Adopting a glass half full philosophy to life has never been trickier.
The redundancy announcements keep on coming, savings are looking increasingly uncertain and the green shoots of recovery have yet to sprout.
However, some optimistic souls seem determined to make the best of a bad situation, with increasing numbe
rs using their redundancy package to fund a grown-up gap year. The thinking is with hundreds of applicants ready to pounce on every newly advertised job, the employment market is going to take time to recover and while it does taking the chance to go travelling could be money well spent.
Lucy Moore, originally from Leeds, was made redundant from a telecommunications firm in London a few months ago and has recently used part of her redundancy package to pay for a round the world ticket.
"I have been applying for other jobs, but not had any luck," says the 35-year-old. "There's nothing more depressing than waiting for the post and finding another pile of rejection letters. For the last few years I have been saving up to buy a house, but most of the mortgage deals want such a huge deposit that the little I have put aside won't cover it.
"It was a big decision to use the money to go travelling, but if I don't do it now I may never do it. The plan is to go away for at least six months, possibly a whole year. By the time I'm ready to come back I just hope that things have improved.
"I'm single, I don't have any children, so apart from nerves, there's nothing to keep me here."
In the last six months, travel companies which organise volunteering holidays have seen a 50 per cent rise in inquiries, many of them from those made redundant, and applications for working holiday visas to Australia are up by a third.
"Many people when they first contact us worry that they have left it too late," says a spokesman for the company Gap Year For Grown Ups.
"Certainly gap years have traditionally been associated with students heading off to explore the world either before or after university. However, for many people this is simply not an option and further down the line they feel they have missed their chance.
"That's certainly not the case. There are actually many benefits to travelling later in life. When you find yourself in unfamiliar situations a little bit of life experience goes a long way and people who chose to volunteer abroad often find they have skills coming into play that they never knew they had.
"For a lot of people who suddenly find they have a little pot of money and some time on their hands, the chance to travel is also the chance to fulfil a dream and taking time out to see the world is often the break they need before going back to full-time employment."
With redundancy not just confined to blue-collar workers and the finance and banking sectors shedding thousands of jobs, the economic downturn has also seen the birth of a new breed of traveller. Dubbed the "extrava-gapper", many well-paid professionals, who walked away with a handsome redundancy package, are avoiding the normal gap-year destinations and going to more-expensive spots such as Japan and Italy.
"Over the last nine months we've seen a surge in clients asking us for advice and support in organising extended career breaks and we expect this trend to continue well into 2009," says managing director Will Holroyd, of lifestyle management company WhiteConcierge.
"For many professionals finding themselves out of work or dissatisfied with their career progression, this is a great opportunity to take stock and to experience other cultures and lifestyles. The majority of these extrava-gappers have the resources to enjoy a
comfortable trip as opposed to backpacking around the regular student trails.
"As the recession grips the UK harder, we expect to see many more clients turn an unfortunate experience into a very positive and exciting one before returning to work when the economy eventually picks up."
