Could we be facing the same 25% unemployment rate in the near future?? This is getting scary. But in the '30's people knew how to garden, can and preserve, and to actually cookmeals from scratch. and how to sew or patch clothing, and fix their car. We have lost many of skills that our grandparenrts used to survive the great depression.
Stu

A Case of Unemployment
The decade of the 1930s saw the Great Depression in the United States and many other countries. During this decade large numbers of people lived in poverty, desperately in need of more food, clothing, and shelter. Yet the resources that could produce that food, clothing, and shelter were sitting idle, producing nothing.

At the worst point of the Great Depression, in 1933, one in four Americans who wanted to work was unable to find a job. Further, it was not until 1941, when World War II was underway, that the official unemployment rate finally fell below 10%. This massive wave of unemployment hit before a food stamp program and unemployment insurance existed. There were few government programs designed to help the poor or those in temporary difficulty. Further, most wives did not work, so if the husband lost his job, all income for that household stopped. An equivalent rate of unemployment today would cause less economic hardship because of the variety of programs (often inspired by the Great Depression) that cushion unemployment and poverty.

Many people date the beginning of the Depression at October 24, 1929, Black Thursday, the day the stock market crashed. This was indeed a traumatic day for those who owned stock as sales volume broke all records. But the decline in overall stock prices was only about 2.5%, from 261.97 to 255.39 as measured by the New York Times index of 50 stocks. Most of the decline still laid in the future; the market hit bottom on July 7 of 1932 when the Times index was only 33.98, a decline of over 89% from its high of 311.90 of September 19, 1929.

*** Continued***

http://ingrimayne.com/econ/EconomicCatastrophe/GreatDepression.html

Over the last four years, I have seen the hand writing on the wall in my industry (custom home builder). I started then banking back for when the rainy day hit. Last New Year (2008) I told my wife we were probably done within a year. I was dead on. I have been self hunting a new gig for 2 months and it is BLEAK. I recently employed a company to help me get back into the game and their forecast overall is awful for the country as a whole. If I hadn't seen the bubble about to burst I would be truly screwed.

Lessons learned....

Pay off all debt possible
Save as much as possible
Networking within your groups for jobs intelligence
Be ready to take a hit on the paycheck at the new gig
Get Help finding new work. Many aren't and they also aren't working.
Build a Career BOB. It is shocking how the hiring game has changed in 8 - 10 years.
Stay Positive.

Remember that ZERO withholdings are kept out of the unemployment check. At the end of the year Uncle Sam will want his taste still. I had a friend who was shocked into reality on this issue, and almost couldn't pay the IRS, etc.

Store food when you can.
just about any job (even flipping burgers) beats no job
I work on the supply side of the home construction industry, and our smaller contractors who will do repair work are busy.

Yep, the remodel/repair industry is where to be right now. My decision and timing allowed me to continue my standard of living for up to 14 years (current C.O.L. and Inflation) without employment. (Assuming Wall Street doesn't completely crap out.) That would be at the cost of my retirement principal beginning in 6-7 years. When the last house is done, so am I. I contracted a 3rd party company to handle all warranty issues (some things in Texas are 10 year warranty by law) and I am moving on. It will be nice to have benefits and salary without as much risk involved. More sleep, less worry.

This subject would make an excellent thread in the long term forum. Care to go into details?

I update my resume twice a year and try to keep my professional contacts contacted. What else do you suggest?

-Blast

More later. I may start new in long term.

I got laid off in October, along with 1/3 of that office, because the economy is taking a toll on my former employer (overseas ESOL instruction). I was fortunate to land a new gig within 3 weeks, but I know some of my former colleagues are still looking. I am pretty secure with my new job, but I am also taking steps to prepare on the chance that something else comes up...

A point about 1930s Great Depression statistics and Modern Statistics.
In the 30s they counted everybody who was out of work and could not find a job as unemployed. The only exceptions were farmers and the legally retired. Wives were not expected to work so they didn't count as unemployed.
Nowadays they only count the ones who are getting unemployment insurance payments and "seasonally adjust" their numbers, so some people who are getting unemployment payments in the winter are not counted either.
Welfare cases, disability cases, and the people who recieve no benefits at all are not counted.
Women who are out of work are counted but only for as long as they get Unemployment benefits. As soon as they run out of benefits then they are welfare cases.
The homeless and regular bums are not counted either.

It leaves a person wondering what the real unemployment rate is right now. I think if I started adding up the real numbers of unemployed people we would be very close to the worst depression era unemployment rates, and maybe whole lot worse.

I think the social assistance programs mask how serious the problem is. In some areas there are more people on welfare than there are unemployed.

Unemployment
http://www.bls.gov/LAU/

Temporary assistamce, social assistance, etc
http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Facts/Facts_Business.shtml

Added to the statistics problem is the fact that the attitude of the Main-Streeters towards the poor and towards the Wall-Streeters is just a harsh as it was in the 1930s.

I think that comparisons to the systems in place in 1933 to those of today are as valid as comparing French Literature of the 14th Century to Continuously Variable Transmissions.

There's not a lot in common. So much - so very much - is different today that I can't even think to compare the situations.

What's happening now is bigger, more complicated and more chaotic (in the mathematical sense) than 1933.

Too true.

Not the least of the changes is that we have something like a tenth the number of farmers as we did then. Nowadays, we have more people on some form of housing subsidy who are of working age and not disabled than we have farmers in this country.

Learned that at work last week. Kinda blew my mind.

The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era
Jeremy Rifkin, 1995

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Work

Hmm, I think most of Rifkin's theories have already been dispelled. In my line of work, the blue collar side makes buck. Even amongst the office ranks, the manpower need is still exceeding supply.

What I do see changing a lot is the corporate model of permanent full time staff. The overhead rates are going up every year, and it is hard to justify hiring someone into the company, training them, then watching them take their newly acquired skillset to the nearest competitor for a 10% pay increase. More and more we are looking for competent temp staff who we can bring on for 6 month assignments, with the option to roll them over ever 6 months until the project begins demobilizing. The overhead costs are much lower than permanent full time staff, we don't worry about paying to train temps, and as more and more technical staff hit the unemployment line, the temp resource increases. Add to this the notion that many temp staff actually are making a higher rate of pay than their permanent full time equivalents, and I would say if anything the market is moving more and more towards contract labor, and folks like me become consultants or independents, while people like my admin assistant will next be applying for work via a temp pool agency. There is no shortage of work, just antiquated and obsolete jobs. You can't keep paying someone $70+ an hour to paint the undercarriage of a new car on an assemblyline, or deliver the mail for $60k+ a year and expect to stay competitive. Not when so many others are willing to do the same for less than half that.

I hear that Washington State's minimum wage is now $8.50 or more an hour. How can you justify paying someone to flip burgers or wash dishes for that kind of money? No wonder we are raising a generation of spoiled, unmotivated workers who feel they are entitled to a way of life they refuse to work for. If the wage rate keeps climbing, where do you suppose Burger King is going to make cost cuts to keep their cheeseburgers below a dollar a piece? There are still plenty of Kangaroo in Australia last time I looked. Maybe pretty soon not so much I reckon.

And a farmer today produces up to 10 times more food per acre than in 1933.

As far as "housing subsidy" - do you have a mortgage? Then you have a "housing subsidy" in the form of deductible mortgage interest. That IS a subsidy - it's a government program that is specifically intended to subsidize the cost of home ownership.

You're pushing an agenda here with a specious argument that attempts to make a moral judgment about people getting subsidies as compared to people farming.

If you want to go that route, OK, I'll bite, and you won't like it.

American agriculture is one of the most government subsidized sectors of industry. From 2001 to 2006, the U.S. government has handed out more than $95 billion in agricultural subsidies. That's more than the auto industry got and that's a DIRECT PAYMENT - not a loan.

In addition to direct subsidy, sectors of the agricultural industry - for example the Dairy industry - have entire marketing organizations funded by tax money (Got Milk? advertising - that's your tax dollars at work folks)

Further, many farmers enjoy price controls that set pricing of commodities so they can't be sold below a certain price, and the government will buy crops if the free market won't (how very European).

In fact, there's a handy site to show you just where the money is going:

http://farm.ewg.org/farm/index.php?key=nosign

So I think this vision of farming as this noble "go it alone" idea is wholly flawed, and further, to connect farmers to those in need of help in paying for housing is an extraordinarily arbitrary link.

I could also suggest that in America today there are more people watching TV than were farming in 1933, there are more people living in RV's than in 1933, there are more people using the internet to discuss survival topics than in 1933, there are more people eating take-out food than in 1933...

The economic mess we're in now is NOT 1933, and looking back over our shoulders at it means we're going to slam hard into what's ahead.

Social spending in America is a trivial - trivial - part of the overall budget and hardly warrants much thought. There's far bigger fish to fry.

Growing up in rural Northern Oklahoma we used to say the farmers planted wheat for three reasons:

1 It can be planted and almost forgotten about until harvest, allowing more time for the bingo/dominoes halls.

2 It can be profitable if all the weather / market conditions are perfect.

3 If aforementioned conditions are or aren't perfect (no wheat or too much wheat), the US government will pay the farmer to plow it under instead of harvesting it. Thereby removing all risk in being a wheat farmer.

In the mean time all the farmers did was complain while playing dominoes...

Yes, read "The Disposable American" - a book that covers this concept in detail.

We are in the midst of many of our technical staff converting from office staff to teleworkers from home. They do all their work at a company computer they keep at home, and once every couple weeks come to the office to download, take care of in-person business they can't do via email or teleconferencing, and maybe pick up another assignment if things are slowing down on the one they are currently on. Even the work agreement is different for them.

Hey Ben,

Could you possibly clear some PM's. I have some ideas / questions that are off topic. Or PM me your email please.

I work from home 1-2 days a week and thanks to the miracle of 3g, on the bus. Still work 60-70 hours a week tho

2009:
"I hear that Washington State's minimum wage is now $8.50 or more an hour. How can you justify paying someone to flip burgers or wash dishes for that kind of money? No wonder we are raising a generation of spoiled, unmotivated workers who feel they are entitled to a way of life they refuse to work for. If the wage rate keeps climbing, where do you suppose Burger King is going to make cost cuts to keep their cheeseburgers below a dollar a piece?"

In 1974, people (those that were making more than minimum wage) said the same thing when California raised the minimum wage from $1.65 to $2.00. California survived the calamity.

7-24-07
"Today, and every summer through 2009, the federal minimum wage will increase $0.70 an hour. For those working full time at the federal minim wage, the increase to $5.85 an hour will mean an extra $1,400 over the previous rate. This 14% raise is pretty significant, but it still keeps the minimum wage earner who provides for a family of three in poverty. If minimum wage increases kept pace with inflation since 1970, the minimum wage today would be $8.77. If it tracked inflation since 1956, the wage would be $7.27. Interestingly, the minimum wage would be $3.39 if 1938’s rate of $0.25 was adjusted for inflation." http://www.consumerismcommentary.com/2007/07/24/federal-minimum-wage-will-increase-today/

The trickle-down effect of poor decisions by people in power (not just government) affects the low-wage-earner more than the higher wage-earner.

Sue

This is very true Sue.
When you start looking at the real wages people earn you see a steady decline over the past 35 years, even with minimum wage bumps.
We have been playing a game of catch up with inflation and losing.
I started to type a lot more, but then realized I would be getting to political and wordy.

I will just add this and leave it.

An economy is like a pyramid.
So long as you have a stable structure on a solid foundation you have a sound economy.
If it gets too top heavy, or if the foundation is weak, it will collapse.

Right now our economies in North America resemble a bowling ball sitting on an upright chopstick which is glued to a sheet of paper with a wad of bubblegum.