I thought things were supposed to be improving?

[Colleen27]

It's sometimes hard to predict what skills will be highly sought in the future. In retrospect, I should have known that my own area of expertise would die (manufacturing) but I don't think that all are so obvious.

Yep. Just look at how many years "plumber" and "electrician" and other building trades were thought of as recession proof. Now the unemployment rate in the construction industry is second only to manufacturing.

I think the next wave is going to hit more college grads, as US companies continue to import talent from overseas where education is less expensive (or govt subsidized). There's a fair bit of political pressure to increase the cap on H1B visas to let companies bring in more skilled workers, even though in many cases there are Americans available to fill the jobs, because companies can pay imported talent less.

 

[C.Ann]

Its strange how different parts of the country are affected. For instance, where I live you'd never be able to tell there is a recession/depression/whatever you want to call it. Things here seem just fine.

Same here in Hershey, PA. I don't know a single person that doesn't have a job. The stores, resturants and especially Hersheypark, are still packed to the brim every weekend.

But things aren't really bad here. You'd never know there was a recession in our town.

Same here. I do know a few people who lost jobs, but were able to get a new one in a few weeks at most..

I think where you live plays a large part in all of this too. There are help wanted signs up all over the place around here. And while the want ads aren't as full as they once used to be, there are 2+ pages of listings..

Things are not much different here either than they've been for the last decade or so. The economy IS improving--unfortunately, as many economists have said, that doesn't mean more jobs (at least, not good jobs). Those at the top are making investment money just fine now, however...

No need for anyone to give specifics about their locations, but I would love to hear your thoughts on that what you think has shielded your area when so many other parts of the country are in such dire straights?
---------------------------------

2 college degrees remind me why went to college now. I know suppose be able to get a better job.

We have a highly educated work force here in San Francisco. Yet people who went for "depression-proof jobs" are losing their jobs because it does not matter how great the need is for occupations such as health care if they are not greatly out-numbered by people in a position to pay for their services.

We have three different universities less than an hour's walk from where I live. The leading job for their graduates after getting their degrees is running a cash register in some store no matter what their major. I used to work in a community college book store during semester rushes, where I watched the average age of students rise with each new semester. Many of these people already had four-year degrees or higher. When there are no jobs, school is not higher education but hiding behind education, and often at taxpayer expense.

This is what I find particularly distressing.. It appears that college degrees - or lack of - really doesn't seem to apply right now..

The real problem here is that for a few generations, Americans were able to earn relatively high incomes with very few skills. Those days are fading fast. I encourage anyone in high school to consider that the world does not feel obligated to provide you with a good life. You get that by competing with everyone else in the world. If you can provide services that are highly valued, you will be highly compensated. If you can provide nothing more than a worker in a third world country can provide, you'll be increasingly forced to compete with that worker on price and you probably won't be happy with the results. Think about what you can do to obtain skills that are valued in the marketplace.

That is excellent advice - but currently, it doesn't seem to apply.. People with education, no education, trade skills, college degree, or even numerous college degrees still are unable to get jobs..

------------------------

Here's hoping that all who need jobs are able to obtain them soon..

 

[Buckalew11]

I have no idea what has shielded us. I'm sure there is a reason but I do not know what it is.

DH's job was phased out in Spring of '09. He took a job on the ambulance making 50% less than he was making at the old job. He's in need of an elbow replacement (hurt at the job that was phased out) and someone clued him in that he would not be kept after the 30 days because of it.

He had to quickly find something else. And did. Making about 10,000 less than that 2nd job paid! But OK, I'm glad he found that job and finding 2 jobs with 1 1/2 months is pretty darned good. That job gave him health ins. for himself but I had to find it for DD and I. The health ins. was a killer, for sure, but who DARES to go without it????

That job had some horrific twists and turns and DH ended up leaving it. That's when the desperation set in for a JOB, period. Well, there were a few reasons for taking a job as this next one but anyway, he needed a job and gave horseback rides in Cades Cove. As you can guess, that wasn't a good paying job but it did pay bills and put food on the table.

We fought our way out of it, pulled together and worked together to survive. Tough year & 1/2. Our lives are better now, with a new job...actually better than the 1st on that was phased out.

Keep the faith.

 

[Colleen27]

No need for anyone to give specifics about their locations, but I would love to hear your thoughts on that what you think has shielded your area when so many other parts of the country are in such dire straights?
---------------------------------

There are going to be as many answers to that as there are areas that have been at least somewhat spared. For example - One of the posters who said her area is thriving is in Frederick, MD according to her tag - the federal govt is a major employer in that part of the country, and they might well be the only thing that just gets bigger and bigger regardless of the economy. Another is in Louisiana - the NOLA area is still rebuilding from Katrina, which means blue collar opportunities for men willing to work hard, exactly what areas like the Rust Belt are lacking. In contrast, the areas hardest hit are those that were dominated by industries that are declining in the US, particularly the twin giants of the outsourcing/offshoring trend: manufacturing and technology.

 

[chicagodisneyfan]

College grads have an unemployment rate of 5.1 percent.
I do not know anyone who is unemployed or laid off in the last few years.

 

[HelenePA]

My area is another one that hasn't be hard hit by this. Amazon just put out the word they were hiring another 2000 people not far from where I live. Another distribution center is being built all the time around me.(I think the low taxes brings them in honestly!) Pay is fair for my area since its a pretty low cost of living place.. my mortgage payment is under 350$ to give you some type of idea how low cost it is.. its not a slum, or high crime area either.. My heart goes out to all who are still looking for jobs.. I dont know what we would do if dh lost his job and was out of work for years.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

same here i cannot find a job to save my life, because i've been a SAHM for 11 years and no one wants to give me a chance, and if DH were to be laid off or lose his job, we'd lose everything. right now, he's working 70-84 hours per week, but that can change at the drop of a hat.

That is so weird...I have a friend who has been a SAHM for several years with her only paid job since staying home was an intermittent stint doing childcare at our church for a few hours a week. She just recently got hired as a waitress at a yacht club. She had restaurant experience more than 10 years ago and was able to get hired.

Have you consulted with a job coach or similar?



We moved from the home of the Space Shuttle. My old area is still going downhill with no end in sight. My house value right now is circa-2002 values. Much more than a bubble burst.

New area---bought home at end of April and it is appreciating in value. So weird! A new electronics store just opened, housing construction going on and the federal govt as the largest employer in our backyard. Though in my immediate area, they have had a tough couple of years...but for very different reasons.

 

[Colleen27]

We moved from the home of the Space Shuttle. My old area is still going downhill with no end in sight. My house value right now is circa-2002 values. Much more than a bubble burst.

No, I think that's still a bubble burst, a big "pop" but less than a decade of run-up lost. Around here, it is 20-30 years of value lost in many cases - houses in my mom's neighborhood are selling now for within a few thousand dollars of what my grandparents paid for that house in the mid 1960s. We bought our house last year for 18% of what it sold for in 2001. Not 18% less, 18% of the previous sale price.

 

[kydisneyfans]

Not nearly as bad in the Lexington, KY area as the national issues, or the most of the rest of KY for that matter. Unemployment was under 7% last month.

Reasons given as to why:
-The area never saw any of the bubbles, so nothing burst. Growth was at an even keel, nothing outlandish. Growth has slowed, but not crashed.

-Healthcare is HUGE in this area, with the large hospitals putting hundreds of millions of dollars into new facilities and upgrading older ones. My wife works for a large hospital and cannot find enough qualified people to work for them.

-State government offices are nearby. The state has budget problems, but layoffs have been few with furloughs being the favored route here.

-If a company leaves, another comes in quickly. ACS just hired over a thousand phone reps, even though Verizon laid off 350 here. Amazon is huge during the holidays, with an article last Sunday stating they cannot find enough help this year and are bringing in people from other areas to help.

-Really the local economy is diversified-if one employment area slips, usually another area of employment gains to even things out.

I also cannot name a person in my area without a job right now.

 

[kamik86]

No need for anyone to give specifics about their locations, but I would love to hear your thoughts on that what you think has shielded your area when so many other parts of the country are in such dire straights

I live in Western MA. The reason I think we are ok is the biggest employers are the hospital which wasn't hit hard as everyone is still sick and MA requires everyone to have insurance and my company which is a government contractor. Western MA may seem like a weird place for a Navy contractor but it has some advantages the biggest being that most of the other contractors are in big cities with HCOL our area is able to pay us VERY well (I make over 60K and have been there less then 2 years) but still has MUCH lower rates then many other companies or even branches of our company.

This means that with the gov. trying to save money we look REALLY good right now so we have been getting alot of work. We have hired well over 100 people in the last year. We need more people, I know that our leadership program for new grads couldn't find enough people that were qualified last year to meet our goal. This is a program that pays new engineers 60K with good medical benefits and will pay for your masters right away! We have a pontential new contract coming in that will be very long term and our biggest fear is how to staff this. We will need at least 200 more people to start work on it. We will move some from other programs (mostly just so we don't staff an entire new area with new employees) but they will need replacements so we will have jobs for most engineering fields as well as some administrative stuff to hire soon.

Oh and the other big employers in our area? The company that prints all the paper for government money and Williams College. So neither of these were hit too bad either.

I know only 1 person who is out of work, my mom, but she has some health problems so she isn't sure if she really can go back to her old field. she is applying for disability.

 

[indimom]

Things around here are hard, but not "impossible" if that makes sense.
We have definitely been hit. My husbands' employer laid off over half of their employees in 08 and have only hired temps since. (Thank God, not DH, but he did take a 15% pay cut in 09.) They lay off the temps when things get lean, then hire them back when they pick up more work. Not great for the people who are taking these jobs, but it keeps the company going. They have to take work when they can get it, but can't afford to offer full time when the work is so inconsistent.
I do know many folks who have been laid off:
BFF's hubby lost his job of 20 years in 09. He has found work, lots of offers, but the jobs are not very high pay and usually involve a lengthy commute or shorter hours or no benefits.
Another friend's hubby is trying to start his own business after being laid off from his employer of 25 years. They are struggling.
Cousin recently found a job (long commute, but he and another man are sharing the drive so that helps) after a year on unemployment. His wife is still unemployed. (They both worked for the same company and it closed its doors completely.)
Several friends/family in the construction area laid off for long stretches at a time, then called up when there is work. Most of them have found some filler jobs between the calls, but it's been rough.

All of them went from fairly well-paying or union jobs to temp or part time or no benefits or long commutes and MUCH lower pay. So around here the jobs are there, they just aren't something you can live on without a second bread-winner in the family. It's been rough.

Our food bank has been asking for more and more donations. They are holding up thanks to record-setting donations, but you hear the requests a LOT more than you did 4 or 5 years ago.

I don't know a church that isn't struggling with lower donations/tithing. Our minister voluntarily took a significant pay cut and got a second job (full time working nights) in order to keep the church on sound footing.

 

[monarchsfan16]

Jobs are always the last thing to recover from any recession.

NH's unemployment rate is within half a percent of "normal". I think we're at about 5% right now. I think the highest we got was into the upper 6's. We were somewhat shielded from the huge meltdown because most of our economy is not based on huge corporations. As someone who works part time in retail, I've certainly seen the signs of the economic stuff, but it was never "extreme" around here. Things are definitely improving now. Northern NH is hurting more, but that's because their economy revolved entirely around paper mills, and sadly those are shutting down everywhere, not just here.

 

[C.Ann]

It's good to hear that some areas are doing quite well - and others are at least "stable"..

Now - if the rest of the country could be like that....

 

[gina2000]

Much of NJ is hit hard. Pharmaceutical firms have merged and relocated...many to NC and PA. Wall Street layoffs in the recent past have left thousands without a job. And state budget cuts have forced school disctricts to cut personnel to the bone.

I don't know a family that has not been affected by this situation.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Outsourcing is really based upon cheap petroleum, which will continue to become ever more in short supply. We are already in an expensive war over oil because we rely upon other countries for our most basic necessities.

We have a highly educated work force here in San Francisco. Yet people who went for "depression-proof jobs" are losing their jobs because it does not matter how great the need is for occupations such as health care if they are not greatly out-numbered by people in a position to pay for their services.

We have three different universities less than an hour's walk from where I live. The leading job for their graduates after getting their degrees is running a cash register in some store no matter what their major. I used to work in a community college book store during semester rushes, where I watched the average age of students rise with each new semester. Many of these people already had four-year degrees or higher. When there are no jobs, school is not higher education but hiding behind education, and often at taxpayer expense.

Outsourcing is based on cheap petroleum? Oil is selling for almost $90 a barrel. While I would love to see the price go higher, I have to admit that $90/bbl isn't all that cheap. Besides, an increasing amount of outsourcing is done electronically, so it isn't affected by oil prices. Outsourcing started to really take off when impoverished countries like India and China opened their economies.

As for college degrees leading to cash register operators, that must be a local phenomena. I'm seeing people with degrees getting job offers with annual compensation around $100,000 around here.

No need for anyone to give specifics about their locations, but I would love to hear your thoughts on that what you think has shielded your area when so many other parts of the country are in such dire straights?
---------------------------------

You can see in my profile that I'm from The Woodlands, TX. It's a community just north of Houston. Things aren't booming here, but they are going reasonably well. I don't know anyone currently out of work. Housing prices are stable.

I don't think that any one reason can explain why some areas are doing better than others. It is a combination of factors. Some had smaller housing booms and busts. Some have industries that aren't suffering as much. Some have better business climates.

This is what I find particularly distressing.. It appears that college degrees - or lack of - really doesn't seem to apply right now..



That is excellent advice - but currently, it doesn't seem to apply.. People with education, no education, trade skills, college degree, or even numerous college degrees still are unable to get jobs..

It may seem that way, but the statistics don't bear it out. According to the BLS, College grads are doing much better than non-college grads. The unemployment rates by education level are:

• 15.7% High school dropout
• 10% High school graduates
• 8.7% Some college or associates degree
• 5.1% 4 year degree or better

The college grad statistic also includes a lot of people with what I would call non-commercial degrees. I can't back the assertion with any statistics, but my intuition tells me that people with commercially desirable degrees like engineering, accounting, and hard sciences probably have a lower rate than those with less commercially exploitable degrees like literature, sociology, or history.

Things here are good enough that the company I work for has had an unusually high number of college intern offers rejected. For perspective, the company pays well and was just voted the best place to work in America's fourth largest city, so it's a pretty good gig. That tells me that the sort of college kids we pursue have some really good options.

 

[Colleen27]

Outsourcing is based on cheap petroleum? Oil is selling for almost $90 a barrel. While I would love to see the price go higher, I have to admit that $90/bbl isn't all that cheap. Besides, an increasing amount of outsourcing is done electronically, so it isn't affected by oil prices. Outsourcing started to really take off when impoverished countries like India and China opened their economies.

Cheap is relative. Oil is more expensive than we're used to seeing it, but I get what SanFran was saying - outsourcing in manufacturing is based on oil prices low enough that shipping things from where ever in the world offers the cheapest labor is cost-effective. And I tend to agree with him that we'll see a time when that's no longer the case, though I think it is still a couple decades off.

 

[sparklynails23]

I think that outsourcing is a symptom rather than the problem. As many countries with low cost labor improve their infrastructure and trade policies, it has become much more efficient to send work to them. The net effect for people overall is an improvement in living standards. The benefits, however, are definitely not evenly distributed.

The real problem here is that for a few generations, Americans were able to earn relatively high incomes with very few skills. Those days are fading fast. I encourage anyone in high school to consider that the world does not feel obligated to provide you with a good life. You get that by competing with everyone else in the world. If you can provide services that are highly valued, you will be highly compensated. If you can provide nothing more than a worker in a third world country can provide, you'll be increasingly forced to compete with that worker on price and you probably won't be happy with the results. Think about what you can do to obtain skills that are valued in the marketplace.

Any society will have people with a variety of intelligence levels and a variety of skill levels. Not everyone has the capability of becoming a brain surgeon. Our country's mistake has been in shipping too many manufacturing jobs overseas, so that we have no base to support our service industries. It's short term profits vs long term sustainability. We're screwed. It's only going to get worse. If you want a job, go into foreclosures (for the short term). Long term, start growing your own garden.

 

[momof1princess]

That is so weird...I have a friend who has been a SAHM for several years with her only paid job since staying home was an intermittent stint doing childcare at our church for a few hours a week. She just recently got hired as a waitress at a yacht club. She had restaurant experience more than 10 years ago and was able to get hired.

Have you consulted with a job coach or similar?



We moved from the home of the Space Shuttle. My old area is still going downhill with no end in sight. My house value right now is circa-2002 values. Much more than a bubble burst.

New area---bought home at end of April and it is appreciating in value. So weird! A new electronics store just opened, housing construction going on and the federal govt as the largest employer in our backyard. Though in my immediate area, they have had a tough couple of years...but for very different reasons.

no job coaches in my small city after trying for a few months to find a job on my own, my next step is to try the state employment office. this usually takes all day, as there are so many people in the area looking for work, so i did put it off a little longer than i should have. i've submitted resumes for all types of secretarial jobs, retail stores, discount stores, you name it. i'm either overqualified, or don't have the right experience.

 

[SanFranciscan]

There are going to be as many answers to that as there are areas that have been at least somewhat spared. For example - One of the posters who said her area is thriving is in Frederick, MD according to her tag - the federal govt is a major employer in that part of the country, and they might well be the only thing that just gets bigger and bigger regardless of the economy. Another is in Louisiana - the NOLA area is still rebuilding from Katrina, which means blue collar opportunities for men willing to work hard, exactly what areas like the Rust Belt are lacking. In contrast, the areas hardest hit are those that were dominated by industries that are declining in the US, particularly the twin giants of the outsourcing/offshoring trend: manufacturing and technology.

Ah-ha! I think that you are on to something! Where federal funding is spent makes all of the difference. Voting with our feet sounds like a good idea, but I understand why construction people who have been burned in the past are fearful of moving to New Orleans. Those who moved to Las Vegas to work on casino projects that went bankrupt or in the real estate business for all of the new residents found themselves stuck there after the economy tanked. While I was working on a school bond initiative for Orange County, California, over and over and over voters spoke of the construction workers who came down to build California Adventure Park at Disneyland and who were left in the Anaheim area with no jobs afterward. No matter how portable their skills, how many times can people move on at their own expense?

As bigoted as some may say that it sounds, I have been advised to move to where there aren't as many immigrant pressures -- yet. I understand that those advising me are thinking of what is best for me personally, even though it is scary to move on to the unknown since I have been homeless in the past. My doctor is here too, and she has reminded me that I have been very sick so my recent medical history makes me cautious. I am thinking of moving to the southeast though since I would be young by comparison given the high percentage of retirees in the south while the competition is getting younger every day here.

Those posting here from the more stable areas of the country would not welcome the invasion of people like me to compete with them for their jobs and drive wages down and housing costs up. I don't blame them. So what do we do?

 

[Planogirl]

As for college degrees leading to cash register operators, that must be a local phenomena. I'm seeing people with degrees getting job offers with annual compensation around $100,000 around here.

You can see in my profile that I'm from The Woodlands, TX. It's a community just north of Houston. Things aren't booming here, but they are going reasonably well. I don't know anyone currently out of work. Housing prices are stable.

The September 2010 statistics for Houston are telling. From www.deptofnumbers.com:

Unemployment Rate September 2010 Month/Month Year/Year
National 9.6% 0.0 -0.2
Texas 8.1% -0.2 0.0
Houston 8.2% -0.5 0.0

The second column is month to month change and the third is year to year. These numbers aren't as bad as the national numbers of course but they aren't great either.

I don't know when in 2010 these numbers were generated but this website http://www.bestplaces.net/city/The_Woodlands-Texas.aspx claims that the Woodlands reached at least 8% unemployment. This is certainly better than Houston and worlds better than the national average. This adds credence to your point that people need to make it a priority to be highly marketable though.

By the way, we are from Houston (and miss it) so I keep an eye on things there.