State Unemployment Information

Workforce Development Politics Civic Capacity and Performance

If 88% of Americans believe that education and training resources should be available to the jobless and more than two-thirds of employers have identified workforce and skills shortages as top priorities, why aren’t we, as a society, able to provide that training in such a way that it leads to long-term economic security? This book looks at the politics of local and regional workforce development: the ways politicians and others concerned with the workforce systems have helped or hindered that process. Contributors examine the current systems that are in place in these cities and the potential for systemic reform through case studies of Denver, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Seattle.

Buy/More Info

Bitter is the New Black Confessions of a Condescending Egomaniacal Self Centered Smartass Or Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office

NEW. Trade size paperback. “Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office”

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Serious sore belly laughs
I LOVE this author and this book! I’ve already passed it around my family and they love it too. I see so much of myself in Jen Lancaster that it’s scary and she is so bitingly funny! I laughed out loud on the first page of the book and just never stopped laughing!

5 Stars Hilarious!

I find all of Jen Lancaster’s books to be hilarious, I think that so much of what she says are things that everyone thinks and nobody else will actually say! I love to listen to her books while I am driving in the car. It makes the time pass so quickly!

1 Star Waste of Time!
This is quite possibly the worst book I’ve ever read! Not only is she the most hateful person to ever write an autobiography, but she annoys the reader with her non-stop footnotes in an attempt to be witty. If I ever wrote something so honestly superficial about myself, I’d probably contemplate suicide! This was a complete waste of time and a horrible read! I only read it for a book club, and I have nothing nice to say about it.

5 Stars LMAO!!!!
This book is hilareous! I found myself laughing outloud many times. I could relate to her character. I was never a VP but did have a high paying sales job until 9/11 and was laid off as well. It didnt take me 2 years to find a job but I can totally relate. Jen goes from being a high priced spoiled VP to being the one fetching copies and answering phones. If you have ever worked for corporate and been laid off this is MUST!!! read.

3 Stars This title really does say it all!!!
Reading this is like watching Jerry Springer, you pretty much hate everyone involved and yet you are mesmerised by the fact that some people have no shame and will reveal anything about themselves that the saner members of the Universe would not divulge under threat of well, personal embarassment at the least. While she seems to view herself as amusing, even justified, I think the correct words would be malevolent and venomous. It is an interesting memoir of narcissism as an art form!

Buy/More Info

Landing on the Right Side of Your Ass A Survival Guide for the Recently Unemployed

Job hunting is a different ballgame when you’re holding a pink slip instead of a brand-new college diploma. In Landing on the Right Side of Your Ass, Michael B. Laskoff—a Harvard M.B.A. who has flown high and flamed out more than once—offers essential advice for those of us who have recently been laid off, restructured, or plain ol’ fired. A tell-it-like-it-is bible of “reemployment,” it tackles both the practical and the emotional issues of job loss.

Because he’s not an academic, a recruiter, or a human resources professional, Laskoff has no ax to grind, no philosophy to peddle, and no corporate ideology to support. He’s been through the job-loss/job-search drill more than once, and since he consistently has gone on to do better in terms of compensation, responsibility, and job satisfaction, he’s the perfect ex-employee to share with you some hard-won wisdom, such as:

•How long to wait before launching yourself into the job arena
•How to channel anger, fear, and revenge fantasies into useful job-search tactics
•How to snag recommendations (and compensation) from ex-bosses
•How to determine your interviewers’ hiring problems and then present yourself as the solution

Whether you’re concerned about the emotional issues of unemployment (from denial and depression to anger and acceptance) or are looking for invaluable nuts-and-bolts advice (what to say about your ex-employer in an interview, how to handle financial issues, and what on earth you should do with all that free time between jobs), Landing on the Right Side of Your Ass is a straight-up, no-chaser survival guide for picking yourself up, getting back out there again, and winding up with a job that’s better than the one you lost.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Good book with a bad title
I wanted to recommend this book to my ezine list, but had to hold back. The title would have gotten us tossed off every ISP on the planet. It’s misleading anyway. Laskoff is down-to-earth and realistic but not at all profane or over the top.

The author’s own job loss stories are laugh-aloud funny. For the most part, his advice is right-on. I especially like the sections on getting a nonprofessional life outside your career – something I’ve been advising my own career change clients all along.

Other great sections include “Things to do before the resume,” which has a realistic discussion of finances. And I liked the interview section, especially the section on interviews that were doomed from the start. The networking advice is sound and complete: nothing new and some folks will have more trouble than others, often due to circumstances beyond their control.

I was a little concerned about Laskoff’s advice to remove short-length jobs, as this strategy occasionally backfires.

A more serious omission: Laskoff doesn’t help readers choose among the many resources now available for help. And personally I was a little turned off by the “confession” exercise and confused by the term “self-interview.”

These days a savvy job-hunter needs to know how to choose a career coach, consultant or counselor, which means reading between the lines on a website. Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Bait and Switch, should be considered fair warning. It’s a rare job-hunter who isn’t tempted at least once.

But no book can be 100% complete. I wrote my own downloadable guide and I would still recommend Laskoff’s as an additional resource. Job hunters could do a lot worse.

5 Stars “Landing On The Right Side Of Your Ass” is a lifesaver!!!!
I wish I had known about and bought this book 2 months ago when I was “fired” (for the first time in 30 years of working!!). It’s essential in surviving unemployment. It’s funny, sharp, urbane and touches on all the “untouchable” subjects – blaming your employer, blaming yourself, taking a vacation before beginning job hunting, how to talk to friends and family, and so forth. It discussed all the subjects I couldn’t talk about to anyone, and helped me feel sane and centered in the midst of a very trying time.

I highly recommend this book, which I have worn out two highlighters while reading!

5 Stars LMAO
The book provides good advice for dealing with job rejection but what sets it apart from others of its kind is the entertainment factor: written with good humor and several funny stories. I felt so much better about myself after I read HOW he lost his first job…. yes, I’m still LMAO.

3 Stars Not A Long-Term Solution
I agree with one of the other reviewers on this site who asks,”What if you land on the wrong side of your ass? I found this book didn’t adequately address the reality of the unemployed situation. I had much better luck with a book on this site called “Unemployment Boot Camp: Tactics for Suriving and Thriving in the 21st Century,” by R.A. Long. It offers a lot of suggestions for empowering yourself and acknowledges that you can be unemployed for long periods of time. The books’ premise is to gear up for the long haul. “Unemployment Boot Camp” makes a substantial case for implementing physical exercise as a means of strengthening your survival skills and looks at the reality of your job-search taking longer than you’d expect. But it also provides candid objectives and options for sustaining yourself until that next golden opportunity comes around.

2 Stars What if I’ve landed on the wrong side of my ass?
This book is basically about avoiding depression so you aren’t dead meat on the job search highway. Personally, it was encouraging to find a loudmouth from Harvard MBA school was going through many of the same things I was going through after emerging from slightly lesser ranking Indiana MBA school before getting sucked up into the world of ‘infinite future’ telecom consulting, and sucked down by an equally weighty ‘nothing available right now’ telecom crash. I have landed on the wrong side of my ass. My salary went from $100K to $20K. And the ONLY material out there I can find is on how to do all the things I’ve already done: networking, resumes, interview prep, etc. No one gets it. No one wants to get it.

What this book did not help me come to terms with, which is really what I still want to come to terms with, is how to maintain optimism over a longer horizon. How to recover from depression once it hits, rathern than feigning optimism to yourself through a hardly affordable hedonism. Sometimes, particularly after a brutal series of experieces like several layoffs in a number of years while a market is crashing, depression wins. And if you get depressed. Are you dead forever irrespective of your abilities? Seems so. Once you lose your enthisiam, no matter how badly you feel treated, you lose your right to work.

I’m still looking for the book on what no one still wants to talk about. What if you didn’t get work again in 6 months, than 12, than 24, than became underemployed because you needed the money? Where do you recover that sense of enthusiasm and hope again. That, to me, seems to be the real battle to stay on the right side of your ass.

I imagine I am not the only one out there that feels this way.

Buy/More Info

Are You a Corporate Refugee A Survival Guide for Downsized Disillusioned and Displaced Workers

During the mid-1990s, 1 in 16 workers were displaced by downsizing, reorganization, or corporate mergers and acquisitions. Ruth Luban, a counselor who specializes in recovery from job loss, recognizes that leaving the workforce causes not only a loss of income, but also of identity, structure, and community. Her step-by-step program addresses these problems and explains how to work through them. Using case studies, exercises, and informative sidebars, she identifies the five emotional stages of job loss:

Selling Women Short The Landmark Battle for Workers Rights at Wal Mart

On television, Wal-Mart employees are smiling women delighted with their jobs. But reality is another story. In 2000, Betty Dukes, a fifty-two-year-old black woman in Pittsburg, California, became the lead plaintiff in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, a class action, representing 1.6 million women. In her explosive investigation of this historic lawsuit, journalist Liza Featherstone reveals how Wal-Mart, a self-styled “family-oriented,” Christian company:

Deprives women (but not men) of the training they need to advance.

Relegates women to lower-paying jobs like selling baby clothes, reserving the more lucrative positions for men.

Inflicts punitive demotions on employees who object to discrimination.

Exploits Asian women in its sweatshops in Saipan, a U.S. commonwealth.

Featherstone goes on to reveal the creative solutions that Wal-Mart workers around the country have found, like fighting for unions, living-wage ordinances, and childcare options. Selling Women Short combines the personal stories of these employees with superb investigative journalism to show why women who work these low-wage jobs are getting a raw deal, and what they are doing about it. A new preface to the paperback edition will reflect on Wal-Mart’s response to this lawsuit and its critics-including this one.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Always Lower Prices – but at what cost?
This is the central question in Featherstone’s treatment of the Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. class action lawsuit. Focusing on depositions, sworn testimony and direct personal interviews, Featherstone gets right to the heart of her subject in the first chapter. The anecdotal evidence, supported by ample statistics, demonstrates that something is, indeed, awfully wrong with Wal-Mart and the disparate ways in which it treats its workers.

As important as the gender discrimination issue is the consideration of how Wal-Mart has, and will continue to, build its fortune off the backs of the working poor. Given enough time, it is entirely possible that certain areas of the country will be economically drained, committed to an addiction of buying at and working for Wal-Mart. It is the low-price panties version of a Super Size Me world. Worst of all, however, is the company’s documented practice of referring its own workers to social service agencies, to apply for benefits they need because Wal-Mart neither provides sufficient benefits nor pays employees enough to afford them. Puts a whole new spin on the phrase “corporate welfare.” Where is the politicians’ indignation over this abuse of the welfare system?

Well researched and well documented with references and notes. One latter chapter does tend to slow down with emphasis on legal citations and stats, but this is necessary to put a factual basis behind the personal stories. Whether you are against Wal-Mart, a Wally-World fan or a blissfully unaware consumer, you cannot read this book and remain unaffected in some manner. If it does not turn you completely away from shopping there, it should at the very least give you pause before opening your wallet.

5 Stars Incredulous
How is it possible that this book (and this class action suit) hasn’t made a bigger impact in the American people? My eyes were opened and I accepted the Wal-mart propaganda and brainwashing for what it was. But I believe boycotting will only hurt these women- instead join the grassroots campaigns and unionizations Featherstone talks about. Once you’ve purchased this amazing book, pass it on to a friend. Or better yet, walk into a Wal-mart and hand it to a female employee. This *should* be required reading.

4 Stars informative and shocking
Anyone living in the 21st century will be amazed at the content of Selling Women Short; the anecdotes shared by current and former Wal-Mart employees are like something out of Gloria Steinem’s worst nightmare circa 1975. Even in the current litigious climate of corporate America, Wal-Mart manages to succeed at completely indoctrinating its “associates” to believe in the “values” of the company, which are as “good ole boy” as they can get. Liza Featherstone’s account of the Dukes vs. Wal-Mart class action lawsuit (now certified, still unresolved), the largest in U.S. legal history, makes up for in content what it may lack in an elegant writing style (it’s a bit bare bones and stilted at times). The women involved in the lawsuit aren’t the typical bleeding-heart liberals that would be easy for Wal-Mart to discredit; they are by and large very religious, relatively conservative women who are trying to get by on very low wages and zero respect. The consistency with which women have been kept to the lowest paying, lowest power positions within the company is nothing less than appalling; using both ample statistics as well as countless personal interviews, Featherstone assaults the reader with a barrage of terrible realities. Many of the employees at Wal-Mart cannot afford to spend 50% of their income on the company health plan, so they end up on state or federal assistance. Women are discouraged from applying to management positions. If this reading this book does not convince you to boycott Wal-Mart, it would be surprising.

5 Stars Struggles for justice
“Selling Women Short” by Liza Featherstone is an engaging book about the historic ‘Betty Dukes vs Wal-Mart Stores Inc’ class action lawsuit that alleges Wal-Mart’s institutionalized discrimination of its female employees. Skillfully weaving anecdotes and profiles of key plaintiffs and their claims of sexism with research about Wal-Mart and its Orwellian corporate culture, the book provides an excellent critique of the company’s numerous illegal behaviors and a humane narrative of its female employees’ struggle for justice.

Interestingly, Ms. Featherstone’s analysis suggests that the company’s paradigmatic success is attributable to its parasitical relationship with the declining fortunes of the working class. Wal-Mart cynically promotes itself as a pro-family, pro-American company even as it offers poverty-level wages and imports most of its wares from foreign, low-wage countries. In this manner, Ms. Featherstone explains that Wal-Mart both contributes to and profits from the exploitation of marginalized female laborers.

Ms. Featherstone is careful to discuss the limitations of the lawsuit as a tool to effect systemic change at Wal-Mart. She contends that it is probably equally important for the public to become educated about the inequities at Wal-Mart in order to create a media firestorm that might pressure the company to change its ways. However, Ms. Featherstone describes the difficulties that unions and interest groups have had trying to organize labor and shoppers in the struggle with Wal-Mart, contending that our consumer culture tends to set aside worker’s rights issues in favor of shopping expediency. Nevertheless, as the lawsuit moves forward the author is hopeful that Wal-Mart may soon feel the need to make significant changes in order to avert a court-imposed solution and/or a public relations catastrophe.

I highly recommend this outstanding book to everyone.

5 Stars Unfortunately, this book is fabulous
It’s so unfortunate that a book like this has to be written. It’s even more upseting that every word is true. The book, strictly speaking, is awesome! Why isn’t every newspaper and TV show talking about it? The situations in the book are true I’m sure. The reason I’m sure is because I’m an Assistant Manager and I’ve lived every one of those situations during my short term in management, and more. Oh the horror stories I could tell! I can’t even count how many times my husband has had to be restrained from leaving the house to go have a “chat” with my Store Manager out back of the store. The treatment of women, actually associates in general and especially female managers, by this company is wrong. It’s downright criminal. It’s also why I’m resigning and giving up. Is Liza writing another book or an update? Is there a way to join the lawsuit? Is there a way to contact Liza? I would really like to know these things because I also have a story to tell. My email is walmartassistantmgr@yahoo.com.

Buy/More Info