What Recession?

where we are it is getting bad my husband works in construction and it has not been this bad for us for about 35 years. He has always been able to find something before. Even the builders around here have slowed down to a crawl.

I got laid off October 28, 2008. I have not been able to find steady work since! No one is hiring, or they are on a "hiring freeze," etc. Lots of people are being forced to take the minimum wage McDonald's jobs, which sucks crap through a straw if you are trained in a particular profession. I have one friend who did I.T. work (computers) and made $2,000 every paycheck, who is now forced to work for Walgreen's for a $200 bi-weekly paycheck. Every time I turn around, I hear someone say they have been laid off. I say if you have a job right now, you are very lucky! I do not care how bad your job sucks, nor how miserable you are at your job - KEEP IT! One day soon - God forbid - you may end up laid off just like the rest of us, and things are only going to get worse before they better, unfortunately.

I am very active in our chamber of commerce and local government. I am seeing businesses dropping like flies. Also, my energy bills (gas and electric) have gotten ridiculous. Keeping gas in the car, can't get volunteers to do things that require driving anywhere. Food prices have soared and our grocery stores have not had full shelves for a couple of months.

As for where we live, it is a small town and we have already had several businesses fold in our local area. This of course hurts the economy in many ways, -lost jobs, lost cash flow etc. The prices of groceries keep going up, but pay is either low or not there at all. In our area a lot of people are either farmers or ranchers, the cost of hay is skyrocketing, as is feed. More and more are selling off their stock because they can no longer afford to feed them. It is getting really bad. As far as nation wide - we drive a truck cross country. Freight is dropping more than I have seen in years - which means that people are not buying things, therefore there is not a lot to ship. We have lost over 30,000 jobs in the trucking industry in the last three months. That is also a testament to just how bad the economy is. More and more trucks are sitting every day instead of hauling freight. More drivers loose their jobs every day as well. We see many truck stops, gas stations, and stores that have had to close their doors and go out of business. This tells me that more and more people are becoming unemployed every day. So yes, I have to say that the economy is really quite bad, and is causing a lot of problems nation wide.

I have a cousin who has been worrying about his professions (architecture). It seems that since businesses are trying to cut back on costs, one of the first things they let go is having new buildings - just as long as the old ones are standing well, then they'd make do with them. That's one of the things that I personally observed :) Thanks for the response on my discussion!