Some of us longer in the tooth who recall the eighties might have varied sentiments concerning the period, and many things come to mind about it. I remember some excellent pop music at that time. There was a certain lady PM, of course. Unfortunately there were many for whom it was a troubled period, as there were historically high levels of joblessness. There was, in the eighties, no Internet business and no online jobs as are available these days. Yet I know openings were available for people who sought them. If you were prepared to do anything you could, it was possible to do short-term office jobs, work from home, or travel around to find seasonal opportunities.

After studying for a Geography degree and discovering there was minimal call from employers for Geography graduates, I became for a while one of the millions of jobless. But after a bit, I signed up with an agency that was recommended to me. Within a few days they phoned me up about a short-term placement. In this post I was working a print machine in an industrial unit, then I worked at a Tax Office (somebody has to it, as the saying goes!). In the following years I worked as a stock controller, and typing data into a computer. The positionswere generally fairly unexciting, and I wasn’t going to get rich working in any of them, but I was earning my own keep and not living off benefits. Within a short time after the conclusion of one job, I would get a phone call, and I would get offered a temporary post with a different employer.

Much has changed since then. The World Wide Web has transformed the way jobs are advertised, with online jobs boards taking over from many agencies. We are at this time facing an unemployment level as bad as at any time before. However, Internet business gives people the ability to work from home or in a conventional office in numerous types of online jobs which have arisen due to the WWW.

In 1988 I moved into permanent work and stayed in employment continually up to the current recession. When I joined the numerous workers who were laid off over the past year or so, I was not too concerned, since I assumed I could again resort to doing short-term work. I once again signed up with the employment agencies. But to my dismay, the phone remained silent. There is not even the type of temporary employment which kept me off the dole queue back in the 80s. And as for being offered another permanent job, I reckon I have more chance of being chosen for the 2014 England World Cup squad.

It would not be before I heard of online jobs and got offered the opportunity to work from home on my own account, that I saw how I might find a way out of a long period of joblessness. In exchange for a small payment for a distance learning course, I was able to start up my own Internet business giving help to website owners on search engine optimisation. Remuneration is on the basis of results, verifiable confirmation that a website has made it to page one of a Google search. However with the correct ethical techniques, this can be achieved over a reasonable time.

The plus point of working in an Internet business is that you are free to choose what hours you work, and your own work methods. It is an engaging and rewarding field of work, and certainly beats adding up stock in a factory or typing numbers into a computer all day, or the other things I did in the 1980s. Once I was given the opportunity to work from home in this specialism, I never regretted it. I don’t even think I’d want my old permanent job back, if it was offered to me. And when it comes to my recollection of the 1980s, undoubtedly it wasn’t all gloomy: the memorable music of that decade will always live on for me.

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