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Joining the job queue: 'I feel increasing fear and desperation'

Tess Cullity, 31, Melbourne. Children’s book editor

I was the junior fiction editor at a children’s publishing company. It’s a relatively small, tight-knit team and we had an editor who was largely in charge of each age range.

I imagine when they had to make staffing cuts they just cut the team back, and they probably also picked me because I was the most recently employed editor.

The bad news came in late March. It was really soon after lockdown. Everyone had warned me, “Prove yourself because there’s a really high likelihood that there are going to be significant cuts soon.”

I didn’t take that very seriously. I thought, kids were all stuck at home with their parents desperately trying to homeschool. I thought people would still be buying children’s books. I didn’t worry too much. And then I got a big shock.

Jobseeker took a month to come through after I made the application. I had to wait for a month from after the date of my redundancy package.

But I had very easy proof of the end of my employment that I could just send through and I had friends who had a much harder time.

I’m a pretty shrewd single mum who knows they need a backup plan or three, so I had some savings to tide me over. That meant I wasn’t eligible for the rental supplement because I had more than $5,000 in savings.

I started to get pretty sweaty palms when they described the ParentsNext program, which sounds really stressful and scary

Tess Cullity

It also meant the real estate agent wasn’t willing to reduce my rent. That continues to be tricky.

My approach to spending is based on living off almost nothing for a long time. My rate of pay as an editor was $29 an hour and I only worked four days a week because I’m a single mum. I have structured my life around not really buying new things.

At the moment, I’m just making no savings and living from Centrelink payment to Centrelink payment. But the payments, as they are, are just sufficient to live my life.

If jobseeker is halved in September it wouldn’t even cover my rent. It could get to the point where I would have to move. That would be gut-wrenching.

Right now I have a very secure, cosy home that’s all set up for looking after a two-year-old. I have an established vegetable garden. Moving would really suck. And it is a possibility.

It’s so stressful imagining the payments being reduced that I feel that if I were to do the K10 test while taking that into consideration, my score would be so much lower than without that as a consideration.

The thought that payments could be reduced is so stressful that it makes me less effective at looking for a job or being a functional member of the community.

The truth is, I was working in my dream job as an editor. And I feel really sad about the potential demise of my career. Really, really sad. Children’s publishing is really hard to get into – and I got into it. I loved it and I loved our authors. I loved the books that we made. I felt proud of the cultural contribution we were making.

I think most editors have some kind of imposter syndrome, and I definitely used to have that. My insecurities about not being good enough to do my job were amplified in a big way after I lost my job. I had to counsel myself of the probably more realistic reasons why I was made redundant.

So far I’ve had two phone calls with a job centre and they’ve both been OK.

In the first one, I was guided through what would happen at the three-month mark and at the six-month mark if I wasn’t able to find a job in that time frame.

I started to get pretty sweaty palms when they described the ParentsNext program, which sounds really stressful and scary.

They told me there were going to be compulsory activities and if I didn’t do them my payments would be cut or suspended. The compulsory activities are things like going to Storytime at the library with my son. That makes my skin crawl.

Obviously I’m very passionate about childhood literacy, so it’s kind of ironic. But I have to do that at certain times and it’s compulsory? What does that have to do with my ability to find a job?

We are facing a significant recession. Any job is a good idea and I’m applying for anything I can get. Mostly social work, disability support work, but also jobs in communications or anywhere where my project management skills might be applicable.

Like most people, right now I just feel extreme uncertainty and increasing fear. I feel this desperation to get my hands on just about any job I can.

When I’m writing a job application, the honest cover letter is, “Dear so and so, I’m looking for security and a liveable wage.”

As told to Luke Henrique-Gomes

• Do you have a story about being unemployed for the first time due to the Covid-19 pandemic? Email luke.henriques-gomes@theguardian.com