The unemployment rate, which includes people working part-time jobs even though they'd rather be working full time, has risen to 16.4%. That means that 1 out of every 6 workers are either out-of-work or working part time jobs even though they want to work full time.
Involuntary Part-Time Employment Chart:
Underemployment by State for June 2009 Chart:
Quotes for those let go:
Getting fired is nature's way of telling you that you had the wrong job in the first place. – Hal Lancaster, in The Wall Street Journal
Never continue in a job you don't enjoy. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined. – Johnny Carson
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. –Steve Jobs, (1955- ) Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. (fired in 1986; re-hired in 1996), and former CEO of Pixar.