What are some signs of the recession where you live?
Here, a southern state once brimming with textile jobs but now burdened with an 11 percent unemployment rate, my wife has been job searching for more than a year. She started out responding to classified ads that she thought she was qualified for, then moved on to temp agencies, call centers, stores and restaurants with no luck. Last week she tried applying for a waitressing position only to be told by the manager that he had 150 applicants already.
The community colleges have seen their enrollment increase big time. A lot of that can be attributed to people who’ve been laid off and going back to school to retrain, as well as people who already have a bachelor’s degree and can’t find a job in their field, and wanting to learn a trade like nursing and welding to help them get by.
Also the plasma center has a glut of “donors” (if that is indeed the right word for people selling their plasma). From what I’ve heard, people are having a hard time just getting through on the phone to make an appointment.
Also the shopping malls are hurting, but places like Dollar Tree and Family Dollar seem to be doing great.
Me and people I know are shopping a whole lot more because every store is having huge sales. We’re also taking more short vacations because you can find great deals on airfare. We’re also maxing out our 401(k)s and saving more on top of that, almost all of which is being invested in stock index funds. We’re also refinancing our mortgage because interest rates are so low.
It might be a coincidence, but in the Adams Morgan district of Washington, D.C. where I live, a Popeyes, Footlocker, and another discount store whose name I don’t recall, the three of which are side-by-side, have all closed in the last month. Oh, and a Citibank branch closeby closed in March.
Seattle:
Many independent stores and restaurants closing up, “for lease” space everywhere. Friends looking for work–any job posting gets flooded with hundreds of applicants so even getting to the interview stage of a job hunt is tough.
And for myself, home devalued from the real-estate bubble, so stuck with a higher interest rate and unable to qualify to refinance to a lower rate.
A chicken processing plant closing in the state that produces a hell of a lot of chickens.
OTOH a foreign company built a pipe factory near the river port in Little Rock.
The University Mall (the first in LR)has closed and been torn town. The plan is to replace it with a condo and businesses, but there seems to be some doubt now if that will go through.
We’ve had some malls where the owner declared bankruptcy.
The traffic seems less.
We drove down a major road a few Saturdays ago to meet a friend. There were lots of closed stores, including one restaurant that Ivylad and I went to for our 20th wedding anniversary. It had been around for 30 years, but I guess this go-round was too much for it.
On the other hand, in my part of Orlando(ish), we’ve recently had a new strip mall open, along with a BJ’s, an Olive Garden, and a Red Lobster, with a Sam’s soon to come.
I’ve stopped going to the mall and hanging out as a time-killer. But on occasion I’ll have to go to Sears and while I’m there take a quick trip through. Same as everywhere else: lots of closed stores. I have to say, I really pity the employees - it must be soul-crushingly boring to have to wait for customers in the empty stores. (Except for Abercrombie & Fitch, I’m amazed those arrogant assholes are keeping their deserted overpriced stores open at all.)
Something annoying to me - the dollar stores are doing booming business, but is it my imagination or are a lot of useful things not being stocked any more? I know they might run out of stuff, but a lot of things - plastic shower curtains, baby shampoo, plastic tablecloths - have disappeared off the shelves. ( Probably need more room for ugly crude knickknacks, but isn’t a dollar pack of toilet paper more useful than a flowerpot-held-by-a-sick looking-mule? …Isn’t it?)
Nothing so obvious, if you didn’t know there was a recession.
Morning traffic is better, but afternoon traffic still sucks.
There are a few more vacant buildings, but even in boom times, these places are constantly cycling in and out. The worst offender – the ex Farmer Jack – closed years ago, but we have a brand new Meijer counter-corner from it. What should we think?
The restaurants that we go to are still packed, and I’m talking mid-week! I’m guessing that a lot of the other clientele is still employed, or retired the second that they could (i.e., not old, but they could very well have gotten in their 20 years when 20 years is all that it took).
The biggest thing that’s easy to notice is the sheer quantity of houses are for sale, and along popular route for me, how long some of the same houses have been for sale. It’s really quite depressing, especially in thinking that in most of the cases it’s probably loss-of-jobs causing the sales and not subprime loans (in my area, in any case).
One thing that I’d love to be able to photograph but can’t is the interior condition of one of my local plants. Less than a year ago, every unit it produced still made massive margins. Now, half of the “stuff” has been removed and relocated, and the rest of the “stuff” is just sitting there, idle.
There’s also the news, taking trips around Detroit, cat dealer closings, and the insane amount of “For Sale” signs you see everywhere.
Signs in Dublin.
A lot less traffic.
For Sale/Rent signs stay up for a long time and there is a lot of them. There is one outside my apartment block that has ivy growing up it.
Lots of closing down sales signs in town.
Queues outside labour exchanges. I haven’t seen them for 10 years.
Rents are falling. My rent has been reduced by almost 20%.
Personal signs. 10%(~200 people) of my company were made redundant and the rest of us had to take a 10% pay cut.
I haven’t noticed the less traffic yet.
A lot of empty shop units.
Empty housing estates out the country a bit.
Irish people working lower end jobs again.
I travel into town from Harolds X at 09:30 and out again at 18:30.
There is signifigantly less traffic. I used to sit in traffic jams every day in and out. Now the traffic just flows if there is nothig strange happening on the road, crash etc.
Ah right. I recently moved so I’m not too sure how busy the area I’ve moved to used to be but the traffic seems fairly mad still.
Modesto, CA
16.8% unemployment rate
We have a number of empty houses in our neighborhood. In fact, we’re on the second wave of them. Last year about a fifth of houses in my neighborhood emptied. (The neighborhood consists of seven year old houses, great big two story ones with 4 or 5 bedrooms each. They just ooze “buy me and be the envy of all your friends!”) Now those houses have been re-sold at half their original cost, and new houses are becoming vacant as people who’ve held on this long lose their grip.
Many stores have closed. We’ve lost Circuit City, leaving the only show in town Best Buy, and I really don’t like Best Buy. (I’m an IT Manager, so I often have to pop out to buy odds and ends quick-like.) I see people holding going out of business signs on the street corners advertising sales. Chain restaurants are doing great, but independent ones are closing. A wonderful taqueria opened within walking distance from my house, and despite having perfect service, great food, and really good specials they’ve closed.
The business I’m in is doing ok (medical billing, people still get sick), but we have to work harder to get payment. People have lost their jobs and insurance, and they simply can’t pay. A few have tried to sneak checks by with statements on them like, “by cashing this check you acknowledge this to be payment in full for my services.” Insurance companies are tightening up too, and don’t pay as much or as liberally. Other medical billing companies have closed due to a nasty “perfect storm” of new regulations (NPI), Medicare changing carriers in a huge clusterfork, and lower payments.
When I advertised a part time minimum wage clerical job I got hundreds of applications, many from professional people desperate for anything. Instead of trying to find someone qualified, I had to try and find the one that would be the best fit, rejecting many people because I knew by their resume that they would despise the boring repetitive task I needed done. On the other hand we’ve picked up a number of wonderfully experienced people for other departments.
I’m a public librarian, and we’ve had a line for computers since, I dunno, last spring. This morning at 10 AM there were so many people waiting for computers they couldn’t fit on the screen and it had to scroll. On a Monday morning! A lot of them are looking for jobs or working on resumes.
Well, I didn’t want to mention the news, because you don’t so much “notice” it, but it does all of the noticing and then reporting to you.
I’ve not seen any closed dealers yet, but they may not be on my route. My Lincoln dealer closed down several years ago (actually, they “moved” to a ghetto neighborhood in Detroit for some reason).
I mentioned the houses for sale (“for sale” signs), but I don’t see a lot of businesses with them, other than the same ones that always come and go, because they’re crappy locations and no one in his right mind would go there for x service.
As for taking trips around Detroit, I’d really like to know what’s different. It’s always seemed like a slum to me, except downtown. I was there a few weeks ago to renew my passport, and it was actually quite pleasant. I mean, I was really and truly surprised, and I felt like I was in a prosperous downtown – like mini-Toronto.
Here in the Boston, MA area, the signs are mixed. Traffic is down, there are a lot of “FOR SALE” signs up, but the restarants are still busy. The real hit is coming-when people exhaust their unemployment insurance, and large numbers of auto dealers close up shop. I think (just my opinion) that this recession will last alot longer; possibly 4-6 years.
The oddest local sign is that everyone who has an old car in a barn or garage has rolled said car out to the street with a For Sale sign on it. On a recent 90-minute jaunt I saw three 60s-70s Beetles, 2 or 4 muscle cars, and 2 50s-ish sedans.
I notice mainly that apartment vacancies are up, and rents are down–great for me as a tenant, but obviously not for the owners. And it’s bad for me too in the long run. If higher rents come because of an economic upswing that includes more jobs to go around, I’ll welcome them. This is in the Westside of L.A. BTW.