Posted on 11/22/2008 7:53:40 PM PST by mathwhizz
“You just sit and you worry,” said Pat Weber, a construction administrator in Fennville who was laid off more than a year ago. “In the last year, I’ve put in for more than 100 jobs. I stopped counting after 110. It’s just so defeating.”
All around Fennville and its neighbors here in southwest Michigan, front lawns are peppered with for-sale signs and merchants complain about slow days. But while this remains a beautiful place with none of the obvious blight of Detroit on the other side of the state, residents say the hardship beneath the surface is very real.
It is the same story in other parts of Michigan, as the state’s already entrenched recession — in at least its fifth year, according to economic experts — digs deeper as a result of the recent global financial crisis.
New data show the state’s unemployment rate crept up to 9.3 percent, almost three times what it was in 2000, and, along with Rhode Island, the highest in the country. Just last week, Herman Miller Inc., an office furniture company based in Zeeland, Mich., announced that it would eliminate or lay off 400 to 650 workers, many of them in western Michigan. SKD Automotive, an auto parts manufacturer in Jonesville, Mich., where it is the largest employer, indicated it would eliminate 300 jobs.
As a result of the steady job losses that began in the summer of 2000, 1.82 million Michigan residents, or close to 20 percent of the population, are now on some form of public assistance, including food stamps and home heating credits, a record for the state.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“GO WHERE THE FOOD IS!” I loved watching that guy, he was pretty filthy but so funny. RIP Sam.
The families that moved to CA had no money to buy or rent a home, and there were no real job prospects. They ended up living in absolute squalor, tent villages with other dustbowl migrant families. No electricity, no running water, no plumbing of any kind.
The families who stayed put in the hard-hit states suffered greatly, but they suffered (for the most part) in their own homes, surrounded by their families and their neighbors. There was a really great docu on this just two weeks ago, prolly History Channel. If a farm was coming up for foreclosure auction, all the local landowners would agree to bid pennies on the dollar, low-ball the heck out of the land, so the family facing eviction could stay put.
Today's families would have to be mental to pack up and go unless they had guaranteed employment on the other end. If a job were guaranteed, for a lot of families in MI, I think they would be best off walking away from their homes here...but only if that job was assured.
Go with the devil you know.
The same can be said of most blue states.
I just took my house off the market after trying to sell it for three stinking years. There is no way we could get what we owe on it in this real estate market, not when foreclosures are selling 80% below market value. We're lucky, we don't have to move, we just wanted to. Too many families in MI, right now, aren't so lucky.
>>How about looking for work in another state? Hm?<<
I can tell you from personal experience, unless you drop everything and go, no one is hiring you from “out of state”
How do I know? My hubby has been doing it for two years. We can’t sell the house here, so basically we are waiting to abandon it when we have to. Board it up, pull in the AC so no one steals it and pray that we come back to it without it being trashed or burned.
It’s sounds like a good plan to get a job in another state. Wish we could.
>>When I was a child my dad sold everything we had to get to a state where there were jobs. It worked!several times!
When I had a family I had to do the same thing, sell about everything I had to go to a state where jobs were plentiful.<<
Fantastic! When will you be sending the check for my house?
It’s easy to sell when someone is buying. Here in MI we are not selling, we are abandoning. Thanks for all the empathy there.
Finally some sense from other Michiganders, who know how it is. :)
>>Once husband is settled in with his new job, sell his old home and moves family to new state<<
Lord, you people don’t get it.
NO ONE will buy our homes.
I sold my birth home, my hubby’s first home and we bought this one.
We lose two generations of homes.
Think it’s easy? Yeah, drop everything you’ve worked for and go, right? It isn’t so easy when it becomes reality.
And I’m 48. This is a nightmare.
Indeed a depression and laid soley at the feet of the Demonrats and their union ballwashers.
Hyundai is in Tennessee as well.
Think it’s easy? Yeah, drop everything you’ve worked for and go, right? It isn’t so easy when it becomes reality. And I’m 48. This is a nightmare.
No, they don't get it.
Families, both of ours, are here. ALL of them--uncles, aunts, grandparents were here, and my family has been here 140+ years. Foreclosures all over the place and we just live in a small town, we can't move/sell if there is nothing to move to or with.
One cannot move to another state, far away with NOTHING, that's just insanity. Just how welcomed do you think a gaggle of northern refugees would be in Texas? The illegals would fare better.
I think we need some sort of Michigan support network, here in the state, without government-strings-attached-to-my-head back-up.
One would think that the democrats in this state would figure out that their own party has "sold them down the river" forever. Truth be told, IMO, Michigan is just a foreshadowing of what is in store for the rest of the country.
I wish people like YOU would stop painting with such a broad brush. Not everyone on Michigan voted for Dems! Some of us voted McCain/Palin and we can't change the majority that wanted to keep their free handouts. SO, I for one did not make this bed!
Exactly. Last I knew Bush was President, not Governor of MI.
I’m for sending the layabouts of Detroit and Flint to Puerto Rico, where they can maintain their US citizenship, yet not be able to vote in a national election again. They would fit in well on PR, as a majority of the island’s inhabitants use the WIC card for groceries anyway.
Haven’t seen a Jeff Daniels “MICHIGAN” commercial in months;
“Send more people! We need the Taxes!”
>>I wish people like YOU would stop painting with such a broad brush. Not everyone on Michigan voted for Dems! Some of us voted McCain/Palin and we can’t change the majority that wanted to keep their free handouts. SO, I for one did not make this bed! <<
Oh Thank YOU!
I didn’t either. Nor did the UP, nor did most of the middle of the state.
“Just how welcomed do you think a gaggle of northern refugees would be in Texas? The illegals would fare better.”
Ridiculous! Sorry excuse. What do you think they’ll do, behave like a bunch of midwestern union thugs?
>>Just how welcomed do you think a gaggle of northern refugees would be in Texas? <<
I’ve actually been told by FReepers that TX doesn’t want us and they have shushed other FReepers to not invite us down, with a big LOL to soften it.
I can’t blame them, actually. They have it good and don’t want what they see as Michiganders. The Detroit Libs and lazy workers.
But it doesn’t make me feel any better.
>>Ridiculous! Sorry excuse. What do you think they’ll do, behave like a bunch of midwestern union thugs?<<
“Foot in mouth” much?
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