A job doesn't have to be paid to be a job

These days, there is so much discussion about employment and jobs. People are usually put into two categories, those that presently have a job and those that do not have a job. If you have a job, you are considered either a full-time or part-time employee depending upon the number of hours that you work. If you do not have a job then you are considered to be unemployed. But what is often left unnoticed is that a job does not necessarily have to be paid to be considered a job.

For example, if you are working as a volunteer for the American Red Cross or your local YMCA, you are still working there. It is true that when you volunteer at an organization, you are not paid. But you are still getting experience and learning new things every day that you are working at the place that you are. It is still considered a job because you are out of the house and in public and you are working somewhere. You are doing something productive with your time. There is a reason why it is called volunteer work. There is the word work at the end of it so based on that fact alone, volunteer work should be counted as a job. And when you do volunteer work somewhere, you should include that in your resume to cover any employment gaps to make you more marketable as a person.

Let’s consider another example of what a job can be. If you are working as an intern for a company, you are involved in an internship job. Internships usually are not paid but they provide valuable experience and skills in your industry and sometimes they can lead to a full time job with the company. So do you see how this works? You do not need to be getting paid for something to be considered a job. Society has a very limited view of what a job is and what a job is not. Society only judges someone by the amount of money that they make while leaving out the fact that you can have a job whether you get paid or not.

If you have just started a website, in the beginning you are not getting paid but you are at least working towards something. You are most probably working hard to design your website to make it more user friendly for people to view your website. You are involved with creating content that will be considered attractive to the general public. Starting and working on a website takes lots of hard work, time and effort. So would that not be considered a job? Of course it would if you are willing to ignore what society thinks and look at things from a different perspective. In many cases people create websites in order to generate income. As you are working on improving the website, you are working towards the goal of earning money and that is still considered a job.

Also, you gain so much experience just by living life and living life can be considered a job too because when you are living, you are learning new things, experiencing new things, meeting new people, and hopefully growing as a human being. Life is not just about earning massive amounts of cash but that is definitely a part of life. A job can be defined in more than one way other than the limited way that society defines it.