The Economy and Where I Work

[Coinneach]

Dealing with change...especially when it's abrupt and affects the people you know...is always difficult for all. I've experienced it myself (and now I'm a freelancer) and I've seen it done with and without dignity for the people involved. I hope some kind of severance package was offered to your coworkers to help ease their transition. If management didn't handle it well, it means a lot of lost productivity as the people who are left deal with the aftermath.

Best of luck to you.

[Riverkilt]

I love that book about who moved the cheese...or smelling the cheese...even the continental plates are shifting, moving...rocks fall from mountains...a bird sharpens its beak on a rock and wears it down.

If the Army will hire a 63 year old Marine I'm there.

My own little agency is feeling the pinch as it becomes difficult for clients to afford the gas to drive 60 miles one way from their reservation homes for their appointments.

Ron

[Freelancer]

Distressing when you hear this type of news. I can only hope that things will turn around soon.

[Pleater]

I was born back in 1951 and I read a lot - believe me - this isn't bad.

Not until you see bodies falling past the office windows is it bad - and even then, it is only the economy.

The US has cheap petrol and cheap food even now - compared with Britain, where the petrol price seems to have topped out at 118 pence per litre. We actually paid less than that this Thursday, only 1 penny, but it was less.

It might be difficult for a while, it could be difficult from now on - but, if you'll take advice - just do the best you can, take a job even if it is not your dream or ideal - employers seem to favour those in work for some reason.

At one time I went from one job to another fairly fast, simply because I was working but looking for something better all the time. I saw aquaintances who were out of work turned down for one job after another.

I did start cleaning factory kitchens and it was not pleasant, but that was only for a few weeks until I found less messy work. I was always being told to do less, not look for things to strip out and clean - by people who were probably still putting on greasy overalls when I'd got an office job.

At another time I worked a factory job which finished at 16:30, so I took a series of evening jobs when I couldn't pay the bills, and that developed into a fulltime job that paid more than the two jobs combined - you just never know who you will meet up with. You do have to be out there meeting people, though.

Things always change, if you just drift along with them the current will almost always put you on the rocks - you have to steer - and paddle hard at times.

[Coemgen]

I'm afraid of how the economy will be in two years when I get out of college and try to just find a stable job.

That's my worry. Of course, I have a bit longer due to my grad school plans. The military isn't really an option for me, since I'm something of a pacifist.

I was born back in 1951 and I read a lot - believe me - this isn't bad.

My parents have been telling me this ever since '03. Problem is, members of my generation didn't live through the hard times (like the Carter administration, my dad's favourite example of bad times), so this is the worst economic circumstance we Generation Y folks have been/are going through.

[ncof300d]

My parents have been telling me this ever since '03. Problem is, members of my generation didn't live through the hard times (like the Carter administration, my dad's favorite example of bad times), so this is the worst economic circumstance we Generation Y folks have been/are going through.

Both of my parents were born a little before WWII. They grew up in families that faced the Great Depression and then the war. The families of my parents were not people of any means and my father's family was very poor. Yet they survived. Hope would I do today? My parents live in the house where my mother was raised. When my mother's family moved into that house it did not have indoor pumping or electricity in the house for a few years. My mother tells of a family that she knew of when she was young. This family actually lived in corn crib that they boarded and blanketed to get through the winter. Not everyone survived.

Today our 'low' standards are pretty high. I am guilty. When My mother's father's parents built a new home in 1963 they built that garage first. The garage had a toilet and sink. Why? because they chose to live in the garage while the house was being built. This is back when a new house was close to a year to build.

The times are tough, but I also ask myself 'how tough am I'. I live with indoor plumbing, central heat and A/C. It is not that long ago that those things did not exist.

[Woodsheal]

The average unemployment rate in the US for the last 20 years, including the "boom" times of the '90s, was 6%. We're below that right now at around 5.5%....

[ncof300d]

The average unemployment rate in the US for the last 20 years, including the "boom" times of the '90s, was 6%. We're below that right now at around 5.5%....

I believe that in northwest Ohio the rate over 10%. There have been some big losses around here and the speculation is that the losses are no over. Also, you need to look at the wages of then compared to now and how the wages adjust for inflation.

[Riverkilt]

My parents went through the depression too. I pretty much grew up on peanut butter and hamburger. Been through some tight times myself. Was in Appalachia during the recession of the early 70s. Have lived in the rural South where unemployment was high despite good times. Currently living in the reservation lands where unemployment is at least 50% and what work there is seems mostly seasonal catering to or cleaning up after tourists.

I keep wondering how gasoline got so expensive after we conquered an oil rich country...not a political thought...just a curious observation.

Hopefully, we'll all get through whatever economic times await us.

Ron

[Keith A]

The average unemployment rate in the US for the last 20 years, including the "boom" times of the '90s, was 6%. We're below that right now at around 5.5%....

Don't forget that once a persons unemployment benefits are run out, they are dropped from the Gov stats on unemployment. So to go by the 5.5% that the Gov puts out, is really falling short of the true mark. Then when you figure many Americans are under employed, you have an even greater disparity.
Just like when the inflation rate is posted it does not factor, the cost of food, fuel, housing, or medical insurance, to mention a few.
Many of the older brothers of my lodge who have lived through the depression, tell me that things went just the same way back then just before it hit. Except with have one major difference now, we no longer have the manufacturing base that we one had that helped pull us out of the depression.