Is it really that bad in the U.S.?

[gigi]

@Athena

I live in an area that’s never had a good, thriving economy, so I suspect that’s a large part of it. Also, the main employers here are health care organizations and colleges, neither one of which are particularly hurt by slowdowns.

Ours is–discretionary spending depends on the return from the endowment, and that’s tanked. Layoffs have been mentioned. The question is–get a second job now to have an in before everyone is laid off and looking? If anyone is hiring given that holiday spending wil be down?

I’m scared to look at my retirement account, and am happy that I never did upgrade from my junky apartment with the cheap rent. I am kicking myself for money I haven’t saved over the years, but have to just decide to go from now and do the best I can.

[UltraVires]

@gonzomax

http://www.realquest.com/rq/default.aspx#
See for yourself. Type in a zip and close in. Then the foreclosures will come up as flags. Start with mine 48127. Then you can move about like google earth.

Wow. If you look at an area 3 miles south of me by 2 miles east of me-= 6 square miles, there are 737 foreclosures.

So, I don’t care if you (the proverbial you) paid cash for your house, or got a 15 year fixed rate with 20% down. You are still affected by your neighborhood being abandoned…

[Yeticus_Rex]

My 20 year old son got a decent job as a chef and wants to move out. He was looking at rent from anywhere from $700-$1200/mo for a 2 bedroom 2 bath. Instead, I found it to our advantage to buy a short-sale house and carry the papers. We found a 2 bed/1.5 bath and got it for $70K on short sale. I gave him a 30 year fixed at 5% flat for $375/mo. P&I plus impound for taxes and insurance of an additional $95/mo. for a total of $470/mo.

When signing the papers, I asked the realtor how the selling party felt about the sale. First word out of her mouth was “Relieved”. They were a couple of days away from the bank foreclosing on them. Their loans were forgiven and the short sale is on their credit reports for only two years instead of 10 years for a foreclosure.

If you can swing it, buy a house and either rent or carry papers. For my son, I couldn’t let this opportunity pass him by. Also, I feel our family will now break even when the tax man cometh for the bailout money.

[purple_haze]

It’s tough here in Michigan. My husband works for a subsidiary to the automakers, and his company started letting people go six months ago. First the underperforming people got let go. Then it was time to eliminate second shift and add those people to the first shift. Some of the day people got let go to make room. A voluntary layoff was announced. “It’s just temporary”, said management. “A couple of weeks.” Tempted by the lure of some time off during the summer, some of the employees agreed to the temporary layoff. That Friday they were told that whoops! It was permanent and have a nice life. I can’t even imagine the sense of betrayal those people felt.

Today my husband came home and told me that with the exception of he and three other employees, everyone else was being cut down to 32 hours a week until after Christmas. It was either that or lay off nine more people. Merry Christmas - good luck buying gifts for your kids now!

I have 24 more credits to go and then I’ll have my Associates degree. I’ll graduate in the spring. We’re hoping that he still has a job by then, so I will have an opportunity to get on my feet and find something that pays a reasonable wage before he gets the ax.

One of the houses down the street sold at auction for 25% less than the market value. Ouch. We built this house in 2000 and don’t plan to move for at least five more years, but it is pretty horrifying to see the home values tank the way they have around here.

I live in Michigan. We’re waiting to see what happens next. I can tell you this much, we are being conservative. This will be a minimalist Christmas, but that’s OK. The kids are 13 and 19 so it’s not like they’re little anymore. This will be a cash only holiday. If we don’t have the cash, I’m sure as hell not charging it.

[even_sven]

@Yeticus_Rex

My 20 year old son got a decent job as a chef and wants to move out. He was looking at rent from anywhere from $700-$1200/mo for a 2 bedroom 2 bath. Instead, I found it to our advantage to buy a short-sale house and carry the papers. We found a 2 bed/1.5 bath and got it for $70K on short sale. I gave him a 30 year fixed at 5% flat for $375/mo. P&I plus impound for taxes and insurance of an additional $95/mo. for a total of $470/mo.

Are you in the Himalayas or California right now, because when I lived in California I knew a girl who paid 400 a month to rent someone’s porch to live on (really!) Maybe I should go home and get in on this…

[Hello_Again]

Just to be clear to the outsider, Michigan has the worst economy in the U.S. Nearly every place is doing better than Michigan, even places that are not doing so great. The economy has been declining steadily for the past eight years. Michigan’s nonfarm employment rate has been trending down since 2000, and the state has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at the moment.

I only point this out because it seems like a ton of MichiDopers posted – keep in mind that they have it exceptionally bad.

[lavenderviolet]

@Hello_Again

Just to be clear to the outsider, Michigan has the worst economy in the U.S. Nearly every place is doing better than Michigan, even places that are not doing so great. The economy has been declining steadily for the past eight years. Michigan’s nonfarm employment rate has been trending down since 2000, and the state has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at the moment.

Yes, good point there. A large part of Michigan’s woes are the inevitable and expected consequences of decades of poor strategy and poor decisions from the auto industry bigwigs.

[DanBlather]

A new Trader Joe’s opened up and there were over 300 people applying for jobs.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

Severla houses in the middle class neighborhood where my elderly Father & I live have been auctioned off.

Lots of closed businesses.

And this area has been lightly touched, so they say.

[Tuckerfan]

@RickJay

If you’re a good welder or machinist, I can get you a job in southern Ontario in about four minutes. Sucks if you don’t have those skills, though.

What’s it pay? I got laid off a month ago, and to say there’s nothing in this area is a bit of an understatement. If you’re in the medical field there’s jobs (though the local hospital’s laying off), but not much else. An hour’s drive away from me, there’s plenty of $8/hr jobs, but the moment gas prices tick up, it goes out of my price range. (Not to mention that my car has some problems and really needs to be replaced, and carpooling with someone is highly unlikely.)

I’ve seen a few jobs in my field, or that I’m qualified to do, but the stipulations they put on the job mean they won’t hire me. (You have to have six months experience with XYZ model machine, I have that much or more with TUV model machine, which is nearly identical to that, which for some reason is not “good enough,” or they want you to have experience with the proprietary software that they [and they alone] use, or they want you to have a college degree [for which they’ll pay you the princely sum of $12/hr].)

Things are so bad, that the gas station across the street from me, which is always packed with people, has started cutting hours of the employees.

[Savannah]

@DanBlather

A new Trader Joe’s opened up and there were over 300 people applying for jobs.

And where I live, the local grocery store chain had a hiring fair, they’re so anxious to get employees.

[Jolly_Roger]

haven’t been hit hard yet, but since I’m in the Army I pretty much have a paycheck and benefits by defualt. That being said I worry for friends and family that are not in the military. Also I had hoped to retire in a year, reaching 20 years of active service. But if things don’t improve and there are no jobs available I may have to stay in. Which pisses me off. I really looked forward to you know, a normal life, a house a decent job, my benefits etc. as a payoff for all of my hard work in the past.

[Yeticus_Rex]

@even_sven

Are you in the Himalayas or California right now, because when I lived in California I knew a girl who paid 400 a month to rent someone’s porch to live on (really!) Maybe I should go home and get in on this…

Victorville, CA.

The house needed a lot of attention to the yard. We got a 40 cubic yard trash bin for a week and filled it up over the long weekend. We also yanked out all of the carpet and will replace it along with some tile in the kitchen. We will also paint the entire interior of the house. Even in this condition, the house was still an excellent deal.

But I haven’t felt this sore in quite some time.

[Tuckerfan]

Recession began in Dec. 2007.

The National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007, making official what most Americans have already believed about the state of the economy .

The NBER is a private group of leading economists charged with dating the start and end of economic downturns. It typically takes a long time after the start of a recession to declare its start because of the need to look at final readings of various economic measures.

“The committee views the payroll employment measure, which is based on a large survey of employers, as the most reliable comprehensive estimate of employment,” said the group’s statement. “This series reached a peak in December 2007 and has declined every month since then.”

Manufacturing hits a 26 year low.

A closely watched index of the nation’s manufacturing activity fell to a 26-year low in November and stands at a level indicating overall economic contraction for the second straight month.

The Tempe, Ariz.-based Institute for Supply Management, a purchasing management group, said Monday its manufacturing index declined to a reading of 36.2 in November from 38.9 in October. It was the lowest reading for the index since May 1982, when the economy was mired in recession.

November’s reading was also well below the consensus forecast of 38 that economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected.

The tipping point for the index is 50, with a reading below that indicating that manufacturing activity is shrinking. A reading below 41 is typically associated with a recession in the broader economy.

[HMS_Irruncible]

Here in Atlanta things seem OK. The only sign of trouble I see is 1 out of 10 homes seems to be either in foreclosure or unsold for more than 18 months. But they’re mostly unoccupied speculative McMansions built in 2007 and 2006, so fuck whoever made those particularly bad decisions.

[Theodore_Striker]

Being a recruiter, my business definitely feels the pinch when things are tightening up. There are still plenty of places hiring in the Cincinnati area, but they are definitely being more selective, and the wages are typically about 5-8K lower than what they were for similar positions 18 months ago. Many of our clients are favoring using our contract services for at last the first 90 days of a person’s employment so they can stall on adding official headcount to their budget, they don’t have to pay holiday pay, and they don’t have to pay benefits until the person is brought on to their payroll. Unfortunately, our main clientele is manufacturing, so it may take a little while for the worm to turn, but we are making due. It is definitely not great though.

[DKW]

We’re feeling a pretty hard pinch right now on all levels; in fact, there’s a one-year wage freeze on all State employees. My only consolation is that my current job isn’t very desirable, so it’s mine for as long as I want it. But transfer opportunities within the State system are extremely limited and are going to be like that for a long, long time.

Frankly, I’m more than a little surprised that it’s come to to this. Public housing, and especially dealing with difficult people, isn’t at all what I signed up for when I completed my Accounting degree. I honestly thought this would be a stepping stone to something a little more appropriate…Taxation, Finance, infrastructure, something like that, and really get my career going. Now there’s a very good chance that public housing is going to be my career.

Not sure how much of it is at fault of the current recession, though, as I can’t remember ANY time that the Hawaii job situation has been good. It’s been wavering between shaky and deplorable since before I was in high school. Can’t really blame the dotcom crash either, as we weren’t quick enough to get on that bandwagon.

Maybe this isn’t quite the right place to say this, but it needs to be said: The only way we’re getting out of this is if we reduce our population and the wealthiest Americans have to pay more. For a long time, we’ve managed to stave off disaster with growth, growth, growth. Now we can’t grow anymore, and huge swaths of Americans are going to be out of work. When we stop producing people the country can’t support, and we start consuming less, and the workforce decreases to the point where employers can’t offer unfair wages, we’ll see improvement. As for the second part, in addition to the obvious noblesse oblige, these, by and far, are the ones who benefitted the most from the good times, in the form of seemingly endless tax cuts and untold millions in corporate welfare. Know how the automakers can so shamelessly hold a begging bowl in front of Congress? Because that’s what they’re used to. Well, you play, you pay. Roll back some of the tax cuts and cut off the gravy train, get more money back in the system, and start paying off some of the horrendous national debt. The less behind we are on our collective obligations, the better off the whole nation is.

I know, it’s never going to happen, you don’t have to tell me.