Many of us oldies who have lived through the 1980s might have ambivalent sentiments about the time, and various things stick in the mind about it. There was some great contemporary music from those times. I recall a certain female premier, of course. Unfortunately for some it was not a prosperous period, due to serious levels of joblessness. There was, in those days, no Internet business and no online jobs as there are since the growth of the Web. Yet I know there were openings for those who looked for them. If you were happy to do whatever you could, you could find part-time work in an office, work from home, or travel from place to place in search of seasonal placements.

After studying for a qualification in Geography and discovering there was no great demand from employers for geographers, I found myself among the large numbers of people out of work. However, I signed up with an agency that I had heard about. Within a few days they offered me a temporary opening. I started off working a printing machine in a factory, then I served as a clerk at the Tax Office (somebody has to it, as they say!). Over time I worked as in stock control, and inputting data. The positionswere as a whole fairly unexciting, and I wasn’t going to make my first million working in any of them, but nevertheless they were work. Within a short time from one temporary job ending, I would get another call, and I would get offered a position with another company.

Much has changed since the eighties. The World Wide Web has transformed the jobs market, with online jobs boards replacing many agencies. We are at this time dealing with an unemployment crisis as bad as at any time before. Nevertheless, Internet business creates the ability to work from home as well as in an office in a variety of different online jobs which were previously unheard of.

In 1988 I moved into a long-term job and remained employed without interruption up to the present downturn. When I became one of the thousands of people who were made redundant over the past year or so, I did not feel pessimistic, as I thought I could go back to taking up temporary jobs. I once again signed up with the jobs agencies. Unfortunately, the phone remained silent. There is not even the variety of short term work which I did before 1988. And as for getting a permanent job, I reckon I have more chance of being selected for the next England World Cup team.

It was not until I learned of online jobs and had the chance to work from home in a self-employed capacity, that I was able to break free from long-term joblessness. With a reasonable payment for a distance learning course, I could establish an Internet business offering advice to website owners on raising their website’s search engine profile. Remuneration is based on results, demonstrable confirmation that the client’s website has been raised to page one of an Internet search. However by using the correct ethical procedure, this can be done within a few weeks.

The advantage of working in your own Internet business is that you are free to pick your own hours, and your own work methods. It is an interesting and inspiring field of work, and certainly preferable to counting components in a factory or typing data on a keyboard all day, or the other things I did back in the eighties. Once I was given the chance to work from home in the search engine field, I never looked back. It’s unlikely I’d want to go back to my former permanent job, if they offered it to me. And as for my view of the eighties, undoubtedly it was never all gloomy: the fantastic music of that decade will remain with me always.

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