Numbers

0.1%

Those are officially my chances of finding a job.

Impressive, isn't it. 

I made this highly motivating discovery after a little research on s1jobs.com, one of the biggest online recruitment sites for Scotland.

Out of the 4526 jobs advertised on the site today, 25% were in Edinburgh and the Lothians, my area. Not bad, you may think. And you'd be right, that's 463 jobs, after all.

But here's where it goes pear-shaped.

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writeitdownith.wordpress.com

 As a lone parent with a school-aged child, it isn't practical to work full-time hours. If I did, it would mean putting B into afterschool care 4 or 5 days a week, and paying for 4 or 5 days of afterschool care. It would also mean a very tired child who I only saw to put him to bed at the end of the day. That's not the reason I became a parent.

And so, searching for part-time hours only, this number dives swiftly to a paltry 71 jobs.

That's only 6% of Edinburgh jobs. And only 1.5% of all Scotland jobs.

What happened to all these part-time jobs which are supposed to be on the rise in these times of financial crisis? As employers can no longer afford full-time hours and more and more people take part-time roles because full-time jobs aren't available? It doesn't seem to be that way, not on this evidence.

Before this depressing situation forced me to slam my laptop down in disgust, I added an additional layer to my search. Uh oh.

When I search for jobs I could potentially actually DO (quite important, I think?!), the number tumbles down to a meager 10 jobs. 10 jobs out of a total 4526. That's 0.2% of jobs.

Taking an initial look at the specific jobs, I can quickly rule out 5 more, so that's just 5 jobs.

0.1%

And I know that many part-time jobs specify the hours they need worked, which don't fit within school hours, so I expect another couple of jobs could be scored out. I didn't even work this bit out, though, I'd had enough by this point. And I need all the free time I have to apply for the huge number of available jobs I found. Yeah, right.

Back in those ignorant, care-free pre-child days, the oft-repeated plan for the future was once kid/s were in school, we'd find a part-time job that fitted in with school hours. Not a problem, loads of parent manage it. But this just isn't possible, it's not realistic. Even with a couple of days of afterschool care, it is still impossible to find a job, let alone one that fits in with the limited hours available during school hours, when you don't have a second parent to take up the slack.

So it's back to the search next week, and if there's 0.1% of jobs i can apply for, this will be a good week.