Every Halloween, newspapers, domestic life magazines and blogs are filled with clever ways… Every Halloween, newspapers, domestic life magazines and blogs are filled with clever ways to make an innovative costume without spending much money. The classic example is the bunch of grapes costume, which only requires several purple balloons and tape.

Nowadays the economy is rough and the employment market is not looking so good. Not unlike a cash-strapped parent of a candy-loving kid, it’s time we get creative. This piece is intended to get those very juices of invention flowing to show how, with just a little abstract thinking and elbow grease, you can throw together a new line of work. I present you with: Creative Job Alternatives for a Questionable Economy.

1) Economics Blog Herald — With each new day, we discover a new depth to the levels of the financial mismanagement and ruin of America. Dire forecasts multiply as analysts and experts pour over records and statistics to fight over the subtleties of economic thought. Trends are described, lines are drawn through dots. It’s all quite an elaborate affair.

However, it should become apparent that there is no way for a busy man to keep track of all the invocations of Keynes, all the dissections of the failures of the incipient stimulus package. Enter the Economics Blog Herald.

All you need to do to take up this post is find a sufficiently rich or sufficiently dilettante client and pitch yourself as a human economic blog aggregator. With candy-gram aplomb and knickers, you will run the latest dispatches from Greg Mankiw, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok to your ward’s door. In no time, your employer will be fluently versed in a dialogue he only partially understands and you will have a steady income.

2) Electro Hip-Hop Artist — Even in dire straits, people will never stop listening to music. What makes a life of fearful unemployment and bailout anxiety worth living if you can’t do it with ear buds and a steady four-to-the-floor beat? Music is non-cyclical, my friends, and that means it’s a cash cow.

Now, I’m sure everyone’s first concern is, ‘Wouldn’t everyone become a musician if it was easy to do?’ Most have watched VH1 documentaries and American Idol enough to know that it is tough to break into the music industry.

However, these stars want to succeed in pop music, a field that, by its very name, demands you become popular. Not so with electro hip-hop. You just need one hipster blog, out of a field of thousands, to deem you the next big thing, and before you know it you will be banging in club sets between Spank Rock and Ninjasonik.

Don’t worry about musical talent — as long as you can rhyme female anatomy with Pavement lyrics you will be fine. Get a fitted Pirates cap, some medium tight jeans and a neon T-shirt, and you are ready for success.

3) Scruff McGruff Ponzi Scheme Perpetrator- Scruff McGruff outfits are not easy to come by. The costume alone costs about $1500 and will only be sold to recognized law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, you have to obtain approval from the National Crime Prevention Council for every appearance of the lovable dog. It is so legendarily difficult for private individuals to get the rights to McGruff that I am sure few readers haven’t dreamt of what they could do with the rights to such a costume.

But for this employment opportunity, you don’t need the costume at all. First, move to a rural area and set up a Web site claiming that you have obtained a McGruff through the support of a local law enforcement agency. Then offer nearby charity organizations, schools and safety coalitions the opportunity to buy into a McGruff profit-share in which everyone donates an up-front fee and successive regular payments to the McGruff umbrella organization for the right to have McGruff at their events and access to McGruff funds raised by the tough-on-crime canine.

As the demand for the costume will surely be less than the crime-dog-crazy groups buying into the scheme will foresee, a few well crafted excuses will get you out of the public appearance hang-up. As to the payouts, rural charity groups rarely have large, emergency expenses. Therefore, when a group tries to withdraw a small amount, pay it out of the principal. As long as enough groups join, you will take a bite out of revenue indeed.

4) Endearing Tramp — As Eddie Vedder once sang, ‘I don’t mind stealin’ bread from the mouths of decadence.’ Neither should you. The world has a proud history of morally-ambiguous thieves: The Artful Dodger, Jean Valjean, Robin Hood. It’s high time you joined this tradition and started snatching loaves of asiago bread from Panera and scones from Starbucks. Likely, a musical will be written about you. What could be better?

Hopefully, these suggestions will help you in the new market. All you need is a little imagination.

E-mail Erik at [email protected].