I have really, really mixed feelings on this one. A lot of places around me are hiring for the first time in forever, so that's a good thing. But they're all minimum wage jobs with little or no room for advancement. The jobs that used to pay a decent living aren't coming back. If we run into one more licensed builder or plumber or electrician we know working at Lowes/Home Depot/Menards I might just cry. These guys have skills but the housing collapse has rendered them all but worthless, and now they're on food stamps and medicaid and just trying to keep from losing their homes.
Our household is a similarly mixed bag. DH and his partner are busy - they're not getting many calls for new estimates but a long-term project for a repeat customer will keep them working for the next few months. It isn't particularly lucrative work, though, because the jobsite (the customer's vacation home) is far enough away that gas and lodging are eating into the profits. Better than nothing, of course, but not what we're used to making on a project of this scope. And like everyone else this winter's heating bills are kicking our butts; we've had two months of bills that were more than double last year's. But the ACA is a huge help for us; our after-subsidy premium is 20% of what we were paying. And DH got quite a few extra hours at his fall-back part time job because he was on call for snow removal, which helped offset those ridiculous heat bills a bit.
I think that coming from Michigan/Detroit, as I did and looks like the PP does, we may have a different view on the economy than a lot of the rest of the US. Since 2008, Michigan has been very slow to recover, and that is right - anyone can get a job at Target or Home Depot for $9.00/hour. That is not even close to being able to provide for a family.
I was born and raised in Detroit/west suburbs, and became an adult in the mid-1990's when the economy was booming, brokers were practically paying YOU to buy a house, and there was no way I would have believed that my $13-15.00 hour job as a 18-25 year old would go away or that I would not have been able to find another one. I even QUIT that job when we built our second house because it was too far to drive the hour commute up US-23 to my new tiny little town in the country and I wanted to be closer to DS during the day who was only 2 at the time. DH was making better money than I was so we could afford for me to work for DS's daycare for $9.00 hour...after all, I was saving daycare tuition (employee's children were free) AND the gas, wear and tear on the car, etc from driving in town instead of dodging potholes, roadkill, and crazy drivers on I-96, right??!!
Great plan, except DH worked in the car industry. When that collapsed (thank you GM, for being the sole driving economic force in our area
) in 2008 and DH frantically tried to find work and was let go 3 more times in two years because the companies he was hired for downsized, went bankrupt, or just stopped paying their employees, and I couldn't get a job because we lived in an area where all employment was scarce, not just my field, after scores of applications I was only able to score an interview/job with Target stocking their shelves at 4am, and house after house in our brand new sub were foreclosing and we lost over $100K in value of ours, we knew we had to do something.
We picked up, took a huge financial hit and sold our house for practically pennies (most likely would have lost it anyway with the way things were going), and moved to Illinois - Chicago's west suburbs. Best decision we could have made. It was tough, letting go of our beautiful house that we built and made ours, where the next 2 children were born, and the only home oldest DS had really ever known, but we knew we had to do it for our future and for theirs. I landed a job exactly 1 month after moving here, and, because it wasn't exactly my dream job (CS call center), it did allow me to get back into the swing of the corporate world, and 5 months later, I was hired by my current company where I have had three promotions and a solid career. Same with DH.
Meanwhile, back home in Michigan, the job market is still pretty stagnant, and people are still living in homes that are nowhere near the value of what they bought them for. I think it is getting *better*, but not nearly as fast as the people need it to, and not as fast as other parts of the country. So, when asking "do you think the economy is good or bad?" it really all depends on where one lives and what experience they have/do have.
But I think salaries will start to move upward more rapidly soon, because places are starting to realize they need to pay better to get the quality of talent they really want - it's not the market it was 3 or 4 years ago where people would jump at any job offer. My current company seems to have awoken to that to a degree, and seems to be more interested in upping salaries and other compensation at a faster rate for current, highly valued employees.
