Sign of the times: I live in a city of a million people, yet the job listings in the Sunday paper don't even fill one page. I enclosed the job openings - all of them - in a black border on the two pages here. Paltry offerings.I'm getting tired of hearing the media and politicians tell me the economy is recovering. Maybe it is for the banks who are now passing out huge bonuses, but it sure isn't for the rest of us. Unemployment and foreclosure figures definitely do not spell recovery, and the employers fighting to avoid laying off any workers are reducing hours and benefits. State programs across the country are being slashed, increasing the pressure on those already hurting.
I guess the media thinks if they repeat the word recovery often enough people will start to believe it. Personally, I'm more apt to believe what Ilargi and Stoneleigh have to say over at The Automatic Earth and their vocabulary doesn't include "recovery".
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We had some friends over last night who thought this recession would probably knock some sense into people's heads over what's coming up in our future. I tend to agree to some degree. Here what amuses me is how little some of these jobs pay: 10 years experience in a specialized field for PT wages at $12/hour w/ no benefits or anything else. Har, har, har.
Newspaper job ads sort of died out a few years ago due to the Internet. One of many reasons traditional newspapers are failing. Most newspaper Web sites link up with Yahoo Jobs or something similar now.
Though, I've been looking for a job for months now, and there are definitely fewer job listings than the last time I searched three years ago. And supposedly the recession never hit my area.
It's all a bit grim.
Where I notice the "recession-can't-call-it-a-depression-can-we?" is in car sale yards. They're all closing down. They just can't seem to stay open.
When you think about it, it makes sense that new cars would be the first to go. New cars are what people buy when the going is good. Feel rich, go buy a new car. Feel tightwaddish, buy a used car. And everyone's sticking with their used cars right now.
We're cutting our budget too. My other half earns well, but we're noticing food prices continuing to rise. Our dollars are just buying less than they were a year ago.
I feel a lot of empathy for people who are doing it a lot tougher than we are. In church we are getting continued calls for more food for the food bank - they can't get enough donations, and people are going hungry. It's bad.
But I can't help feeling that we're only in the early stages. You get to learn a bit about economics, and you learn that you can't heal a broken economy by shuffling debt. Only by clearing it. As long as the governments refuse to clear debts and just shuffle the rotten debt around, things will not improve. They'll only get worse.
Here's to 2010 ;-) :-(
My husband likes to watch the financial news on TV. I mostly tune it out because I can't take the cheerful 'economy is improving -- get out there and spend!' commentary, but last week I heard a new tune being played. One guest 'expert' was doing the ususal spiel when the second 'expert' intervened. We are not seeing an upturn, he noted, just a decline in the rate of decline. What's to say we aren't going to experience a steeper decline in the future instead of the upturn everyone is predicting? Expert number one dismissed this concern. Every upturn is preceeded by a slowing in the rate of decline, he reassured viewers. So what else could this be? Well, there are other possibilities . . .
EEK! these are the Sunday job ads for Tucson/Pima county!? :(
(I know they are more places in Pima County than Tucson but a lot of people used to commute from the county areas to Tucson for work.)
I haven't looked in the Phoenix papers for a long time for fear of what they'd look like. Now, I'll have to look out of curiosity.
Peace to all,
shamba
Beany - you'd think so but many people think it's almost over. I hate to burst their bubble, but...
mollyjade - that could be part of it but there has been a steady decline in ads over only the past year in this Sunday paper. I have friends who've been looking for work for months now with little success. Others are having hours cut or are forced to take furloughs or paycuts.
Daharja - that this is the tip of the iceberg is scary. I've just started reading a book now - Plan C: Community Strategies for dealing with peak oil and climate change - that is painting a pretty grim picture and I'm only in the first few chapters!
gaias daughter - the level of denial and not wanting to look at what's really happening is pretty amazing to me. I guess a lot of people just can't cope. In the media's case, though, it's sheer manipulation of the masses.
Shamba - yep. Grim, huh? We commented to each other a few months ago that it was amazing to only have half as many pages in the Sunday ads. Then it went down to one fold-out (4 pages) plus an insert (2 more pages). Lately, it's not even had the insert. The photo I took is half the total ads for everything other than cars for all of Tucson. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually combine it with the car section because they won't be able to fill up the space.
I totally agree. We're a long way from recovery. Don't ruin the big business/government spin though. Happy times are here again. ;-)
Recovery, whatever. My husband was out of work 13 months before landing an $8/hour, part-time/temporary position. That barely covers daycare for the weekday shifts, when I'm working.
The interesting thing is the level of denial among people I know. A neighbor friend of mine essentially distanced herself not long after she lost his job. Now her husband's in the same boat...and she doesn't understand why her husband, degree in hand, isn't immediately finding a job. Scary.
LOL I have never found a job through a newspaper ad.I use My company as a gauge for the economy- Boeing, being one of the larger employers in this area, is still laying off, still wanting to move operations to a "right to work state" (non union- so watch your ass in a plane built by non-union, lower trained people) So far the only jobs I see being saved are managers and executives
Yeah, I'm with you on that. I work in the service industry and I've lost ~30-50% of my income, every week making just a bit less. Recovery my ass.
Same thing here in my neck of the woods. I live in a small town, but our want ads (jobs) has dwindled (I love that word) to only 3 columns.
After taking a year off to recover from spinal surgery I was finally ready to go back to work as a demonstrator (ladies that hand out free samples) and was told we would get mucho hours because they had women calling up all the time not showing up at the last minute.
And during the month of June I went an entire week with no work while unemployment was reassessing if I was still eligible (which I am. And thus far in July I have worked only 1 day last week and only one day this coming week.
Needless to say I am filling out applications once again.
Green Bean - three months later and happy times are still not here yet. Am I supposed to keep believing the lies?!
Going Green Mama - my sweetie and I talk about the collective denial all the time. Amazing what people tell themselves.
Rob - oh, yes, must save all the executive and managerial types for their work is so essential. Excuse me while I gag. (I know, that's just so dated.)
Allie - the newscasters seem so surprised each week when there are more unemployed people. Hello?!
The Cooking Lady - hope you have found something!
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