Job pre-pandemic = $2300/mo

UI benefits during pandemic = $1600/mo (I chose to pay taxes on my UI to avoid the excess burden post UI, but still going to owe taxes because of my employment pre-pandemic)

No UI working a side-hustle = $1200/mo.

Taking a job at the beginning of the pandemic was out of the question because the only available positions were customer-facing positions. Mid-pandemic saw the worst in terms of available jobs, and the ones available paid less than my UI, which was already less than my original wages.

Now at the end of UI, the available jobs have not improved, and my industry is still reeling from the last year and a half of chaos.

I know things will get better with time, and that my persistence and effort will (hopefully) pay off, but this is r/rant, where people come to vent their frustrations. I have every right to be pissed that I can't survive on the offered wages. That my government has done a shit job of managing this pandemic. That we have to subsidize the rich with our taxes. That I have to be worried about affording the basics even though I have always worked and paid my dues. Everything is falling apart. My neighborhood was full before the pandemic. Now you will see a "For Sale by Owner" sign every 4th house. My apartment that I rented before the pandemic has gone up $180/mo. Everything is becoming more expensive from food to gas, but the wages offered are stagnant even with the increase in available jobs because no one wants to pay a wage that matches this areas cost of living.

I'd love to just get up and move somewhere else, but that entails dropping all of my existing obligations which would just pawn my own struggles onto others since we're all being forced to help each other at the moment, and I just can't turn my back on those I hold dear.

This whole fucking pandemic totally turned my life, and many others upside down, while the richest people became much richer. It is a fucking joke that I should just "pull myself up by the bootstraps" when I've done nothing but bust my ass and do what I'm supposed to since I hit working age. At this point I understand why my uncle killed himself in 2008.