Your Be-Happy-about-Your-Friend’s-New-Job Guide

The good news: the unemployment rate finally appears to be falling and people you know are getting jobs. The less great news: you aren’t one of them, and even if you’re enjoying your funemployment, this shift is creating a bit of a rift.

Whereas it was easy to find camaraderie amongst recently laid off friends and colleagues at the beginning of the recession, that unity is becoming strained for some now that more people are finding jobs and leaving their unemployed buddies behind. Without anyone to commiserate with or take part in events like the Unemployment Olympics, the prospect of funemployment becomes a lot less, well, fun…

6 Things You Shouldn’t Say to the Newly Laid-off

When she was laid off from the job she loved at a media company last fall, one marketing executive went for drinks with her friends to drown her sorrows and find a little solace. She and three-quarters of her department had been fired — and on top of that, she had just signed a lease renewal, including a rent increase, on her Manhattan apartment.

“Don’t you have six months of rent saved?” asked one seemingly well-intentioned friend. The marketing executive nearly fell off her bar stool.

In the hours after a friend or family member is laid off, the last thing they need is…