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Unemployed and definitely not enjoying it - any suggestions? (polite ones)

Try some voluntary work to vary experiance and show potential employers a wider rage of skills.

I don't know your trade/occupation but are you willing to accept work maybe below your level of expertise? I know it's galling to spend years training for a career you want,but sometimes you have to bite the bullet and take what's available. Once you have a job, you can then bide your time till the right opportunity comes along. It's important to keep working. If you don't you can get into a rut. Even a crappy job gives you the pride that you are still wanted/capable.
Good luck

Maybe go back and do some adult education courses to further your skills?

You're doing better than me. I'm not working at the mo..
I'm just taking a Summer break. At least I can get see all my friends.

I can't give you any more suggestions than those already mentioned here other than - please don't think it's pointless even trying and that you'll finish up on benefits forever.

I went through a particularly bad patch in my early 30's when there seemed to nothing other than 2 or 3 month contracts in businesses run by cunts. Every time I opened the paper to look for jobs I kept seeing stories about how employers only wanted people under 30 and that those in the trades (my occupation) were quickly becoming obsolete.

Another real enthusiasm killer was watching jobs that you knew you'd be perfect for go instead to wankers who had the 'right connections - old school tie' etc.

The job I have now had for the past 17 years is easily the best I've ever had and I still remember seriously thinking that I'd never find anything other than shit work and probably be better off dead. Some jobs that sound pretty crappy can turn out to be great sources of training for extra skills - or even unexpected fringe benefits like the office girl being a fucking raving nympho! (except of course if she's Susan Boyle)

The best thing is not to lose momentum, basically stay in the employment game all the time. If you can't get paid work then do voluntary work so that you stay used to the whole thing of working. The longer you're out of it the harder it is to get back into it - rather like they say with getting off the property ladder. If you go to Adecco, Reed, and agencies like that, they usually have lots of temping jobs one can do that often lead to the offer of a permanent job (I've got permanent jobs that way in the past).

Good job the Chingford Skinhead isn't on this forum, the miserable bastard would have told you to get on yer bike.

Which, as I found out in 1986 and again in 1989 was extremely rusty, had square wheels and had no chain.

The worst of it was that, whilst willing to take a job at a lower level than the senior management level I'd attained in previous employment, I was either too old - at 39 and 42 - or too experienced or "wouldn't have been comfortable operating at a level below which I was capable".

So, I went self employed, drove taxis, sold insurance and drove delivery vans on an ad hoc basis whilst I set up my own company in the work I had previously done for 20 years and was able to retire at 51.

I had the great pleasure in supplying services to one company that had made me redundant - covering very similar work that I had been employed by them to do on a salary and charging, as a consultant, 3 times the rate I'd been paid for the job in house.

Some of the people who rejected me back then are still working as wage slaves and will be, given their mortgages and failed endowments, until well past 65.

Don't give up, try to think around the problem, look for new ways of earning - even if only temporarily - but keep busy.