🚨Advice on switching jobs during a pandemic

Hey everyone. I hope you are all doing well and staying safe. I’ve been toying around with this inner debate for months and want to gauge what people think. And possibly see some perspectives I haven’t thought of yet.

So i am a day care teacher for a city college. I’ve been there for 3-4 years and this was supposed to be the year I left and pursued becoming a paraprofessional. I have been certified for over a year and would like to utilize this certification and gain experience before it expires in 2022. But the pandemic hit in March and my center has been closed since. We are lucky to be able to work remotely throughout the whole shelter in place and even to now. We engage with the kids and families over zoom. Send resources, do professional developments and webinars, write reflections and make lesson plans for when we reopen. We’ve been banking on repoint this September when we got word in July that it was a possibility but until then they have decided to put us on a month by month contract. At the end of the month they will re-evaluate the budget to see if they could rehire us. It’s been very stressful to have to wait until the last four days of the month if you still have an income. We went from having a contract that guaranteed us for the school year to one that guarantees us to the end of the month.

And then we found out they have no plans to open our daycare center as classes are remote so parents/students won’t need us. (They clearly never met a working and full time student and parent of a toddler) so now the college has more motive to lay us off as we can not take care of children through a screen and I get that. On top of that my fiancé and I locked into our venue in February and worked hard to get our minimum down from 60 to 25 so if I did lose my job we wouldn’t be in debt to the venue for 10,000 dollars and could use the nest egg we have saved to get us by. I am also in NYC where the mayor has basically decided to cut 22,000 city workers and guess what? I am a damn city worker and I have little to no seniority. So on top of not knowing if I have a job at the end of the month the mayor is cutting city employees which puts a double target on my back.

This stress has caused chronic insomnia, loss of appetite etc. I would never leave my job unless I had another job secure and contract signed. My fear is switching in the midst of a pandemic. I’ve experienced being the last one in and first one out due to budget cuts and it sucked even at 17 and it’s 10 years later. I am scared to lack even more seniority and be in this situation again. I have also been home for 6 months and the thought of going back outside and working frightens me, but I believe that the longer I stay in the worst my fear will get.

I am asking for your opinion and what you all would do if you were in this situation. I am scared to lose my chance of unemployment if a new job falls through, but I am also scared to find out at the last 3 days of the month that I don’t have a job the next month.

Sorry for this novel. I do appreciate you reading this far.