Career Planning & the Stimulus: Are More Layoffs Around the Corner?

Whether you're unemployed, looking for a job, or graduating from school, the stimulus package probably affects your career planning objectives. If you're job is stimulus-funded, the effects are obvious: government dollars pay your salary. If you're job is not stimulus-funded, the connections may be unclear since your paycheck comes from another source. You may not care about the stimulus because you feel as though it has no direct impact on your career planning objectives.

In actuality, it does. When more people are employed, there is less competition for people applying for open positions-- ie. there is less competition for your job. With more wage-earners employed, more people have funds to shop with money that potentially pays your salary. So what happens when another wave of layoffs hit us? It affects all of us -- the employed, unemployed, and everyone in between.

So what's going on in Washington this week?

Within the next few days, a portion of the stimulus package is set to expire. After Thursday, federal funds that subsidize the salaries of more than 130,000 adults and a similar number of student workers will disappear. When these jobs do disappear, there is no guarantee that these employees will be eligible for unemployment benefits. Some might be eligible, but others won't, which means that they won't be able to pay their bills or feed their families. With a larger pool of unemployed Americans, there will be even higher levels of competition for even fewer jobs-- something that our country absolutely cannot and should not face.

If this program ends, up to 26,000 employees in Illinois may face sudden unemployment. In Pennsylvania, 12,000 will lose their jobs. In other states, thousands more will lose their jobs.

In Mississippi, the program funds were used to create more than 3,000 permanent positions. The funds subsidized employee salaries on a sliding scale until after six months, when the companies became responsible for funding the positions.

The New York Times has described the program as both a band-aid and bridge to permanent recovery. At first glance, these analogies appear incongruous. The term "band-aid" suggests that the program was intended to be a temporary fix; however, the term "bridge" implies a permanent solution. Which do we need in today's economic times when failure is becoming the norm for so many people who are career planning?

The answer is both-- which is exactly what this stimulus program intends to be. We need something to be a quick fix for people. The reality is that failure can happen in a matter of months. We also need sustainable infrastructural chances that encourage  businesses to hire more people-- which is what Mississippi envisioned with these funds.

So what happens now? If the program ends, is it ending prematurely? What happens to hundreds of thousands of salaries?

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