Sounds easy to "just" get a new job ... I wish real life was like that.

Depending on your skill set and location, it is easy to find a new job. People who can write software should not have a hard time finding work in the US unless they are avoiding cities with a population over 100k, or are terrible at selling themselves. The unemployment rate for programmers in this country is roughly half that of the national average. If you're having problems find steady work, you're doing something wrong, and it has nothing to do with the recovering US economy.

I don't do programming, I do instrumentation installation, repair, and calibration.

The only software I write, are updates for electronic sensors, and I rarely do that.

The US economy is FAILING - my sector has shrunk considerably since 2006, and is continuing to do down.

My employment is directly tied to construction / repair in manufacturing and energy .

If you want to know how "recovering" things are, 8 power houses are shutting down Dec/31, a major paper mill is gone to China, 1 oil refinery closed down, and several assembly plants went under. All with in 250 miles of were I am staying right now, and all this year.

The unemployment rate for an instrument tech is well over 28%, and climbing.

Edit: every time I read THIS STUFF, I get depressed. Each plant closing is less maintenance work available to me.

The US economy is FAILING - my sector has shrunk considerably since 2006, and is continuing to do down.
My employment is directly tied to construction / repair in manufacturing and energy .

...

The unemployment rate for an instrument tech is well over 28%, and climbing.

I don't mean to trivialize your situation at all, but the fact that one major sector of the economy, which has been shrinking since well before 2006, is shifting to places where labor costs are lower doesn't mean that the entire US economy is failing. Even if it's the case that the domestic manufacturing sector is. This is even further underscored by the unemployment rate in your field, which is far worse than most other employment sectors.

I'm sorry to hear about your employment prospects in your current field. But from my experiences with you here at GameDev you seem bright, hard working, motivated, and creative. Even as current jobs taper down, you could relocate, build a programming portfolio, earn some formal credentials (not necessarily a bachelor's degree), or do other things to prepare for a new field or cope with the diminished demand for your current one.

If I remember correctly you've already started working on some of these things. I hope you don't let pessimism or depression derail you at this important stage.

The US economy is FAILING - my sector has shrunk considerably since 2006, and is continuing to do down.
My employment is directly tied to construction / repair in manufacturing and energy .

...

The unemployment rate for an instrument tech is well over 28%, and climbing.

I don't mean to trivialize your situation at all, but the fact that one major sector of the economy, which has been shrinking since well before 2006, is shifting to places where labor costs are lower doesn't mean that the entire US economy is failing. Even if it's the case that the domestic manufacturing sector is. This is even further underscored by the unemployment rate in your field, which is far worse than most other employment sectors.

I'm sorry to hear about your employment prospects in your current field. But from my experiences with you here at GameDev you seem bright, hard working, motivated, and creative. Even as current jobs taper down, you could relocate, build a programming portfolio, earn some formal credentials (not necessarily a bachelor's degree), or do other things to prepare for a new field or cope with the diminished demand for your current one.

If I remember correctly you've already started working on some of these things. I hope you don't let pessimism or depression derail you at this important stage.

Exactly what Khaiy said. If your job is being exported wholesale to China, perhaps you should be looking into a new career and not just another job to hold you over? Seriously, get into software development. It's easy to pick up and you can get creative on your experience when you talk about instrumenting which will help with the transition. I cannot find enough software developers for all of the startups I'm working with here in LA. I get asked for help on a weekly basis but every competent developer I know is gainfully employed.

I don't like to bother with these threads, because gargantuan inequality completely destroys perspective on the matter... Things are very bad and we should feel bad. Class warfare is (still) one of the biggest issues today, but it's discussion is repressed. If you've got the lower classes working multiple jobs and still living in poverty, something is very broken.

I just want to say that in Australia, it's outright illegal for my employer to ask me to work more than an average of 38 hours a week. You can thank us for the fact that many countries now consider "more than 40" hours to be classified as "overtime", which often carries a higher wage. The US was afraid we were turning communist when we were the first country to pass that one simple labour protection law

And in Eastern Asia they can easily work 50 to 60 hours a week.

That's because we outsourced all our labour to them, and actively work against their economies so that we can still have slave labour in 2013 and not feel bad.

The lessons in books like "who moved my cheese" are obvious when you think about them, yet few people actually think about them, so the books become bestsellers.

Every copy I've seen of that book, has been bought in bulk by a general manager who's carpet bombed cubicle-land with them, as part of the preparations for a "company restructure" (redundancies)

East Asians work 50 to 60(+++) hours a week because they work in sweatshops for pennies being given drugs to stay awake.

...It's not a thing we should strive to be like.