Unemployment benefits for the self-employed

My apologies for silence the last ten days. I know both my followers must miss my posts. I do mean to do this more often, but starting the job, settling the kids into regular activities and clearing up other work has left me stressed, then ill (now getting over the cold/flu), and very time crunched. Still no excuse, hence the catch up this week.

Via Darren I read about a campaign promise in the current Canadian election by the ruling Conservative party to implement employment insurance for self-employed people. I guess the main point of it is to provide maternity/parental benefits to those of us not currently eligible because we work for ourselves.

Interesting thought. Yes, it would be great to get some benefits for maternity leave. But the maximum benefit you can get is about $415 a week, which is then taxed. I know for some people that's a significant sum of money over several months, but are those people self-employed? I had a friend go back to work because her benefits were running out, but once she paid for child care, the financial difference between working and not working was less than $500 a month.

I guess I was lucky, because I had the best of both worlds. With my first child, I had worked at a job part time that ended six months before the baby was born, but under the EI rules I qualified for maximum benefits. Which was nice, but frankly working part time I made more than the benefit amount, so I wound up refusing benefits most weeks (you have to report earnings and if you earn more than a certain amount, they don't pay you). The second baby for me I had no benefits, and yes, I started back a bit earlier than with the first, but it didn't make a lot of difference to me.

So are there a lot of self-employed people in their 20s and 30s who would benefit from EI? Am I being elitist to think every self-employed person would turn up their nose at $1200 a month, in return for paying in for at least six months before that?

How much do you make?

A couple workplace-related blogs I follow have had posts this week about salary secrecy -- the compulsion to hide your annual salary from everyone. I have always thought a reluctance to discuss money was a downfall of our society. What's the big secret?

Take housing prices as a comparison. MLS listings are public, as are annual assessment records, so I can easily look up how much anyone's house costs. That's a bigger indicator of wealth than salary, at least in my hometown. And if you know what someone does for a living, you can guess what what kind of money they might make in many cases. So what's the big deal?

I know, poverty is seen as degrading, and being overly wealthy is seen as elitist. But when you work in a company where you know how high up the corporate ladder you rank, why is it a big deal to know how much more or less the next gal earns?

I began my career working for the federal government, a unionized ehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifnvironment where every job has a classification, and every classification has a salary range. So I knew how much every single person in my workplace earned. Then I moved to the private sector, where I wasn't allowed to share my salary with anyone, and no one shared with me. And I just didn't get it. It always seemed like a silly game to me -- hide your income from your cubicle neighbours.

As a freelancer, I have been open about my rates, and find that others are just as open. Asking around helped me set the right number for myself. I used to charge too little, until I started asking around, and then brought up my rates when I found others at the same level were charging more. In fact, I learned last month that I'm charging far too little for media training sessions, because I asked a couple other freelancers, so the next one I do will cost the client a more market-reasonable rate.

I'm not saying I run around telling everyone I meet what my annual income is, but I'm also not hiding it. If someone asked me directly how much I earned last year, I'd tell them. Although with all the deductions, and the whole incorporated business thing, I'm not sure I have a direct answer. I know how much the corporation made, and I know what I reported as net income on my taxes, but it's never as simple for someone like me to say how much we earn as for a salaried employee. But I've certainly got nothing to hide.

Partnerships the key to freelance survival?

I've been at a bit of a loss lately since the small agency with whom I had partnered on a lot of projects went out of business. Not only did they add value to the clients I had, but they also were a source of some referrals to me. And we often combined resources to bid on projects of bigger scope. Well, another partnership seems to be forming for me, and I'm kind of excited about it now.

I met another freelancer at a networking event and it turns out we had a lot in common. Our personal conversations are fun, interesting and stimulating. And her skills really compliment mine, without a whole tonne of overlap. And best of all, she's great at cold calling and sourcing new business, things I'm not good at nor do I enjoy. And her specialty is in an area I really want to work in -- sustainability. I've had some experience in that arena but not enough to be anywhere near the expert she is.

Anyhow, it's very early days, but we are seriously discussing formalizing some kind of work arrangement that combines our skills, making a list of target clients, then going out and knocking on doors or holding seminars or something. If it worked, this could be the kind of situation that would keep me freelancing for a while longer, before I had to give up the freedom and go 9-to-5-ing. And since my kids are still pretty young, another year or two of this would be lovely.

This is the first time in ages that I've felt invigorated about the possibilities of refreshing my freelance offering. Of course, that's today. Tomorrow could be a different mood swing. After all, I am 40 now. Doesn't that mean pre-menopausal mood swings are due to start?

Contract jobs

I've been wondering if the current trend in working is more people working for themselves or more people working as employees. If the labour shortage is so bad, is that because everyone has given up corporate life for self-employment, or is it because everyone is taking jobs and there just aren't enough people left for the vacancies?

A recent article in the Globe and Mail caught my eye on this topic. It's all about the trend of contract work, where an agency places you in a company for a temporary, albeit full-time gig. The article talked mainly about finance, law, and tech contracts -- I know of only one agency in my area that deals in communications, my field, and it's mainly junior jobs or design work, not my thing. But it got me thinking.

Would a full-time, short term project be preferable to many clients? I guess it comes down to variety and flexibility. The nice thing about freelancing for many clients is that I can schedule my own time. Of course, the nice thing about a full time contract is the stability of income for a longer time period than freelancing, but would the client be as understanding if I wanted to take the morning off to go on a field trip with my kid's school?

Monday morning up and at 'em!

It's been a relaxing weekend with the family and very little work stress, which means I need to get off my duff and get some work going now. Starting the day in my home office, once the hubby and kids are out of the house, takes one of two tones with me:

1. I'm right to the computer and digging into a project straight away, and barely pick my head up until my stomach grumbles for lunch; or

2. I make another cup of tea, read the newspaper, scan the blogs, and try to drag my brain into work mode.

This approach seemed to be pretty constant whether I worked at home or in an office. I remember one job where a co-worker would start and finish early, so when I came in he'd been there for an hour, but almost never seemed to have moved far beyond the tea and newspaper stage. In his defense though, we did work in media relations so we needed to read papers as part of our job, but not the lifestyle section.

Do you find the Monday morning get-up-and-go is any different if you're at a workplace or a home office?

Gen X short changed by demography

Linda Duxbury really hits the nail on the head about my demographic, the embittered Gen X:

Generation X, a term popularized by Canadian author Douglas Coupland in the 1990s, includes anyone born between 1961 and 1974. Duxbury explains Generation X’s job market as follows: “Members of Generation X followed this huge cohort, the Boomers, into the labour market just when the labour market tanked. When those born in 1961 were trying to get their first jobs we hit a recession, followed by a jobless recovery, followed by another recession. So there was tremendous competition for jobs in this particular group. They had trouble getting permanent work and they had trouble keeping permanent work.”

Members of Generation X are often portrayed in the media as apathetic cynics who are over-educated and underachieving. Another term closely linked with this generation is McJob – a low-paying job with little stimulation and few prospects. This is certainly not a flattering portrayal of a generation, but these characteristics as a generational response to a point in time are justified. To put it simply, Generation X was short changed by demography.

That's me to a T. I have never had a long-term job -- I've always had to make my own opportunities. I've had many jobs for which I was underemployed, until the past few years was what I always thought was underpaid, and a lack of prospects I guess is what prompted this blog.

It's nice to know I'm not alone in this.