Our economy is a resillient one. It may be weak in certain areas and pretty good in other areas.
The shopping center scenes, I mentioned in our area seem to be replicated in many N California areas.
Our Dil called a few minutes ago, she and our two grand kids got a few Target gift cards and Walmart gift cards. So she and the kids went out shopping to use those gift cards.
She called from a Carls Junior restaurant. She told my wife that the stores and parking lots where they went (at least two shopping centers) were busy. The fast food places were busy. Now maybe that will clear out when the gift cards are used up.
I80 to the Sacramento/Tahoe area and back has been busy this morning. And other friend called and said the traffic reminded her of weekday commutes. It took her a little over an hour to make a 35 mile trip to outlets east of here.
Friends with relatives in the rust bucket and the NE say that the economic situation is very bad back there. A friend when he hears this, says those are his old friends and relatives back in Michigan, still waiting for Studebaker to reopen its car and truck factories. They refuse to move and to develop new skills needed in today’s world.
My wife watched a local news special last night while I was getting Tuxed Out. They had a guy who runs a new type of employment agency strictly internet in the San Francisco area. In spite of the 8% unemployment rate, he had a lot jobs that he was not able to fill due to lack of job skills and people not willing to change or really work in those jobs.
One of our younger relatives is a N California Senior Project Manager for heavy duty types of of construction. He needs 3-4 project managers and about a dozen supers besides 100’s of skilled workers. Their current open windows for future jobs due to the shortage of those skilled people are out past 2011/12. He just hired a new/young project manager from Oregone, whose company went belly up. The new guy starts working this week. His pregnant wife is due any day. Our younger relative has not been able to get any other laid off skilled workers from that closed company to move down.
Last night at our NY’s party, one of our friends talked about a friend, who is a semi retired heavy construction project manager in Western Canada in his 70’s. For a decade he comes to southern California during the winter months as a trouble shooter/consultant. They called our friends on Christmas to say they had arrived in Southern California, and he started to work on Monday.
Yes, this is not scientific. But in a way it is like watching Weather on TV telling you that global warming is causing a drought and extreme heat in your area. You walk to your front door and walk outside and it is cold and rainy. Yet the so called experts say it is hot and dry in your area.
A 3-5% drop in traffic with a 10% smaller basket size isn’t noticeable by the average shopper but would result in a 13-15% drop in sales (those are the #s for the retailer I work for by the way). There are *jobs* out there but that doesn’t mean anything other than we haven’t reverted back to cave man yet. The classifieds here has dropped about 80% in size in the last 6 months. The U6 unemployment rate is at 12.5% and skyrocketting and continuing unemployment benefits hit an all time high last week.