There have been a lot of reports about which group of people have been hit hardest by the recession. Men have definitely been hit disproportionately hard by job losses. In fact, men held 71.9% of the jobs lost since the recession began, hurt by mass layoffs in construction and manufacturing, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I've even written about how more households are relying on female breadwinners after husbands were laid off.

But single women -- many of whom are mothers or caregivers -- who get laid off don't have a second income to rely on while they hunt for a new job.

In a fairly idiotic bit of tabloid-style hysteria, CNNMoney asks the question "Are you committing career suicide?" by taking a low-paying job because you can't find anything better.

According to staff writer Jessica Dickler, many laid-off workers are taking steep paycuts to make ends meet, often working at entry-level or menial jobs to put food on the table: "But a smaller paycheck could push you back a rung in the in salary ladder, and make it that much harder to get back to where you were."

In this "Your Job Will Come" podcast, WalletPop's Aaron Crowe talks with Francis Larkin, a senior product manager at SimplyHIred.com, a job board Web site that helps people search for jobs, about how to spot fake job postings.

I wrote about the site in October, and was impressed by its various filters to help narrow job searches.

Among the tips that Larkin suggests for spotting fake postings on job boards are to not apply for jobs that require you to move money from one bank account to another, which is essentially money laundering, and looking for misspellings in a job post.

Some unemployed people are so anxious to work that they're volunteering for jury duty and the minimal pay that goes with it, according to a New York Post story.

As someone who recently spent four boring and frustrating days sitting on a jury, the $30 that I'll get wasn't worth the hassle and won't make me volunteer for it, no matter how underemployed I am.

Other than the civic duty involved, it's a waste of time as far as getting paid. My recent jury duty netted me $1.53 per hour.

Besides, if I was a lawyer I wouldn't want a juror who was there for the money and would be likely to extend deliberations a few more days for some extra pay.

Michigan State University's College Employment Research Institute's latest graduate job outlook is pretty bleak.

This year's college graduates have a mind-boggling 40% fewer job prospects, and jobs for candidates with bachelor's degrees are expected to drop by 1% in 2010.

Eighty percent of employers won't be offering higher starting salaries, and 8% will lower starting pay by an average of 5%. Twelve percent will increase starting pay by an average of just 3%.

Signing bonuses and performance bonuses are also on the decline -- understandable given that there is so little competition to woo recent grads.

Adding to employment woes for recent college graduates is the 10.2% national unemployment rate -- which means that young people will have to compete with older candidates with years of experience and families to feed. As the rising number of unemployed workers cycle through the unemployment system, they'll become increasingly desperate for income, making the situation even worse for recent grads.

So what's a grad to do? One short-term solution may be to pour energy into finding freelance and temp opportunities. Independent contractors often lament the lack of benefits but for young single people, it's just not that important.

You can buy your own health insurance for a few hundred dollars a month. Indeed, young single people who work at full-time jobs with benefits are, in effect, subsidizing their co-workers who have large families and consequently large health insurance costs.

Another idea for recent grads: recognize that the job you work in the crappiest job market in a long, long time might not have a lot to do with your long-term career. If all you can get is an unpaid internship in the field of your choice and find yourself working six nights a week at WalMart to make ends meet, that won't kill you.

For the last year or so, I've been conducting an experiment. Now, don't hold me to the scientific method because it's been a really informal experiment. But the results have been both scary, enlightening and not very surprising. Cutting to the chase, for almost exactly the last 12 months, I've been applying for various jobs via one of the popular online job search sites.

Some background first. I'm self-employed. I write about politics, I produce videos, I make cartoons. But last year when the market tanked and the really serious recession began, I began to seriously worry that my small business work might not endure through the economic slump. So in a panic, I started up a profile at the job search site, uploaded my resume and began to look around.

Fortunately, I've been able to keep busy enough to pay the mortgage and haven't needed to take an actual job somewhere. But just for curiosity's sake, once my studio and writing work appeared to smooth out, I decided to keep sending out applications through the job site for the balance of this year. Just to see what would happen. The experiment.

Here's the result. In a full 12 months, I wasn't called in for a single interview.

No calls. No emails. No interviews. Nothing.

It turns out that the bad economy is great for coin-op laundromats. Because, though houses with laundry rooms will be foreclosed upon, washing machines and dryers will break and be too expensive to fix, and sometimes, we lose our homes entirely, we still need clean clothes.

Long the refuge for college students, the young creative class, jobless, homeless and others not in possession of a few Whirlpools, laundromats are now flourishing. And the middle class is showing up, too, pride and laundry baskets in hand.

By all appearances, this would be a great time to get into the business of laundry; the Wall Street Journal recently profiled one such man, Brian McChristian, laid off in early 2008 and now running the Austin, Texas Community Coin Laundry; and he's one of the lucky ones. His business is doing well, thanks in part to his efforts to keep his parking lot and facility free of anyone not doing laundry.

"Mean" Joe Greene finally got what was coming to him -- and it wasn't a blindside tackle. Thirty years after appearing in one of television's most iconic ads, the former Pittsburgh Steelers player and four-time Super Bowl champion was finally given an award for his part in a 1979 Coca-Cola commercial that has been cited as one of the best in television advertising history.

The ad shows the defensive tackle limping off the field and into the locker room, when a young fan stops Greene to tell him just how great he is and offers him a bottle of Coke. After a bit of coaxing, Greene accepts the drink and shows his gratitude by flipping his jersey to the youthful admirer. The ad concludes with the brand's famous tagline at the time, "Have a Coke and a smile."

When the holidays roll around, your first instinct is to take a break from the job search. After all, everyone's thinking about family gatherings, vacations, parties and gift shopping.

But Aaron Crowe, WalletPop editor specializing in careers and the job search, and Duncan Mathison, coauthor of "Unlock the Hidden Job Market: 6 Steps to a Succcesful Job Search When Times Are Tough" (FT Press), say don't stop. They offer tips on how to stand out from the crowd without being a holiday grump.

One of the worst things about the recession may turn out to be one of the best things about it: The layoffs are creating a new workforce -- the part-time workforce.

Cobbling together enough part-time jobs to add up to full-time work is becoming the skill set of the new part-time workforce.

A new economy is being formed, or at least expanded upon, as more laid off workers join the ranks of freelancers and contract workers who don't get benefits such as paid vacation and sick days, but get paid for each project they complete.

If some Democrats in Illinois have their way, a prison in the rural, western part of the state could become home to detainees currently housed at Guantanamo Bay.

The move has local leaders seeing dollar signs. Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, both Democrats, told the Daily Herald "the potential sale could be a once-in-a-lifetime economic opportunity to help create about 3,000 jobs in the economically depressed area."

WalletPop's Lan Nguyen chats with Mitch Free, founder and CEO of MFG.com, a global online marketplace for manufacturing. A college dropout, Free started his career as a machinist. That background helped fuel his idea to create a Web-based market for manufacturing in 1999. He shares his story and what it took to make it.

Jobs in the clean technology industry are growing twice as fast as the national average. So that's where the jobs are. Walletpop spoke with Ron Pernick, co-founder of West Coast-based Clean Edge and the author of The Clean Tech Revolution, to find out what these jobs are, how to land one, and, most importantly, how much they pay.

Here are some highlights from Clean Edge's recent report, Clean Tech Job Trends 2009, which I highly recommend you read if you want to know if this industry is for you. There are lots of resources for clean tech job trainings, education and job search engines, after the jump.

According to the report, jobs vary from accountant -- there's one we've heard before -- to wind turbine technician. From the report, here's a sample of jobs and their salaries:

• Hardware Design Engineer, Smart Grid $87,700 Mid-Level; requires Engineering Bachelor's
• Welder, Cutter, Solderer, or Brazer, Wind Power; salary: $50,300 Mid-Level; requires: High School/Associate's Degree
• Wind Turbine Technician, Wind Power; salary: $52,600 Entry-Level; requires: Bachelor's Degree
• Construction Superintendent, Wind Power; salary: $74,000 Senior-Level; requires: Bachelor's Degree
• Field Service Engineer, Wind Power; salary: $62,400 Mid-Level; requires: Engineering Bachelor's Degree

But can these jobs be outsourced?

In this "Your Job Will Come" podcast, WalletPop's Aaron Crowe talks with Abraham Twerski about his new book, "Without a Job, Who Am I?" and how to get back your self esteem after being laid off.

Among the tips he gives are to spend some time mourning after a job loss and to not let your job define who you are.

The world has a new poker champ -- whose life story may inspire people to pursue their dreams of being a professional gambler -- but don't let the tale of Joe Cada fool you into following his career path.

Cada, 21, won the $8.55 million jackpot in the World Series of Poker, making him the youngest winner of the event.

Cada started playing poker on the Internet when he was 16, and he was so good at math that he later dropped out of community college to pursue a career as a professional gambler.

It's not a career path that Cada recommends anyone follow, although speaking to the Detroit Free Press from his high-roller, 9,000-square-foot suite at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas is an odd place in which to be doling out that type of career advice.