Length of Unemployment At the time of writing (summer 2001) I have been unemployed for over 10 years. This alone leads employers to perceive me as permanently unemployable.

This false perception is based on the false notion that the longer one has been unemployed the more out of touch one becomes with one's industry and its current techniques, methods, trends, fads and fashions. The truth is that with no productive work dissipating one's time, one naturally spends it (apart from applying for jobs) reading about and practising, these very things. That is what I have been doing during every spare moment of every 'working' day since I became unemployed. This, I feel sure, is plainly evinced by the content of the Internet web site I have constructed since becoming unemployed.

Nevertheless, the job market, like all other sectors of the so-called 'free' market is ruled by irrationality. This false perception will therefore continue to ensure that being among the longest out of work, I shall be among the last ever to be considered for a job. The unemployment line will therefore remain, as always, a first-in last-out queue.