...well, mostly unemployed.
Here's the situation:
27 year old US citizen living in China. Engaged. BA and JD degree from really good (Top 3/Top 10) but really expensive schools. $65,000 in student loans (at 6.8% - discount to 6.55% due to automatic payments) from law school. Licensed to practice law in New York State. Thank God that I had some help from my parents, and some merit scholarship help (chose my top 10 school over a top 6 school due to the significantly lower total cost), so it isn't as much as some, but definitely still a seemingly insurmountable amount for me at this point in my life. Couldn't find a job after graduating from law school (it really hurt my career that I didn't get a 2L Summer Associate position with a big firm), so did a 1-year fellowship at a non-profit in China making $30,000 per year. The fellowship is up, and there's no role for me at the nonprofit. If I wanted to stay, I would have to take a huge pay cut (!) to $25,000 per year or so, which is the local salary level, and the job has no career growth at all.
Fluent in Chinese...but it's not like 10 or even 5 years ago anymore. All the young expats I know have had huge problems getting their careers started here, unless they started their own business or somehow jumped to the mid-level in their career. Multinationals are replacing expat roles with P.R.C. citizens, and Chinese companies still don't know what to do with Westerners, except token white guys used for "face' roles. I'm not white.
I'm not totally clueless, so have been networking and interviewing pretty aggressively this year. I got a lot of leads, and advanced pretty far in many interview processes (including 2nd, 3rd, and 4th rounds, so it's not like I totally can't interview), both for BIGLAW in Asia and related industries (risk consultancies, finance, etc.), and for more entrepreneurial stuff (director of China country office for major U.S. university, head of new office for Chinese college admissions company)...but I haven't gotten a single f****** offer. I've been looking in the U.S. too, but I've been getting even less leads. But that may be because I'm here, not there.
I actually got a verbal job offer (after a rigorous interview process) in the financial sector...but it got withdrawn because I'm not a Chinese citizen. That felt bad.
Fiancee is a (Chinese) attorney making $60,000 per year, but has hit a career ceiling at her firm, and is looking for a change.
I've gotten into Mustachianism this year, and have been saving and scrimping like a demon. In addition to paying off my student loans at $800 per month (sometimes a little more here and there) I have about $13,000 USD, split between the Schwab Broad Market ETF and AAPL, which I bought on the way from the mid-400s to when it hit ~400, so I have a slight profit, beyond 6.8% (my guaranteed Internal Rate of Return from repaying student loans) already. Could sell it and dump it into the ETF as well, but I think that my investment thesis has not yet changed, and also I may want to wait for the long-term capital gains period. I've also recently been moonlighting doing some teaching of legal writing and business English, making about $40/per hour, but have only been able to find work for about 2 hours per week.
I just feel totally lost and in need of some honest advice. Everyone I meet in real life says that with my background I should be able to find someone good, but I never end up actually getting anything. I know that for me in my stage of life right now the important thing is accumulation, and I've worked really hard on keeping costs at rock bottom. So I need a good job where I can develop my career and start making money, but I haven't been getting one.
I'm waiting to hear back from some places in the middle of August that I'm in various stages of interviewing at, but I just feel so futile, and am wondering if I should completely change directions or professions. I majored in Chinese in college and then went to law school because all my research indicated that doing so would set me up really well for a career doing U.S.-China work, but I was hit with the double whammy of the legal job market tanking and the huge trend towards localization in China (which is starting to seriously affect even the executive level - I meet experienced 40-50 year olds who can't find a job here - in seemingly the world's most dynamic economy, all the time). I try not to make excuses for myself and do what I'm supposed to, but life has been hard. My fiancee and I have had to put marriage and life on hold for so long now.
If I had to work or die tomorrow, I could find a job doing admissions consulting, test prep, or teaching English and probably make $25,000-$30,000 per year, probably more if I continue teaching at night too. But there's no future in that. You make pretty much the same salary 5 or 10 years out as you do at the beginning.
I've been learning more about entrepreneurship and talking to people who have started their own online income stream and the like recently as well. I now hate the idea of basing my life on what any given employer or boss thinks, and like the idea of being able to write my own ticket no matter what. My mindset is far different than when I entered law school and was set on climbing the ladder, a ladder I failed to get on. So...I could try to develop something myself, and I've been brainstorming ideas pretty hard. I've started writing some e-books just for fun, and could do more in this area if I had to. But this will take time to make decent money, and I have pretty hefty loans. I know the age of making lots of money just by blogging is over. The real money is now in leveraging that blog to be an expert, and leveraging that expertise to make money. But again, takes time, and I have to pay student loans every month. My fiancee has been so supportive this past year but I hate continuing to be a bum and putting an undue burden on her financially (she pays most of the rent and bills, although I do help out).
My visa is expiring so I'm going back to the U.S. in the beginning of September. If I actually get one of the positions I'm interviewing in August I'll renew my visa and get a new work permit then and then come back to China. If not, I have to start looking in the U.S. again, and I know the legal job market there sucks. If I had to retool by getting a CCNA or something like that I would do that, but I don't want to make the same mistake and just enter another saturated market. I know the market in the U.S. for anything legal related is also totally swamped. I talked to people at FINRA, and that used to be a reliable safety valve for a legal career, but have had no luck.
The problem with law is just that there seems to be no real way to set yourself apart as a young lawyer, since all the profession wants is the exact right pedigree and experience. I've networked, gotten to know a lot of lawyers, some rather well, blogged, done some writing, and none of it seems to have made any real difference. Maybe this work got me more interviews but it hasn't led to offers.
There are other problems in my life like health insurance and the like, but it all comes down to not having a job.
P.S.
When I meet with people for advice or leads in real life I am definitely not this honest or forthright, and try to be much more professional and lawyerly. It's just that...I feel I need to get this off my chest and get some honest advice about my situation. Lawyers that I talk to just tell me to "keep on trying" and don't really tell me anything productive. I ask them for referrals and they mostly do give them to me, and sometimes this leads to an interview, but nothing seems to come out of it in the end.
EDIT:
Modified to add more details.