I find it very shitty that a person that can write as well as you can cannot find a job.
And how do you form connections, even casual ones, through that kind of alienating medium?
It's called psychopathic white privilege. Im white and I grew up in two households--one middle-middle the other upper-middle class, and I know what you mean about it because I've been on the knife's edge of it in a kind of social stratification schizophrenia. It's about detecting past poverty and judging people harshly based on it. Let's face it, America hates the poor more than the ultra rich. Because they've been bodysnatched since the rich control culture through the mass media.
Btw, this may not apply because i'm in the IT field but every job I've found was through craigslist. Seriously, I got to point where I said 'fuck it' to monster, dice, simplyhired, etc all these onine career sites. I've also gotten some interest through linkedin, but craigs was the way to go for me. I would never consider the government to be competent to do anything like get me a job.
There are temporary agencies for manual work--I know that's not necessarily what you want but sometimes you have to just eat crow to build a work history and references. I moved to portland oregon on a whim one time, misread the room entirely thinking it was good for IT at the time. That was the case, months prior to the move, but when I got there they had just laid off 10k people at Intel so anyone with Intel on their resume is going to kick my ass. So I had to work in a movie theater while applying for IT jobs and not get hired. While mentally preparing phone interviews I was being told how to take out trash (seriously?) by an 18yr old manager, doing a job I had when I was 16 but at this time in my early 30s. Portland was awesome but I couldn't for the life of me get a job. I moved again to boulder colorado and had a job at a startup for months that never paid me and I moonlighted as a grocer stocking products at 7.50 an hour just to (barely) make rent in a tiny place shared with a female roommate. Eventually I got a job that opened doors and worked in my career there for 7 yrs. Then I had a medical issue meltdown but that's another story.