Something tells me she is the antithesis of what you will find in the jobless dating pool.

A few weeks back, Nerve.com decided to get sex advice from the unemployed. I know it’s tough to keep those standards up when you can barely afford the drinks necessary to meet (and potentially sleep with) strangers, but I really can’t see how this was at all beneficial for those interviewed. Here are four things I gleamed from the piece about the sexual misadventures of the jobless.

1) The unemployed are so insecure about not having a job that you can’t even ask them what they do as a topic of conversation.

What’s the worst way someone’s attempted to pick you up?

“Oh, it’s also sort of a dead end when guys ask me, So, tell me — what do you do?’ I’m like, ‘Uh, I don’t do anything. I’m unemployed.’”- Jessica, 27

2) They will leech off of your paycheck.

Are there any sexual advantages to being unemployed?

“I prefer going after them job-having girls. That way they can take care of you.” – Pete, 23

3) Not having a job excuses you from having standards.

Is it easier to get laid when you’re unemployed?

“I think it’s probably more a question of quantity over quality. I’d say that it’s probably easier to get laid more being unemployed. If you’re working, you probably have less sex, but it’s with better people.” – Jess, 22

4) You can always identify someone without a job by their affinity for free drinks.

Where are some places I could pick up unemployed people?

“As far as the day time goes, I don’t know. Being out when the sun’s up is a rare thing for me. At night, your best bet is to find a party with an open bar.”- Jess, 22

Get those red pencils from the '90s ready!

Hell may have frozen over yesterday when a $15 billion bill spurring job growth passed yesterday, 70 to 28, thanks to a bipartisan coalition of 55 Democrats, 2 independents and 13 Republicans.

The Times reports that the central element of the bill is giving companies who hire unemployed Americans an exemption from paying payroll taxes on those workers through the end of this year.

Happy job hunting, you lucky 25 million!

All a marriage needs is flying wads of cash.

Money is an awkward thing in relationships, which is why it’s hard to believe anybody’s dating anybody in this economy. In fact, however, the opposite is true. The NYT reports that the recession has resulted in tighter bonds with your loved one (often whether you like it or not).

A spouse is more likely to depend on health care from a spouse, or on in-laws to help finance a mortgage or to assist with child care. And the ones who are hanging tight are retrenching and redeveloping an appreciation for time spent together.

All the more reason to listen to your elders and get married for the financial benefits! Alex Roberts of the Institute for American Values writes that “once the Great Recession lifts, more couples — especially lower-income couples who are in the greatest danger of missing out on marriage’s economic benefits — can take full advantage of the emotional and material benefits associated with marriage.”

But according to the WSJ, said “material benefits” can also be a cause for divorce.

Couples who report that they disagree over finances at least once a week are 30 percent more likely to divorce than couples who disagree about finances a few times a month, according to research by Jeffrey Dew, a professor of family studies at Utah State University.

And as always, the rich have it worse than anybody else if things don’t work out.

Ms. Alter represents a client who once relied on a $5 million bonus and is now struggling to cope on a salary of $500,000. The damage in those types of cases, much more frequent these days, can be a slippery slope from the financial to the psychological.

“Their self-image is destroyed,” she said. “Their marriage has gone bad, and they can’t support their lifestyle anymore. Their kids have to be taken out of private school, they have to sell the vacation home, and the money becomes a focal point.”

Those poor children! How will they ever succeed without their beloved vacation home? Now I know to never, ever, let myself get divorced married.

Who can even afford cardboard and permanent markers anymore?

For anybody hoping to enjoy their weekend, the NYT instead ran some sobering statistics about what the jobless are facing: formerly middle class, the “new poor” are now relying on food stamps with years of unemployment behind them and no future prospects in sight.

The reasons for this are after the jump (hint: now is a good time to reach for that second beer).

• 6.3 million Americans have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.

• Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.

• Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department.

• Automation has helped manufacturing cut 5.6 million jobs since 2000 — the sort of jobs that once provided lower-skilled workers with middle-class paychecks.

Miraculously, kittens gained the ability to discuss finance too.

Apparently, it’s socially OK to talk about money now. “Where it was once shameful to talk about some of these things, now it’s not,” Hilary Black, editor of the anthology “The Secret Currency of Love,” told the New York Times.

And the stigma of being laid off has certainly diminished, if not disappeared altogether. “One silver lining to this terribly scary time is that people can talk about their troubles without fearing that others are secretly judging them as failures,” Ms. Black said.

Hm, I don’t know if this author’s ever been to Brooklyn or anything, but being unemployed has had a certain cache ever since bankers were deemed Satan’s children for ruining our economy with their greed. (And eating babies dipped in gold.) In my experience anyway, complaining about how you can barely afford the drink you’re sipping is one of the few ways friendships are formed. The stigma is really with all of those lucky bastards who have a job. No one wants to be associated with a paycheck, which is only a few social security numbers away from THE MAN.

Let 40-Year-Old Virgin be a lesson to you, smartypants.

Ok, so that’s a bit of an overstatement. But it turns out most Ivy Leaguers are not getting laid. Maybe this explains why we’re so much more frustrated than everyone else? I’m not sure how this translates to the job hunt, but if the Jonas Brothers are any indication, your V-Card is a really good way to stay focused in the face of success.

According to a Crimson survey of the class of 2009, in their four years at Harvard, 52 percent of the students had one or zero sexual partners, and only 28 percent had even one dating partner. [...] “Go Ask Alice!”—Columbia University’s Dear Abby-equivalent—reports that the majority of polled college students also had zero or one sexual partners in a given year, while believing that their peers were having three times as much sex as they were. Other revealing statistics include that 31 percent of U.S. college women are still virgins at graduation and that college male sexual activity is down from 2.1 partners in 2001 to 1.6 partners in 2006. [The Crimson]

Sounds about right to me…(Thanks for the tip!)

A weekly round-up of hopeless economy news.

• Joining thousands of others, Conan O’Brien sported a newly minted unemployment beard. [TMZ]
• A number of industries in New York state, including financial services, terminated at least 5 percent of their workers in the current recession, which has fallen harder on men, minorities and those without college degrees, a report said on Tuesday. [Reuters]
• People are still holding back on buying burgers, soda and beer. So much for fast food, soft drinks and booze being recession-proof. Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Molson Coors. All three reported Tuesday morning that demand for their products is stronger abroad than it is in the United States. [CNNMoney]
• Finding a job got much tougher last year, as the number of available openings fell by nearly one quarter. At the same time, the unemployed population soared by more than one-third, leaving more laid-off workers competing for fewer jobs. All told, there were 6.1 unemployed workers in December, on average, for every available position, according to Labor Department data released Tuesday. [AP]

This stock market bull doesn't look so scary anymore, does it? (Symbolically anyway...)

The NYT reports that the dow’s fall to 9,908.39 — its lowest level in three months — has delivered a “psychological setback as investors braced for more market volatility.”

The fall of the ”closely watched barometer of the economy’s health” was attributed to fears over Europe’s debt crisis. And now that the holy number of 10K has been disrupted, shit is expected to fly.

“Investors and traders find solace in 10,000,” said Jeffrey A. Hirsch, editor of The Stock Trader’s Almanac. “While it may not be important technically, falling below that level indicates that the whole economic picture is not as rosy as everyone had thought.”

No, judging by the plethora of friends still unemployed, nothing about this metaphorical economic picture looks rosy at all. Especially when the dip is combined with the recent poor employment numbers.

On net, the economy lost 208,000 nonfarm payroll jobs last quarter, and the unemployment rate rose to 10 percent, from 9.7 percent. As long as the labor market remains weak, consumers — whose purchases make up the bulk of economic output each quarter — will be reluctant to spend money.

The numbers look especially dim when you factor in what the Economix blog describes as the “growing underclass.”

But one major obstacle to that goal — and one that has so far gone mostly unacknowledged — is that many of the jobs slashed during this recession are not coming back. [...] In fact, the share of the unemployed who lost their jobs permanently is at its highest level since at least 1967, the first year for which the Labor Department has these numbers available.

The jobs cited as being lost forever include industries like glassmaking, clerical work, and of course, print media. Those that are let go are subjected to a cycle of joblessness. The only way they can find work again is if they start a new career, which may involve  a costly education in a different field or a costlier geographic move, and even then, the permanently unemployed will fall to the bottom of desired applicants.

All of which is to say that many of the Americans who are already out of work are likely to stay in that miserable state for a long, long time. And the longer they stay unemployed, the harder it will be for them to transition back into the work force, further adding to America’s growing underclass.

The situation has gotten so bad that poor aspiring j-school kids are resorting to whoring themselves out on Facebook. Let the best LinkedIn ad win, I guess.

Something tells me it's going to take more than this little piggy to pay 4 years of tuition.

The WSJ reports:

Most researchers agree that college graduates, even in rough economies, generally fare better than individuals with only high-school diplomas. But just how much better is where the math gets fuzzy.

The problem stems from the common source of the estimates, a 2002 Census Bureau report titled “The Big Payoff.” The report said the average high-school graduate earns $25,900 a year, and the average college graduate earns $45,400, based on 1999 data. The difference between the two figures is $19,500; multiply it by 40 years, as the Census Bureau did, and the result is $780,000.

Mark Schneider, a vice president of the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, calls it “a million-dollar misunderstanding.”

Dr. Schneider estimated the actual lifetime-earnings advantage for college graduates is a mere $279,893 in a report he wrote last year. He included tuition payments and discounted earning streams, putting them into present value. He also used actual salary data for graduates 10 years after they completed their degrees to measure incomes. Even among graduates of top-tier institutions, the earnings came in well below the million-dollar mark, he says.

People who major in music sometimes make money.

Name: Abby

Major: Music/ English

What I do all day: I spend about five or so hours a day singing, playing guitar, rehearsing with my band, writing songs, and working on a project for my ArtistShare songwriting feature. At night, I perform at venues around NYC like BB King Blues Club, The Bitter End, The Living Room, and Iridium. I’ve also been spending a lot of time lately at SHOF (Songwriters Hall of Fame) where I’ve been taking an advanced songwriting workshop with hit songwriter Peter Bliss. This month I’ll also be traveling a lot, recording some tracks with a producer based in Boston and showcasing at the Millennium Music Conference in Harrisburg, PA. Nonmusical activities include freelance writing, running, tutoring, and making out with my dog Phoebe. 

What I would rather be doing all day: Exactly this! I’m really thankful that my parents are so supportive of my songwriting career. I might go back to school at some point to get my MFA or PhD but I’ve been dreaming of music since I was a little girl so I’m just going to wait and see where this all leads …

Where I found this job: “It found me” … just kidding, that expression always makes me want to puke in my mouth a little bit. I’ve been singing since the womb and started voice lessons with a blues/gospel singer when I was about eight. I used to be really resentful that my folks weren’t stage parents but I’m really glad they didn’t push me at such a young age for two reasons: 1) I had a childhood, and 2) I now know how to read/add. It also takes time to develop your artistic voice so I’m not sure how successful I would have been back then anyway.

Why they hired me as opposed to hundreds of other overqualified Ivy league grads: Though it would be really easy to answer this facetiously, I’ve decided to take the high road and interpret “they” as the people who pay or hopefully will pay me: namely, club owners and music publishers/licensing companies. I would like to say hire is based on “talent” but a lot of times it’s not … it’s really about how many people you’re able to draw to shows or in the latter case, how much money they think they’ll be able to make off your song. My corporate party gigs are usually based off experience though.Best part about being employed: I’m doing exactly what I love and/or will hopefully avoid a midlife crisis. Ironically, I’ve found it a lot easier to pursue music than I have writing; it’s very easy to ignore/delete emails but in the music world I can go to the physical venue and have face-to-face interactions with club owners. I’ve also had the chance to meet with various publishers and music industry execs through my participation in SHOF and other songwriting organizations so it’s made the music world seem a little easier to access.

Worst part about being employed: When I tell people — particularly those of the Ivy ilk — that I’m pursuing music they look at me as if I’ve said “I’m becoming a unicorn trainer!” If you want to become a doctor, you go to med school, a lawyer — law school … but in music, there isn’t a certain path or amount of time and I think “success” itself is often fleeting and hard to quantify. There are a lot of rejections and false promises in this industry so it’s difficult to discern who to trust. Also, a lot of the connections/successes you make aren’t necessarily immediate nor tangible so a lot of musicians end up really depressed or jaded.

Heartfelt advice to your jobless friends who may have been freeloading off of you for months: Hah, because I’m just rolling in dough right?! While I’m not making the big bucks (yet! … I’m hoping a licensing/publishing deal will help in that dept!), I’m rich in spirit hah! In all seriousness though, I think it’s important to hold on to your passion and stay positive … a good song is a good song no matter what time it is so just keep honing your craft and enjoy the journey!