Note: The following has nothing to do with geo-caching.

I have been "on the dole" for about 6 months now.
Did you know that Arizona pays the lowest un-employment insurance in the
nation? Mississippi pays more than Arizona! There was a bill in front of the
State Government to increase the amount, but the employers of Arizona killed
that because the extra $25 / person / year was just too much of an economic
burden.

Not to make it sound worse than it is (tho I am hard pressed to figure out
how to do that)... but..
Here are the averages for a job search during "good times", which you should
use for economic planning purposes. Some of these numbers come from
recruiters, some are my observations
 Add 1 month for every $10K earned
 Add 1 month for every 5 years over age 30
 Add 1 month for every year in school beyond a Bachelors
So if you are (say) a 50 year old, with a Master's, making $80K.. figure 14
months.
Expect to send out over 400 resume's during that time. Why is the resume
number so high? Because, with the advent of job boards, most of the posting
you will see are duplicates or firms looking to fill up the resume
data-base. In other words, about 85% of what you see does not reference a
"real job".

Is unemployment higher among geocachers?
Well - from what I have seen on the profiles from groundspeak...
We tend to be High-tech, middle-aged males in the peak earning years.
Which makes us prime targets when the layoff lists are drawn up.
Given that Compaq, H-P and IBM have laid-off about 30,000, I really don't
expect to ever work in the field again. I don't even think I want to.

The solution? Re-Invent yourself! (huh?)
For the last 6 months I have been working on a new design for wastewater
treatment using algae.
I have spent the time becoming a biologist and working on grant application
packages.
The result? I now have about $300K in grants lined up and will be building a
pilot project in Jerome. All I have to do is last another year before the
major grant $$ kick in....

Now this is really not material for the geo-cache list, but after seeing so
many posts float by on the subject, I had to share my experience.

If the re-invention process sounds like something you would like to
consider, drop me am email and I will be happy to pass on what I have
learned.

Regards,
Jan (Raouljan) Allbright
jallbright@verdeonline.com