As WWW mentioned earlier the cold chill has indeed arrived throughout the aviation community with few if any regions of the globe unaffected. I can't understand why after so many signs and voices that forewarned of this difficult time people ignored it and even now the penny still hasn't dropped. Going for a FI ticket just means you're making a smaller mistake than the price you paid for basic training but another mistake nevertheless.
How long would the Flight INstructor's course really take? Once there are signs of a recovery you can rush out and get the rating thus safeguarding your invetsment. To throw money on it at present is just silly. Recall that the newly acquired rating means you're already at or near test standard rather than decaying over months possibly years and then finding yourself out of standard and emotionally demotivated. Come on give yourself a break and stop being your own worst enemy.
Flying is not exempt from social and economic realities the airline heads are very integrated with the economic landscape and aren't distracted by the whole 'naive dream' side of aviation. You need to get a firmer understanding of that aspect rather than ratings for now. Even if you get a job now how long will you keep it before being let go...? Remember the airline operator might already realise that they need someone for a couple of months and "oh well we can dump them at the end of that, who's knows but it sure won't be our problem", that's how they see it. You have got yourselves sucked into a poverty situation and the way things are going the options to make a living in alternative industries is slowly evaporating too. The issue of recruitment shouldn't be first on your list (after all if the employment activity is geared in the opposite direction then why are you expending such efforts to follow it).
This indeed is difficult reading and I take no joy from that at all, if anything I would dearly love to hear that my peers have all got jobs or at least some hope of something aviation related in the pipeline but alas that's not necessarily true at present.
"Get in from the cold before you freeze".... Remember how you were taught to avoid aviation gremlins and pitfalls during training. What about the bad weather issues of just calm down and wait for the weather to clear and then go, no good up there wishing to be on the ground? That is no different from the job hunt, we can't control the weather it happens to us but we can control how best to handle it and thus reduce the damage upon ourselves, our finances and families.
There should be no-one who claims that post training they'll never fly again because you all will, at least privately and with your quality of training you can step up to some exotic machinery that's for sure along with a logbook full of decent hours and alot of respectable experience. However the issue of employment well that's another matter but after all it's just a job, don't kill yourself over it. Come on chaps and chapesses a touch discipline please.