

Most applications were less than fruitful with what seems like only a minutia providing any sort of response, let alone acknowledgement. I had a handful of interviews with some even moving forward to additional rounds, but I would always be told they found a more adequate person for the position.

People have been complaining about the current job market, and I’m just another person here to vouch for such. It’s been so challenging to find good work, one of my friends, a more recent undergrad, is stuck with three part time jobs just to afford rent and their fairly mundane living. I can only imagine the frustrations of others.

However, things have begun to look a lot brighter. Late last month, I finally got a job offer for a full-time position working multi-state tax compliance like I had prior. So far, I’ve been enjoying the job and the team a lot!

One of the nicest things about the company, too, is that it’s employee-owned. After coming from layoffs through private equity firm acquisitions that’ve been sweeping through world, it’s felt cathartic joining a company almost pushing for the opposite.