When Peter Shanley lost his job in California’s Silicon Valley last December, he put his redundancy payment in the bank and bought himself a $3,000 racing bicycle. If he was going to be unemployed, he said, he might as well enjoy it.

Another victim of corporate cutbacks took off on a tour of northern Mongolia, staying in nomadic huts for $3 a night. One group of newly jobless Californians formed a beach volleyball team. Lynn Parramore, a freelance New York travel writer whose commissions evaporated, decided to learn the ukulele.

They are calling it “fun-employment”, a defiant riposte to the miseries of global economic turmoil. Once the shock of losing their jobs wears off, a new breed of determined American fun-seekers are turning their back on the remorseless grind of hunting for non-existent work. It may be the worst recession of their lives, but that is no reason not to party.

“Moving on from your current employer can be scary,” noted Rebecca Wiedmeyer, who writes an advice column for the newly unemployed. “But you can still find fabulousness on a rough economic ride.”

The swelling ranks of the so-called funemployed are in stark contrast to the shrinking US economy, which shed 345,000 jobs last month and has an unemployment rate approaching 10%. Although the pace of contraction has slowed, a record 27% of America’s 14.5m jobless have been out of work for six months or longer.

For most of those workers, the recession is proving to be no fun at all as families are swamped by mortgage and credit card debts and have little prospect of returning to their previous income levels.

Yet surprising numbers of intrepid former wage slaves are making the most of a work-free summer to travel, take up new hobbies, surf or simply lie on the beach.

“I could sit in my apartment and worry and make useless phone calls, but it’s hot and the air-conditioning costs money,” said David Marshall, a New Jersey carpenter who lost his job with a building contractor in March. “So it’s actually cheaper for me to spend my day at the beach.”

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that hordes of local jobless were “opting to hit the beach instead of punch the clock”. Others are boasting about taking “paycations” – a vacation from pay.

Inevitably, the fun phenomenon has given birth to an internet industry. The funemployed write blogs, issue regular up-dates on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and devote entire websites to helpful advice and encouragement on how to make the most of the US government’s $475 weekly dole cheque.

One Twitterer recently tweeted: “Funemployment is great for catching up on reading.” Another added: “Averaging three rounds of golf a week plus hockey and bball [baseball]. Who needs work?”

One website has taken to listing “stuff unemployed people like”. It is already up to item number 99 on a list of mostly hedonistic pursuits that include “guilt-tripping friends into buying the drinks”, “starting the weekend early”, “buying Perrier with food stamps” and “dreaming about winning the lottery”.

Parramore, the ukulele player, joined with two of her unemployed New York friends to set up Recessionwire, a website promoting “the upside of the downturn”. Among the recent trends it reported was cheaper cocktails at strip clubs.

Others have found a more cerebral pleasure in their enforced escape from the rat-race. The funemployed seem mostly to be twenty- or thirty-somethings who have not yet settled into marital or parental responsibilities. For these young workers, several psychologists have concluded, losing a job can still be a blow to the ego but also provides easier opportunities to re-evaluate priorities or escape from a rut.

Alexis Mansinne, a 25-year-old event planner, learnt by telephone last November that she had been “let go” from her job with an architectural magazine. Guaranteed a year of unemployment benefits, she decided that she would “take advantage of being unemployed”.

She visited family and friends and did volunteer work for a local charity. She went for picnics on the beach “with a cute boy” and started a blog called – inevitably – Funemployment. Eight months later she still has not found a job, but she is not as worried as she thought she might be. “I’m still enjoying swimming upstream,” she said.

Rachel Steinberg, 27, lost her public relations job in January but quickly concluded that she was benefiting from what she called “unemployment empowerment”. She added: “I’m taking control of my life back and it feels good.”

Her resolve was tested when she found a new job last month, then lost it almost immediately. “When I first became unemployed in January, I blamed myself at every step,” she said. “Now here I am doing the same thing over again. It’s an abusive cycle that takes its toll emotionally and physically.”

Yet somehow she has learnt that looking on the bright side works. “I jokingly refer to 2009 as the year of the epic fail,” she said.

“What’s changed is that I don’t consider failing a negative term in every sense. It has made me stronger, more confident and more determined to take advantage of new opportunities.”

For Shanley and his new racing bike, those opportunities will include intensive training for the California Death Ride, a 129-mile slog through the Sierra Nevada mountains next month. Not everyone’s idea of fun is the same.

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