Business
Next Steps After Losing Your Job Due to Covid-19
This post has been submitted to Todayville by Artur Meyster, Founder of Career Karma
Losing your job at any point can be a disheartening and worrisome event, let alone during a global pandemic. With that in mind, however, try to focus on the fact that there are still steps you can take to ensure that you reenter the workforce as an asset to the future of work. Technology is changing everything about how work is performed, as evidenced by the rise in remote work, and more jobs will be disrupted before the pandemic calms.
On that note, the next steps after losing your job due to Covid-19 should be preparatory steps that can help you thrive in this coming future. First and foremost, however, it is important that you remember to breathe and stay calm. The world may seem chaotic right now, but that doesn’t mean your life needs to be as well.
Reevaluate Your Skills
Regardless of the reason you got fired, it is important that you completely break down and reevaluate your skillset. Unless you were in an intensive tech-based career already, it is unlikely that your skillset will be perfectly aligned with the future of work.
A study by CNBC found that some of the most prominent skills for the future of work will be based on coding or programming. Jobs won’t necessarily be specifically structured for these skills, but rather careers of all types will begin requiring experience with coding as computers begin to dictate business.
To acquire this soon-to-be important skill, it may be worth looking into top-rated coding bootcamps that can give participants a beginner’s knowledge of coding languages. However, this is not the only tech skill that will be needed in the future. Perform research during this time while you look for a new job, and determine what you are capable of and what interests you.
Reflect on Your Career Choice
Now that you’ve lost your job, it may be worth considering whether or not your career was really right for you. If you don’t believe it was, take an extra minute to ensure that it was the career that bothered you and not the specific job.
Perhaps your career was the perfect choice for you and you do not regret entering the field you did. If so, you are one of a lucky few. Realizing that you were in the wrong career, however, is actually beneficial if you just lost your job. This means you are aware that you made the incorrect career choice and can rectify that decision by tackling a new field. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for many who are passed the age of a university student to change careers, but certainly not impossible.
To that end, identifying and pursuing some easier online degrees can be a perfect choice for someone who just lost their job. There are a number of career options that can provide growth in the future as technology takes control of the workforce, many of which now accept online degrees as an accredited source of education.
Consider Attending a Trade School
On the topic of online degrees, there is likely no better path after losing your job than attending a trade school. This form of education, sometimes called a vocational school, is a quick and efficient method of changing careers as they offer specialized courses that prepare students for a specific career.
The Atlantic covered a study that discusses how trade school attendance has risen to levels that rival traditional education enrollment. This option has become respected by employers around the world, and the fact that some trade schools, such as App Academy, don’t charge tuition until you’re hired make them attractive paths.
Technology and the pandemic are changing everything about the work world, but they are also changing education. In today’s day and age, you are never too old to consider a new career path and enroll in some form of online education.
Conclusion
Losing your job does not mean that the world is crumbling down around you. Treat this event as an opportunity to revamp both your skills and your career. While it may not seem like it now, doing so can set you up for success in the future. Dealing with the loss of your job, whether it was held for a long time or just began, is a difficult task, but making the best of it and growing from this loss can help you to become an even more valuable asset to any company in the future.
From the Fraser Institute
By Tegan Hill
According to this week’s fiscal update, amid falling oil prices, the Alberta government will run a projected $6.4 billion budget deficit in 2025/26—higher than the $5.2 billion deficit projected earlier this year and a massive swing from the $8.3 billion surplus recorded in 2024/25.
Overall, that’s a $14.8 billion deterioration in Alberta’s budgetary balance year over year. Resource revenue, including oil and gas royalties, comprises 44.5 per cent of that decline, falling by a projected $6.6 billion.
Albertans shouldn’t be surprised—the good times never last forever. It’s all part of the boom-and-bust cycle where the Alberta government enjoys budget surpluses when resource revenue is high, but inevitably falls back into deficits when resource revenue declines. Indeed, if resource revenue was at the same level as last year, Alberta’s budget would be balanced.
Instead, the Alberta government will return to a period of debt accumulation with projected net debt (total debt minus financial assets) reaching $42.0 billion this fiscal year. That comes with real costs for Albertans in the form of high debt interest payments ($3.0 billion) and potentially higher taxes in the future. That’s why Albertans need a new path forward. The key? Saving during good times to prepare for the bad.
The Smith government has made some strides in this direction by saving a share of budget surpluses, recorded over the last few years, in the Heritage Fund (Alberta’s long-term savings fund). But long-term savings is different than a designated rainy-day account to deal with short-term volatility.
Here’s how it’d work. The provincial government should determine a stable amount of resource revenue to be included in the budget annually. Any resource revenue above that amount would be automatically deposited in the rainy-day account to be withdrawn to support the budget (i.e. maintain that stable amount) in years when resource revenue falls below that set amount.
It wouldn’t be Alberta’s first rainy-day account. Back in 2003, the province established the Alberta Sustainability Fund (ASF), which was intended to operate this way. Unfortunately, it was based in statutory law, which meant the Alberta government could unilaterally change the rules governing the fund. Consequently, by 2007 nearly all resource revenue was used for annual spending. The rainy-day account was eventually drained and eliminated entirely in 2013. This time, the government should make the fund’s rules constitutional, which would make them much more difficult to change or ignore in the future.
According to this week’s fiscal update, the Alberta government’s resource revenue rollercoaster has turned from boom to bust. A rainy-day account would improve predictability and stability in the future by mitigating the impact of volatile resource revenue on the budget.
Tegan Hill
Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is criticizing the Memorandum of Understanding between the federal and Alberta governments for including higher carbon taxes.
“Hidden carbon taxes will make it harder for Canadian businesses to compete and will push Canadian entrepreneurs to shift production south of the border,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Politicians should not be forcing carbon taxes on Canadians with the hope that maybe one day we will get a major project built.
“Politicians should be scrapping all carbon taxes.”
The federal and Alberta governments released a memorandum of understanding. It includes an agreement that the industrial carbon tax “will ramp up to a minimum effective credit price of $130/tonne.”
“It means more than a six times increase in the industrial price on carbon,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said while speaking to the press today.
Carney previously said that by “changing the carbon tax … We are making the large companies pay for everybody.”
A Leger poll shows 70 per cent of Canadians believe businesses pass most or some of the cost of the industrial carbon tax on to consumers. Meanwhile, just nine per cent believe businesses pay most of the cost.
“It doesn’t matter what politicians label their carbon taxes, all carbon taxes make life more expensive and don’t work,” Terrazzano said. “Carbon taxes on refineries make gas more expensive, carbon taxes on utilities make home heating more expensive and carbon taxes on fertilizer plants increase costs for farmers and that makes groceries more expensive.
“The hidden carbon tax on business is the worst of all worlds: Higher prices and fewer Canadian jobs.”
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