The Recession and Layoffs Thread

Patrick Murtha · Feb 17, 2008

Whether or not we're actually in a recession, people keep talking about the possibility (and it appears this is one of those things we actually nail down after the fact, whether we were in one at a given point or not). I've noticed a trickle of posters on various boards I belong to announcing that they have been laid off; of course, that could be true at any time, but still, I've noticed it. Apprehension is running high at my company as sales tail off -- in lockstep with the general retail economy, but the CEO is as apoplectic over it as if we were an isolated case.

So what I'm wondering, in a non-partisan, non-controversialist way, is whether any posters to this board are being affected by all this yet: whether that means being actually laid off, being nervous about being laid off, feeling that an elevated title and salary put you at greater risk in a downturn, working in an increasingly fraught and nerve-wracked environment, being wired to the Dow in a way that keeps you awake nights, and so on.

$ally · Feb 17, 2008

Yes. I was part of a huge lay-off at the company I'd worked with for years at the end of this summer. Their sub-prime mortgage business imploded.
I now work an admin job at corp HQ of a distribution company (through a temp agency). They have indicated that they would like me to stay on permanently, but I won't because it is clear that they are having the same problems. I'm not going down with the sinking ship again. I need to be with a company that can survive a recession, or work on my own again.
It is a very real situation, my friend, expected to last until 2010 or so.

Brad Bowers · Feb 17, 2008

There is some worry here on my part. Our company was bought out a year and a half ago, and the new owners came in suddenly and closed down our plant last July, but retained a handful of us to work remotely from home. This has worked out well for me, but some of our little group were let go at the first of the year.

I work in the publishing industry, so there are peaks and valleys in the workflow, but I've only had about three hours of work the last two weeks -- though they still pay me for 40 hours. So, the paranoia and anxiety has set in, as this job may not be as secure as I want. Hopefully I start getting more work this next week.

Brad

LizzieMaine · Feb 17, 2008

Well, I was affected by it last year -- even before the media hypers got wise to the fact that something was going wrong. I lost the fulltime writing job I'd had for ten years in January 2007 when our company lost a bunch of key accounts because corporations were tightening up on expendable things like PR writing, which is always the first sign that trouble is coming. Since then the market for the kind of writing I was doing has contracted to absolute bupkis, and I've been trying to survive the past year on what I can make at the theatre. My personal savings has dwindled to nearly nothing, I have had no budget for any kind of frivolous expenditures, and I have had to postpone necessary medical and dental care for lack of any kind of insurance. So yeah, as far as I'm concerned, there's been a recession on for quite a while now.

Mr_Misanthropy · Feb 17, 2008

Recession

We're not in a recession. But things aren't good. An economic recession is an economy with negative growth. Our economy is still growing, but about 2% less than it has been. So, it's slow growth, but thankfully not a recession.

I wasn't the victim of a lay-off, but I'm having a really hard time getting out of my 20 hour a week job. I'm at the point now of living paycheck to paycheck, and it's bad. I've been looking for work for over a year now. I don't have a college degree, but I am a veteran and I have skills. The best I have been able to do is a job at a chef at a restaurant that will be opening in April. Hopefully that will be more full time work, but not a great wage. I don't have tons of debt, but I have debt. And when what I make barely covers my bills, the debt is only getting worse. What really upsets me is that I'm far from the only one in this boat. It seems that a LOT of people in this little Midwest town lives paycheck to paycheck. Between me and my better half whom I share an apartment with, we together take in about $1000-1200. Yes, that's both of us combined. We're both starting full time jobs within the next couple months, and hopefully that will put us at about close to $2000 a month. But it's still a sad state of affairs.

It seems like no one has the opportunity to get rich anymore. The rich will only get richer or go broke, and the poor will stay poor. I have a personal plan to take care of my debt, etc, and hopefully be able to save some eventually. But without steady work, and with ZERO extra income after paying bills and ignoring a lot of old debt, it seems hopeless.

I guess this is mostly just me ranting, but our economy is bothering me. I had to get that off my chest.

univibe88 · Feb 17, 2008

My company has sent out memos asking us to watch our expense reports. I've also had a lot of meetings about "selling in a down economy" and really focusing with our customers on the "return on investment" and "total cost of ownership" of our products.

Although I hate a lot of the negativity and worrying that is created by the media. Objective economic factors can create a perilous economy, but unnecessary emotion can push the economy into an otherwise avoidable recession.

I enjoy being an optimistic cheerleader of the economy. (Not blind - I can see the risk of the housing market, high energy costs, etc. I just like to focus on positive news and look for a quick, strong recovery.)

Patrick Murtha · Feb 17, 2008

Mr_Misanthropy said:
We're not in a recession. But things aren't good. An economic recession is an economy with negative growth. Our economy is still growing, but about 2% less than it has been. So, it's slow growth, but thankfully not a recession.

It is interesting, though, that sometimes these figures are "revised" later and the announcement is made, "Whoops! We were in a recession after all." So I wouldn't be too sure at this point.

[It seems that a LOT of people in this little Midwest town lives paycheck to paycheck.

The exponential growth of "payday loan stores" and "auto title loan stores" in recent years has not seemed to me to be an encouraging sign about the current state of affairs. (Did I put that mildly enough?)

imoldfashioned · Feb 17, 2008

I'm in a business where I expect to be laid off every 2-3 years so I'm sort of used to it, recession or no recession. Because I plan for it I actually rather enjoy having a couple months off when the axe falls.

I have a friend who's job hunting now who's been shocked by how few jobs there are out there right now. Whether that's because of the time of year or a recession I can't say.

Mr_Misanthropy · Feb 17, 2008

Patrick Murtha said:
The exponential growth of "payday loan stores" and "auto title loan stores" in recent years has not seemed to me to be an encouraging sign about the current state of affairs. (Did I put that mildly enough?)

You're exactly right. We have as many payday loan places in this tiny town as most towns have Starbucks'!! They're popping up left and right. I think the whole outfit should be outlawed, as it's complete highway robbery. They're just making it worse for people. I'll admit, I've had to use one before in an emergency, but I paid it back in less than a week to avoid interest rates that were too crazy, but alas, still crazy. I'll never do it again. I felt horrible, like I was going to a loan shark. Which is exactly what they are.

PrettySquareGal · Feb 17, 2008

I think there is an over-reliance on the media and government to define and tell us when things are starting to suck economically. I look at the cost of living compared to average salaries, to start.

Patrick Murtha · Feb 17, 2008

univibe88 said:
My company has sent out memos asking us to watch our expense reports. I've also had a lot of meetings about "selling in a down economy" and really focusing with our customers on the "return on investment" and "total cost of ownership" of our products.

Although I hate a lot of the negativity and worrying that is created by the media. Objective economic factors can create a perilous economy, but unnecessary emotion can push the economy into an otherwise avoidable recession.

I enjoy being an optimistic cheerleader of the economy. (Not blind - I can see the risk of the housing market, high energy costs, etc. I just like to focus on positive news and look for a quick, strong recovery.)

One of the things I wonder is, did people talk about "the economy" this way in the Fifties and Sixties? I'm doubting it. There was no CNBC, no beefed-up business and investment news, the Wall Street Journal was for people who worked on Wall Street. Now we're all consciously wired to this beast called "the economy," and many of us follow it at an extremely micro level (The Dow is up this hour! It's down the next hour! The Fed is going to cut rates again!). I wonder if this is all to the good, not that there's any putting the genie back into the bottle at this point.

In that Fifties and Sixties economy, people in general may have had a somewhat vaguer awareness of the movements of the economy, but it could afford to be vaguer because in most cases, those movements weren't immediately and directly tied to the potential loss of their jobs. Consumers noticed inflation and complained of it, but didn't live in fear of the bread line. Corporate profits were up one year, down another year, and that was to be expected; no one thought of "the economy" as a perpetual "stairway to heaven." Now we tend to, and are shocked, shocked, when an economy behaves like...well, an economy.

Interesting reading in this regard: Jacob Hacker's The Great Risk Shift. Hacker spells out why the average middle-class American feels "the economy" as a more pressing force today.

PrettySquareGal · Feb 17, 2008

Patrick Murtha said:
One of the things I wonder is, did people talk about "the economy" this way in the Fifties and Sixties? I'm doubting it.

Most people could find a job at the local manufacturing plant and stay with the same company until retirement. People were able to buy houses on minimum wage. You didn't need both parents to work to make ends meet. Life was good. There was no need to talk about the economy.

Patrick Murtha · Feb 17, 2008

PrettySquareGal said:
Most people could find a job at the local manufacturing plant and stay with the same company until retirement. People were able to buy houses on minimum wage. You didn't need both parents to work to make ends meet. Life was good. There was no need to talk about the economy.

Great point. Our incessant talking about the economy these days must mean, in some ways at least, that it's not so good.

And I agree with your examples. My dad was a modestly compensated salesman with no degree; my mother did not work regularly. On his earnings in their early twenties, they bought a sizable house on a quarter-acre in Passaic, New Jersey, within visibility of Manhattan if you climbed a nearby hill. They had three kids there, sent them to Catholic schools. He bought a new car like clockwork every two years. This was from the late Fifties to the late Seventies.

MrNewportCustom · Feb 17, 2008

Mr_Misanthropy said:
You're exactly right. We have as many payday loan places in this tiny town as most towns have Starbucks'!! . . . going to a loan shark. Which is exactly what they are.

You said it! I went out with a lady who worked at one when they were first starting. She called it "Legalized Loansharking."

I work for a wood flooring wholesaler, and this is always a slow time of year for us. But, this year is the slowest we've seen in a long time. Some of our competitors have either sold out or filed for bankruptcy. The biggest problem where I work, though, is internal: they refuse to lower prices and be competitive. To balance that, though, every non-salaried employee (non-management, of course) is losing a couple hours a week so that no one will be laid off. We haven't had any layoffs since January of 2000.

On the other hand, a couple of our customers (installers with their own businesses) have told me that they have more work than they can handle, and their biggest problem is getting time off to rest. One of them actually called another and gave him a couple jobs he didn't have time to do.

Lee

LizzieMaine · Feb 17, 2008

We just got one of those paycheck loan joints this winter -- the first one I've ever seen around here. It's set up in an abandoned gas station, with big garish neon signs -- and the windows are taped over so you can't see who's inside. Given that this is supposed to be a "hip trendy arty Creative Economy" kind of town, it doesn't bode well at all.

Patrick Murtha · Feb 18, 2008

LizzieMaine said:
We just got one of those paycheck loan joints this winter -- the first one I've ever seen around here. It's set up in an abandoned gas station, with big garish neon signs -- and the windows are taped over so you can't see who's inside. Given that this is supposed to be a "hip trendy arty Creative Economy" kind of town, it doesn't bode well at all.

Here in Northeast Wisconsin, there is one virtually every other corner, and I'm not even exaggerating. New ones open all the time.

Flivver · Feb 18, 2008

I work as an auto industry analyst and we're forecasting for 2008 the worst auto sales in over a decade. But our economists are predicting that things will start to improve in the second half of the year.

AmateisGal · Feb 18, 2008

Flivver said:
I work as an auto industry analyst and we're forecasting for 2008 the worst auto sales in over a decade. But our economists are predicting that things will start to improve in the second half of the year.

Did they say why things will start to improve? I'd be curious to know.

dhermann1 · Feb 18, 2008

LizzieMaine said:
Well, I was affected by it last year -- even before the media hypers got wise to the fact that something was going wrong. I lost the fulltime writing job I'd had for ten years in January 2007 when our company lost a bunch of key accounts because corporations were tightening up on expendable things like PR writing, which is always the first sign that trouble is coming. Since then the market for the kind of writing I was doing has contracted to absolute bupkis, and I've been trying to survive the past year on what I can make at the theatre. My personal savings has dwindled to nearly nothing, I have had no budget for any kind of frivolous expenditures, and I have had to postpone necessary medical and dental care for lack of any kind of insurance. So yeah, as far as I'm concerned, there's been a recession on for quite a while now.

Lizzie: Just FYI, there are approximately 10,000 men in the Lounge who would marry you tomorrow. Something to keep in mind as a sort of Plan B.

Ecuador Jim · Feb 18, 2008

PrettySquareGal said:
I think there is an over-reliance on the media and government to define and tell us when things are starting to suck economically. I look at the cost of living compared to average salaries, to start.

Lots of sheep out there who believe whatever the media tell them. Seems to me we are quickly wiping out the middle class. The wave of foreclosures in the coming months may do more to accelerate that.

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