I’ve been unemployed since 2009. I was laid off two weeks before Christmas ’08. Since then, I’ve taken many jobs in the field that I got my degree in, but none of them last for more than four months.

Most of them paid fourteen dollars an hour, which is a problem when you have student loans. It appears that no one wants to hire someone without seven years experience in a very specific skill set — email administration, database administration, directory administration. I couldn’t even get a job doing a roll out of new desktops, because I had never done it before. In actuality, you don’t need any special skills to do that job AT ALL. If you know how to troubleshoot a computer, you can certainly install it at a desk and explain to the person what’s different about this computer versus the last one.

Then you run into the person who thinks it’s odd that you’ve had so many jobs. Their heads apparently have been in the ground for the last four years! They do not seem to understand that the job market is like the Hunger Games out there.

I’ve lost interview opportunities because I didn’t call the recruiter back in a few hours. As though I’m supposed to be sitting by the phone from 7 AM to 7 PM ready to interview at a moment’s notice. When I talk to full-time employees at the few jobs that I get in my actual job field — temp jobs — they’re very glad I’m there, as they tell me they are working fifty hours a week and haven’t had a raise in years.

According to the job salary sites that tell me what I should be making in these temp positions, I’m underpaid. And if those same sites consider my degree, my certifications and my four-plus years of experience, I’m VASTLY underpaid.