As someone who writes about workforce and management issues, this terrible recession is yielding so many things to write about that I hardly know where to start. Here are a few workforce stories and issues that caught my eye today:

• The COBRA subsidy is a big hit, at least with unemployed workers. This hardly qualifies as a shocker, but the COBRA provision in the big stimulus package  signed by President Barack Obama is going over very well with workers, according to a story in today’s issue of The Arizona Republic. We all expected that, of course, but the big “news” for me in this story was the estimate that 20 to 25 percent of laid-off workers will now take COBRA coverage, according to Linda Wurzelbacher, president of Basic Western USA, which administers COBRA plans on behalf of large employers. That’s up from the 10 to 12 percent of workers who took advantage before the subsidy in the stimulus bill was passed.

Of course, there are still a lot of questions about the new COBRA rules and what HR people need to make this all work, but that’s where we come in. Workforce Management is hosting a webcast next Tuesday, March 10, on this very topic with attorney Edie Lindsay of Troutman Sanders. The cost is $99 and it should be a highly instructive session for anyone struggling with questions about COBRA in light of the stimulus bill.

• Unemployment numbers are bad and getting worse. February’s unemployment report showed that 651,000 more jobs were lost last month, with the national unemployment rate jumping to 8.1 percent.

This is bad news, no? Well, that’s how I view it, although I had to laugh at a headline on one recruiting industry Web site that tried to claim that “February job losses are bad, but no worse than expected.” That’s one way to spin it, although this is the same Web site that had commentary last year claiming that the media was largely to blame for the negative economic news and that the media was “rooting for a recession.” As one of my editors is fond of saying, these guys need to wake up and smell the recession, especially since the “real” number of people out of work may actually be a whole lot higher.

• What happens when you’re 55 and you lose a $100,000 job? It’s a good question and a frightening prospect, but if you’re New Yorker Lois Draegin, it means you work hard to learn some new skills to make you employable—as an intern. It’s a fascinating sign-of-the-economic-times tale in today’s Los Angeles Times, and it just goes to show you how far people will go when they are desperate and out of work, as so many are these days.

• A hot new work trend is the “portfolio career.” I’ve known lots of people who could juggle a lot of different jobs, but a story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer actually made sense of this growing trend. “Career coach Pam Dibbs has noticed a new phenomenon in the wake of layoffs sweeping the Puget Sound region: People are embracing the portfolio career. ‘Instead of one full-time job, [people are] choosing to work two or more part-time jobs and/or freelancing in two or three areas. It challenges our conventional thinking about careers, yet offers big rewards for those comfortable with some risk,’ said Dibbs, who works for the nonprofit Centerpoint Institute for Life and Career Renewal in Seattle.”

It may not be the right thing for everyone, but Dibbs told the newspaper that she likes the flexibility a portfolio career gives her. She added this sobering observation that seems all too true with each new month of massive layoff notices: “The whole idea of having a job for life just isn’t the same as it used to be.”

Get my latest blog updates and workforce management news by following me on Twitter.