If you're currently unemployed in Australia, is job hunting really worth all the aggravation? Aren’t you better off taking a break for 18 months and living cheap on the beach somewhere in Aus or Asia?

Being a job-seeker in the current market ain’t much fun. Vacancies have dwindled to almost nothing and most of them are in boring sectors like compliance and product control, or in third-tier banks.

Even if you get an interview, the recruitment process is long, soul-destroying and riddled with danger. These days just about everyone in the bank is involved in grilling candidates, from local HR to New York HQ. And more and more interviewees are finding that the vacancy they applied for is suddenly pulled half-way through the recruitment process.

If you do land a job, your troubles are far from over. It’s not so unusual in the current market for newbies to get the sack after just a few weeks. “Last in first out” has never rung so true.

So why put yourself through all of the above, especially if you have enough cash to tide you over until 2010? Taking time-out won’t even damage your CV, so what's the downside?

Beach or bank? Let us know below.