losing hope but trying to make the best of it

Hmmmm. Let's hope he doesn't get inspiration from 'Breaking Bad'!!

I'd go into horticulture - there's a lot of chemistry involved in growing veggies. I know little bits, like the fact you can grow beans to fix nitrogen from the air into the soil, but a trained chemist would know so much more.

It depends on which branch of chemistry he did his Ph D in. When you get to that level you are fairly specialised. DS has a Ph D and is an academic but when he is job hunting it is not enough to find a job vacancy in his discipline, it has to be his speciality area as well.

I can vouch for the fact that job seeking is tough. If anyone wants a brief glimpse into my world, put DirectGov into Google, go to the job search section, put EX21 5RT into the area section, select 20 mile radius and see what you get.

Dr Dolescum is the second of my well-qualified young friends to find himself in this situation. Thankfully the first chap finally got a placement about a year or more ago and is now in a reasonably well paid job where his presence would be sorely missed. But I worried about him too for two or three years, in the same way that I now have ever-growing concerns for Dr Dolescum. Even a creative, intelligent, artistic young man with a brilliant sense of humour can get ground down over such a long period of disappointment and rejection. Weaker minded folk may easily turn to crime or self-harm. We are forever being told that our young folk are not properly equipped for the world of work and need yet more training programmes yet the truth would seem to be that the only growth in the job market caters for people to work in fast food outlets or call centres. Many are over-qualified and not welcome in such jobs.

My daughter started a new f-t job in PR today. She worked part time for a year and was then made redundant and has been out of work for 10 weeks. It's basically taken 15 months to find a new job. She was told 120-150 people are applying for each job. The worst of it is that companies no longer contact an interviewee to say 'it was nice to meet you but ...' So you go for an interview and then are left waiting and waiting.
I heard a gentleman on the radio this morning. He was opening a new Costa Coffee Shop and had 500 applicants for the post of trainee barista.

Trish, my son went through similar for nearly 3 years, he has a science (Geology) degree. And as Flickety rightly points out, the job has to be not only in his discipline, but also his specialty. "Suffering from worklessness" affected every aspect of his life. He poured his heart out on Facebook, which worried me no end 're future employers reading his bitter outbursts as things got worse and worse.

He lived very frugally, so much so that he started looking a bit frayed around the edges. I was extremely worried about him.

He did something really good during this time: he put posters up around his neighbourhood and started what he called "The Job Club" inviting out of work people to meet every morning in a local coffee shop that offered bottomless coffee and free wifi to job hunt on their laptops together. He soon had a little "band of brothers" and they supported each other, all ages. He said it gave him a purpose each day. I was proud of him.

Thank God, he has been back in a good job for close on a year now.

Veggies grow themselves by eating. Growing veg, that's different.

Durhamjen, did you post on the wrong thread by mistake? I don't understand what you mean.