No work for a year in London

[Winterlit]

I’ve name-changed for this post.

My husband and I have found ourselves without work for a year while raising two kids in London. We’ve had a string of unpredictable events that depleted our savings in the 3 years before. So, we only had savings for 3 months plus I had made some small investments that I could liquidate. Since then we’ve used credit cards and taken out 2 loans.

We thought it may take us 6 months at the most to find work! We work in tech as freelance contractors (for over 15 years) and all contract work has dried up. A couple of small freelance jobs almost went through but got cancelled last minute. We’re very proactive people and as such have applied to permanent jobs as well as working on a tech product for which we are applying for investment for.

We have had so many contract jobs, permanent jobs and investment rejections - in the hundreds! - over the last 12 months. Moving to a cheaper city is a last resort option I’ve thought about but changing the kids schools + home is not something I want to do. Especially as one of them is in secondary.

I have this feeling that perhaps we’re too experienced to be hired?! Perhaps most of the tech hiring is happening at junior levels. I say this as we know many others in their mid 40s also out of work for 6 months + in London.

I’m not sure why I am posting! Maybe to hear a hopeful story or ideas on how to get out of this mini crisis for our little family.

As a side I had a fairly emotionally and possibly physically traumatic childhood and have been working / self-sufficient since I was 16. My partner has also been working since a young age. We worked many jobs to pay our way through uni. We got together young and supported each other a lot in our careers.

I feel bad complaining as we have our health, our two lovely children and live in a fairly stable country. Apart from the recent riots! We’re both UK born ethnic minorities so it’s close to home. Anyway, that’s a digressions. Essentially, financially this last year has been a lot!

We’ve cut back on many expenses and are living quite frugally with a small mortgage on our tiny London flat. Our biggest expenses are school fees and we’ve given ourselves another academic year to see if we need to change to state school.

My husband and I feel even stronger as a unit through all of this which has taken me by surprise as it’s quite a testing time. We’ve had some issues in the past and had couples therapy a while back which was very helpful. We’ve also always actively worked on our relationship since the beginning which I feel is helping us now.

A bit of long winey post but I guess I am so ready for some tailwind! 🤞 🍀

You’re living on loans? Sounds mad to me that you’re both not working, have no saving left, are taking out loans and credit cards and still considering paying school fees for another year!? How are you going to pay back years of debt? I’d be looking for any job I could right now and definitely take them out of private!

The technology market is very quiet for anyone in programme/project management or product. It is resilient for developers and infrastructure engineers. The contract market is also as quiet as I’ve seen it and many long term contractors have gone permanent. The problem is that a hiring manager has to take a risk that a contractor who was on £700/day will stay in a £90K job when the market comes back.

What is it you and your DH do?

Personally I’d start looking for a good state school for the younger kids and accept it could be years before the market improves depending on your skill set. I think it’s the same in Manhattan and other major cities.

My company laid off many program managers at the start of the year. Many have still not found anything. They are all older and very experienced. You are not alone.

Why the heck have you taken out loans and credit cards before claiming universal credit? You can claim with savings of £16k or less. Savings under £6k are disregarded. Running up debts is madness.

After a year without work you need to be looking for any work not just that in your chosen field.

@savoury my husband is a programmer and has worked in investment banks, scale -ups and a number of complex critical systems. He gets interviews through to the final stages but then not an offer. It’s quite a grueling process as you are probably aware of the various technical test. The last set of interviews a few weeks ago had 2 technical tests and they sent a rejection email a few days ago saying his experience is not suitable for the job. He feels he does well in all the tests and I trust him as he has been doing these for almost 20 years now with job offers.

I’m a PM in tech and have been working with smaller companies than my husband as a freelancer. I also took 3 years off in total for my two maternity leaves and had a career change so I have less experience and had a smalled salary than him.

@Pinkdressandahighpony I have applied to some casual jobs and a recruitment consultant aprenticeship with no luck. Do you have any ideas for other jobs and places to apply?

@Snowflake2 We don’t qualify for much universal credit as we own our home. I checked the online questionnaire calculator when our savings ran out.

We can try other work too, any suggestions on where to apply? I haven’t had much response to what I’ve applied tor so far in retail, recruitment and admin.

Why on earth are you keeping your children in private school?!

This sounds mad to me! One of you surely HAS to get a job doing SOMETHING?? You've ran out of savings and living on credit card debt? This would absolutely kerp me up at night! I'm sure your preferred work will come along eventually but I wouldn't think you need to be resigned to both being jobless for a year with no money, not claiming benefits and no savings! One of you needs to go to the job centre surely?- get a job in retail, hospitality- anything to keep you going and not put you in a position where you are not earning and could potentially lose your home!
Good luck!

This. I have nothing against private school so this is not private school hatred - I was privately educated and all being well so will DC. But it is absolutely bonkers that you have kept them in private school when you have no income.

The care sector also has thousands of vacancies. Immediate start, no qualifications needed. Lots of roles with flexible hours to work around life!

You've surely calculated wrong. Have you spoken to Citizens Advice? You'll be entitled to the standard element plus child elements of Universal Credit. You also (also!) probably both have NI contributions that mean you could claim Jobseekers allowance . Both of those should be considered asap before getting into more debt.

As your DH is a developer @Winterlit I think it’s a matter of time only. Sorry if I’m stating the obvious but I’d recommend he widens his search to perm roles and ups his experience in core tech skills beyond his current skill set. For instance it might be a good time to learn snowflake (example only) or to get a DevOps qualification which are largely free. He just needs once chance at a permanent role and then it’s not so hard for a hiring manager in future.

Your experience might be harder. Are you looking at government work? Once you get one - and pass all the security clearance - it seems you can go perm or contract for years albeit at lower rates. Ditto for local councils with less security clearance required. They may not be as lucrative but provide steady work.

Getting a job down Tesco’s probably isn’t going to cover the school fees, I’m guessing.

What transferable skills have you got OP, sounds like you need to move into something else? And you can’t afford private schools so stop that nonsense.

This doesn’t seem to add up.
You can apply for UC if you own your home. I own my home and receive (a small amount) of UC, it’s based on income & savings.
If you are giving yourself another year for school fees (plural!) in London then I’d suggest you aren’t struggling in the way most people would associate struggle having being out of work for 6 months.

FGS don't do a recruitment consultancy apprenticeship - employment is falling and we'll be in a recession soon.

You'll get £18ph cleaning in London. Meanwhile you both need to identify alternatives.

For those saying to claim UC, would a couple sending three kids to private school really qualify?

Speaking as a London private school mum… this is nuts.

London state schools are fine. Having parents stressed about money and living hand to mouth is not fine.

If they have under no savings and absolutely no income at all, then yes. As it should be.

Naturally the sensible thing would also be to reduce outgoings. They seem to be getting into debt to pay the fees which is ridiculous.

Unless OP is exaggerating the severity of the situation.

I have this feeling that perhaps we’re too experienced to be hired

No, this won't be the case. I think rather than think this way it's time to be brutally honest with yourselves. Has DH stagnated in his skillset? Is there further training he can do to modernise his knowledge? He's getting far through processes so they obviously don't have an issue with being 'too experienced', it's probably that others have more recent training and things move quickly. Are you taking due time over applications rather than feeling like it's a sure thing?

Reality is you both need jobs, you can't seem to get jobs in the sectors you have previously worked in, time to branch out.

@savoury we’re both been up skilling by learning AI. It’s what has landed my husband the job interviews he has had so far. It’s also how I managed to almost get two freelance jobs for. We’ve done this by teaching ourselves and building real working projects to showcase our learning.

One of the projects has become a product that we’ve continued to learn with and apply our skills on - this one had enough legs to apply for investment funding so we did and are in the final stages of interviews with a VC firm. It was never part of the plan but has come out of necessity!

At the moment we’re working on job applications, getting freelance jobs and our product. This means we work 10 hours, 7 days a week to fit it all in.

i do hope it’s a matter of time.

I can call the citizens advice bureau as suggested. Our income stopped fully in September and as our contractor + freelance income is fairly high we didn’t yet fall under the amount that we qualified for anything meaningful. That will have changed as we are approaching a year.

We’ve also reached out to all the small companies we previously worked for offering light software tech support. This has worked somewhat as many companies have laid off so many developers they are struggling to keep up with delivering any work. So we have a regular long term client paying £1500 pcm for a days work per month.

The private school thing is the last thing to go for a reason. It’s to with racial discrimination that had some dire consequences for my family when I was a kid after which my parents made some big sacrifices to send me and my sibling to private school. It was too lat for my older siblings unfortunately and it’s left quite a lot of trauma in my family. I know the world has changed but it will likely be the last thing I change which is why I have given it another year.

How do you pay private fees for two kids in London without money. There must be some around this household and it could be more than qualifying for UC.

I sympathise @Winterlit

I am in the same boat. A good deal of my work went abroad with Brexit (financial services) and I've been out for two years now. There's either nothing, or I'm over qualified.

I've ended up changing career entirely.

@MumChp it’s been a combination of savings + selling investments I made + loans

Yes definitely get a proper benefits check from Citizens Advice. They also offer help with maximising income and managing debt.

@HappiestSleeping are you happy to share what career you switched to?

I switched careers before as I worked as an architect and then the big recession happened in 2008-2009. I couldn’t find work so I taught myself new skills and re-established myself. It took years to properly learn and get enough work. I’m open to doing this again which is why I am learning all this AI stuff.