The best place to lose your job...

[hunter]

It is one of the most stressful things that can happen: getting laid off from your job. If you’ve experienced it, you know the panic it can cause – worries about income, career, and, in some countries, healthcare.

But what if being laid off turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to you? And not thanks to good luck, but because there was a system in place designed specifically to unlock your potential and get you into a better job than before?

This is the promise of Sweden’s unique ‘transition system’, a nationwide private welfare service for workers who have become recently unemployed due to redundancy. Companies pay into ‘job security councils’, which provide skilled coaches who pick you up, dust you down and match your skills and ambitions with the market. There are 16 of these organisations, each covering a different sector of the economy and tasked with finding new jobs for workers who have lost their jobs for economic reasons.

As a result, Sweden has the best re-employment rates in the developed world – about 90% of laid-off workers are back in work within a year, according to the OECD. This is drastically higher than France and Portugal, the OECD points out, which only place about 30% of workers within the year.

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https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191212-where-losing-your-job-is-a-good-thing

I know, I know, we can't have anything like that here in the U.S.A. because we are Great and Exceptional and everyone in the world wishes they lived here.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

1. Here it's called "Outplacement". I was in the business for more than ten years. Unfortunately it's

only available to those individuals who are guaranteed it by contact, have an employer willing to pay for it, or can personally fund it. There are some providers who are paid by local or state governments but I’ve found their performance to be seriously lacking resulting in poor success rates.

The region that I managed placed 85% of clients in an average of four months.

[hunter]

2. Swedish employees expect more from their employers than U.S. employees.

The article says 90% belong to trade unions.

"The councils are run in a 50-50 partnership between employers and trade unions – the government plays no part."

The government runs employment programs for those not included in the private systems.

[KentuckyWoman]

3. Losing my job in 1972 was an amazing blessing.

I was good with numbers, struck out on my own, and made a better living that I ever would have where I was. I as able to hand the business over to the few people who worked for me when I decided to give it up. Their lives, in the small town eastern Kentucky, are better for it as well. No one is getting rich, but it sure beats waitressing or mining for quality of life.