Posted on 02/20/2010 6:17:52 PM PST by ricks_place
BUENA PARK, Calif. — Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.
Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.
Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come.
Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department.
Here in Southern California, Jean Eisen has been without work since she lost her job selling beauty salon equipment more than two years ago. In the several months she has endured with neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check, she has relied on local food banks for her groceries.
She has learned to live without the prescription medications she is supposed to take for high blood pressure and cholesterol. She has become effusively religious — an unexpected turn for this onetime standup comic with X-rated material — finding in Christianity her only form of health insurance.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I work for myself but its a constant battle. Customers are very slow in making buying decisions.
Sounds like you: a. paid your dues, b. kept notes during the episode.
Wishing you all the best!!!
If all the troops come back home - they won’t find jobs....
End unemployment extension and voila! Unemployment numbers (as Obama figures them) drop to near zero! Problem solved!
Get an education, etc etc?
Normally good advice if there are job openings.
Been watching the want ads in local papers.
Several years ago, the want ads covered several full pages.
Now?
Can cover all categories of ads with palm of my hand.
Just very, very, very little hiring going on.
Here in Calif, real unemployment about 20 pct.
Grim.
No surprise here. 14 months and counting.
Great tips.
One that isn’t really happening except for the one the media created to keep Obama’s approval from hitting 30%!
our troops already have jobs
............
if they come home,
they spend their money at home
People are going to have to create their own jobs, instead. Forget the old path of getting a job; you've got to make your own job in the new world.
The hiring train has been derailed, otherwise.
For example, I lease some of my land to a man who "runs cattle" on my property. He was always dirt poor, so he could never before buy enough land to be in the cattle business on his own, but he can cash-flow enough from his cattle to pay me for a grass lease. He doesn't own the land, but he's created his own job. It's a rancher's version of share-cropping, with cattle.
I have another man, a long-time friend of the family, who pays me to bring his clients out for boar hunts on my ranch. Sometimes he'll do deer, as a trophy or two has been bagged out there. I prefer the turkey, ducks, and quail. He's created his own job. He doesn't own the land, yet he can be paid for his hunts.
I'll let the odd kid now and again fish out there to earn a few coins from the local seafood restaurant. Catfish and perch are tasty! Those kids have created their own jobs. No one is hiring them. No one is sending them a paycheck, yet they are earning money on their own.
The NY Times ran an article about an aviation man known as "The Grim Reaper." He repo's airplanes for banks from deadbeats. He's making 6 figures, yet he's not on any company's payroll. He's just out there, getting paid for each aircraft that he brings in.
In all of the above, those guys are creating their own jobs. To me, that's the same concept as the independent dentist or chiropractor with his own little office. That paradigm works. You may not believe it now because as Alvin Toffler says in Future Shock, the new change is something that we deny at first, yet this is how to earn a living by creating your own job. This is the answer going forward.
There won't be a month that goes by that a vagrant or migrant will miss coming by to offer to kill catus (a back-breaking job that is best done by hand because the chemicals that kill those plants take more than a year to reach the roots) or to cut brush. Again, these people are hustling...making their own jobs.
I've been there. I've panned for gold in national parks, built fences, logged trees, cleared trails, etc.
People *can* create their own jobs. Buy a used tow truck and start driving the highways...those people stranded in their broken-down cars need your help...and they are your next "paycheck." Tow truck owners here in Alabama routinely gross $90k per year.
Those who realize that the corporate career hiring track has ended will fair better than those who don't realize/accept that they can/must create their own jobs outside of the old corporate structure.
We've got "change." The old corporate hiring structure is gone. Companies have to downsize, not hire. Lots of guys are newly laid off competing for whatever salaried jobs are left. That's like being one of 10,000 guys in some remote Canadian mining town competing for the one single girl. Don't be one of those 10,000.
Adapt before everyone else. Create your own job.
ping
I think you are right.
Going local and re-thinking will be what will get more people to earning and taking care of their families.
Here is a link to an article about someone doing just that with cars. The customer will build his own car, and the shop has the new design, no GM.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/
What is interesting to me, is as this contraction in this credit cycle continues, smaller will be better. This will allow for more innovation, more creativity, more local solutions for work.
There must be hundreds of other different ways this kind of new thinking could play out.
I hope what I say helps and gets those in peril a bit of focus to help them out of harms way...
No...see post #71 instead.
>>Isn’t it amazing how hard it is for people over 50 to get jobs, regardless of the pay.
My husband and I became full-time RVers/Workampers in 2007
and have never been happier in our lives. It is very freeing to divest yourself of “the stuff”. We spend our time in 5 star beach resorts between MD. and Fl. year-round.
Maybe this will help a few ppl. JUST DO IT! : )
Good advice.
Just the opposite of a third world country. Instead of abandoning people who for the most part are educated and middle class, this provides them with temporary housing and services, with an eye to quickly returning them to employed prosperity when the economy improves.
Right now, the entire country faces a major problem, because the destructive effects of our high unemployment get worse with each passing week. The longer people remain unemployed, the more they burn up their assets and family support. Unemployment compensation just stretches this decline out a bit.
But if they have low cost shelter and food, school for their children, some police for security, and free clinic quality health care, they can “tread water” for years longer. At the same time, by putting a job center there, as soon as work is available, they can build up a month’s rent and deposit, and get their family out of the low cost shelter motel far more quickly than otherwise.
In the short and long term it costs less, speeds up economic recovery, helps keep families together, and generally keeps the fabric of society knit. That’s the furthest thing than what happens in the dog-eat-dog third world.
I agree with the information, suggestions and ideas contained in post #71. The future may well mean that the old ideas of corporate jobs is dying. Make your own job is great advice. I owned my own business for over 20 years until the ‘Triple Whammy’ destroyed it... I started my computer business back in the early 1980’s - kept it going past the year 2000... But insurmountable barriers do appear.
Recently, me best buddy - just over age 50’s - unemployed for a long time - Mr. Dad he became - started his own business. My buddy negotiated with a fellow who wanted to unload his dry cleaning business. The price started at 400K but was negotiated down to 30K down and the owner is ‘toting the note’ on a total of less than 300K with my buddy making monthly payments.
My buddy learned from my experience - and said so. He wasn’t going to continue to beat his head against the wall.
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