Category: The View From Your Recession

A reader writes:

I work for the state child welfare agency for Missouri. We have been routinely asked if the economy has affected the amount of child abuse and child neglect hotline calls that are made or the number of kids coming into foster care. So far, it has not. We assume that because most of our clients are already soaking in poverty that the economic downturns don't affect them because they currently survive in that same circumstance.
 
This is no longer the case. Today, we had our first child enter foster care because the parent's unemployment ran out and the parent could no longer care for them. The economy is now affecting us.

A reader writes:

I began working in the mortgage business in 2002. I started in an entry level position at a medium-large mortgage company not long after I dropped out of high school.

Back then I was a drifter who needed a job to help pay the rent for the new apartment my girlfriend and I just moved into. I was lucky enough to find an ad offering $15 per hour plus commissions with no experience necessary (I’m sure for many this speaks volumes about the current state of the mortgage market). It was a telemarketing job that I excelled at and soon worked my way out of and into a management role where I was to hire and train new recruits. After a couple years of that I was recruited by another company to be a mortgage broker and by 2005 I was making $90,000 per year at the age of 23.

Soon after came ‘the crash,’ where the lenders who mortgage brokers relied on began dropping like flies. By the end of 2007, business at our company was down by about 50%.

I was still making what I considered good money; I finished 2007 with a gross income of around 65k. I considered myself to be a very ethical, honest mortgage broker. Without attempting to sugar coat things, I worked with people who I knew were not ethical mortgage brokers. These other brokers were used to a far fancier lifestyle and needed to close loans to pay bills for their overly expensive habits. Some who, as the market deteriorated further, I could blatantly hear their pathetic desperation when they were too flustered to close their office door while selling snake oil to unsuspecting families. I became terrified that would happen to me. What if I was 40 years old with 2 kids? Could I ever be that desperate and pathetic? I needed to quit and find something else to do with my life.

Luckily for me I lived modestly in a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom house with my wife (the girlfriend from the apartment) who had a steady job with a decent income. Our living expenses were relatively low. I decided going to college was my only option. I knew that it would provide shelter for a long and painful recession.

I was a gargantuan failure in high school. Not graduating rewired my brain but left me with insecurities that grew exponentially with every passing year. I was terrified to go back to school. I began at a community college in January 2008 and after just a year as a full time student I have a 4.0 GPA and I’ve been accepted to several high quality Universities.

Without this recession I would have continued the path I was on until I had children, a bigger house, and other factors which could have quite possibly made it financially impossible for me to ever have gone to college. This recession has liberated me from the perpetuating academic and intellectual insecurities that have plagued my life since my failure in high school.

There is very obviously far more negative than positive inflicted on us collectively because of the current economy. I feel horrible for people, like my own parents, who have seen their life savings cut in half, if not worse, because of the recession. I worry about my brother who will be graduating into a bone dry job market this spring with a master’s degree and 90k in student loans. But I refuse to believe that America is going into the shit tank. I believe we will recover, like I recovered from not graduating high school.

A reader writes:

My brother works in the movie industry as a producer for a major movie

studio. Or, rather, that's what he did until today.

He had just gotten the job a couple of years ago and was one of the newer employees at the studio. He wasn't some rich movie mogul, which is what most people think of when they hear the term "Hollywood producer." Truth be told, there are a good number of producers that are in the middle of the totem pole and generally make the same salary as most other middle class professionals. That's what my brother was, and he was pulling down just enough to make his mortgage payments and support his wife and one-year-old daughter.

But today the studio announced a bunch of layoffs, and his name was on the list. They say that the movie business is one of those recession proof industries, but when you have the base of such an interconnected economy collapse and you also have lots of people suddenly waking up to the fact that they've been living way beyond their means, then it seems that even the mighty Hollywood ends up shedding jobs. And those people, just like everyone else, will have to think about finding work, staying in their homes, and making sure their families have good health insurance.

The irony is that I thought my job was in far more danger than my brother's, given that I work for public radio, which depends on the generosity of listeners and underwriters. It goes to show that you can cover a recession every day, but never really get it until a loved one loses his or her job.

A reader writes:

As an American living in Ireland for the last 7 1/2 years (I married an Englishman from London who wanted to move here to take advantage of the "Celtic Tiger" economy), I can tell you it's been a real roller-coaster ride. 

The main reason for the Irish economy having shrunk to the degree it has is construction.  It was 40% of GDP, and it has evaporated, seemingly overnight.  The government in power for the last 12 years is Fianna Fáil (roughly translated into English from Irish as "Soldiers of Fortune"); it has been in power, on and off, for 59 years since 1932.  Fianna Fáil is, among other things, in bed with developers who grew extremely wealthy on the back of the huge construction bubble. 

They have also allowed their banker friends to play illegal games with depositors' money which has created a larger banking problem in this depression than in most other countries.  A large part of this is the size of the Republic – about 4.5 million people – smaller than greater Boston, where I'm from.  There is just no depth in such a tiny country, and nothing to fall back on with an expensive workforce that has seen it's good jobs (computers, retail, aviation, medical devices, Waterford Crystal, etc) disappear at a rapid pace over the last 18 months.

As for my husband and me, we have been trying to get out since 2007. The cost of living (among the highest in the EU), dismal healthcare, poor infrastructure, and poor outlook have gottten to us. Our beautiful but modest house on Galway Bay has languished on the market, in spite of deep price cuts, since then; the housing market has come to a virtual standstill.  We are lucky in that we have no mortgage, but I have been the sole bread-winner since finding a job in 2004 (we are middle-aged and the Irish would rather hire youngsters, of whom there are many as Ireland is a very young country – they command less money). 

My husband, with an enviable resumé, was unable to find work even in the "Celtic Tiger" years, due to his vast experience which, it seems, made him overqualified for most jobs, and his age. Many Polish and other Eastern Europeans, who migrated here for the construction jobs, have now returned to their homelands.  Ireland is bereft, bewildered, and in a current governmental vacuum where no one seems to be able to fix the problem as they are all in hock to one another.  May God help this little country, of which we have grown fond but where we can no longer remain.

A reader writes:

I'm a 10 year vet of the television industry getting mostly steady work since I started in scripted dramatic television. What the writers' strike hasn't done to destroy the optimism or "high end money" for creative types, the global economic crisis has. More people than I can count are looking around after years of sacrifice and asking "how did I get here and why am I doing this?" (and not just run of the mill sacrifice, I mean the brand sacrifice that only comes at the foot of hollywood's "haves").

Many of us have justified our low wages and poor treatment as a right of passage and a necessary sacrifice for the privilege to be work in a creative business. The dream is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and some creative validation I suppose. It appears that the pot no longer exists.

With reduced money and shrinking opportunity, many of us would elect to take jobs more suitable to our levels of education and intellect, only the job market is awful and getting worse. Studios and networks are merging, the industry is buckling as less people plop down in front of their TVs, more and more content becomes available online, cost-effective reality program continues to eat away at scripted television, and things like Jay Leno's move to 10pm eliminates 5 hours of scripted programming a week, which equals 40 or so writing jobs and hundreds of crew jobs. Worse yet, if it's a success the other networks may follow suit.

My most successful close friend in hollywood was laid off during the strike and hasn't been able to find work in over a year. He's gone from development executive to applying for and not getting interviews for production assistant jobs… and he's highly qualified and very experienced. If he doesn't find work in the next 2 months he'll be moving in with me and my girlfriend into our very small place. And more than anything I feel relief that I can help him out and that we may be able to have another person who can help w/utilities and rent should I lose my job too.

I'm VERY thankful to have a job, any job. But I do have to grit my teeth every day and work for a person I dislike and do not respect. In a way the bad economy has allowed me to maintain my self-respect, as I now justify what I put up with as a necessity of the time. It's my daily sacrifice "to get by" in these tough times. But I also feel trapped in a life and a position that I have no desire to be in.

My "out" is law school. But the idea of going to school and graduating into an equally unsure or suffering economy gives me pause (as I think it would anyone) that the only thing I'd be doing to myself after 3 years of hard work in sacrifice is a mountain of debt that would hamstring my options even more.

A reader writes:

I'm an infectious disease specialist.  Today I saw a patient with a horrible foot ulcer from diabetes. She likely has infection in her bone, will need weeks of treatment, and may lose her foot.  She cried with guilt, regret, and disbelief at her condition.  She had been an excellent patient.  She saw her doctor, managed the complicated treatment of her diabetes, saw her foot specialist. 

Until her husband lost his job and insurance. She couldn't afford her insulin pump supplies, started stretching her doctor visits. Paid cash when she could. And ignored…pushed away her pain. Tried to hide the smell coming from her foot.  For 4 months.  Now it may be too late.

Another writes:

I am a pediatric emergency room physician in a small southern city, and I regret to tell you, business is booming. 

Sadly, we are the ultimate countercyclical business.  As poverty increases, access to routine and preventative healthcare declines. Thanks to SCHIP, children have access to medicaid in my state.  But as more children lose private insurance secondary to their parents' losing their jobs, as more parents lose their homes and become displaced and return to live with their parents, fewer and fewer children have a primary care provider they can go to for routine care and minor illness.  They turn to the emergency department for care.  We have therefore seen an increase in volume and a decrease in "acuity" (the severity of illness or injury). 

Great for my job security (and I am grateful to have secure, well-paid, and fulfilling work in these times), but bad for our department as we are overwhelmed with volume, bad for the "really" sick and injured kids who have to wait longer to be seen and are therefore at greater risk of poor outcomes, and bad for society as a whole as our children suffer the effects of losing access to routine and preventative care.   

A reader writes:

I separated from the military in 2005.  As a gay man, I could no longer deal with the duplicity that was required of me as an officer.  I won a partial scholarship to attend law school, made good grades, and interned at the office of the general counsel at the headquarters of a major federal department in DC.  Graduating from law school was one of the proudest moments of my life.  Though I had been living as a poor student, I was finally able to live as an openly gay man for the first time in my life. 

Almost a year later, I still don't have a real job and have had only one job interview.  I recently moved back in with my amazingly understanding and loving parents who live in an extremely fundamentalist rural town where I've been substitute teaching. After months of fruitless job hunting, I'm now in the process of losing weight so I can go back into the military full time.

When I got out of the military, I told friends and family that you can't put a price on the peace of mind that comes with not having to hide such a huge part of who you are.  Well, with an obscene amount of student debt that is pretty standard with law school graduates, I've learned that you actually can put a price on being out.  Just ask Sallie Mae. 

I'm hoping Obama makes good on getting rid of DADT soon, but I'm not holding my breath.  At this point though, all I know is that Captain's pay is way better than what I'm making substitute teaching.  My uniforms have been folded in the back of my closet for the past four years.  Now the uniform comes out, and I go back in.

A reader writes:

I went through my first recession during my freshman year of college after 9/11. I remember the most tell-tale sign of the slowdown was that construction sites, ubiquitous in Florida, slowed or stopped entirely. I'm living in Shenzhen, China, now during an even bigger recession.

Except it's not really a recession. China will likely be pulling 5-6% growth this year. While the IHT and other major papers carry a story a week about how bad the Pearl River Delta is doing, I just haven't seen it.

Everyone talks about things slowing down but few people are talking, or seeing, things closing up. Projects I saw started a year ago are finally begin to shape up as the scaffolding comes down and beautiful "gardens", apartment complexes, emerge. New projects are breaking ground and cranes are almost as ubiquitous as they were three years ago. My best friend here – a Hakka man in his late-20's who grew up able to eat meat just once a month – turned down a sales job paying, literally, 8x more than he makes now because he's convinced his current one-man operation is going to explode any day now.

As a foreign teacher I'm making more than I ever have. I'm making $35 an hour doing private lessons preparing a brilliant student to study in the US. I can treat a few friends to an exceptional dinner for half that. Four hours a week pays the rent for my 29th story apartment. My sister, a single mother who just got her Bachelor's degree, is making $8. Enough for a Happy Meal and Big Mac dinner, perhaps.

A final note is that it's surprising how well China's Maoist legacy acts as a safety net inside a capitalist economy. Shenzhen and cities like it, effectively, have half of their population living not as citizens, but as long-term temporary workers. Most of these workers who are getting downsized now will be returning to homes and farms in the countryside because they mostly were not allowed to sell. Most never made permanent residence because the archaic "hukou" household registration system ties delivery of government goods and services to those hometowns. If it works out well, they'll be going back to a rent-free home with decent savings and severance to start their own projects, where their children have free education and increasingly subsidized health-care. As terrible as these policies looked during the boomtimes, they're looking increasingly wise today.

A reader writes:

I am among the legions of job seekers. With the intent of exploring every option, I went to a LA Career fair expecting the less appealing younger sister of the boring corporate recruitment fairs they had when I graduated UCB. Wrong. Worse. Much, much worse. PBS was covering it, that's how bad it was. I started a different blog just to emote anonymously into thin air about it because I would never tell anyone I knew that I actually went to such a gathering. It will depress me to write about it again, so pardon the link:

Wow. I knew it wouldn't be good, but what shit was that? […] Do you want to sell yuppie tupperware? Then this is for you. Would you like to explore opportunities selling crap jewelry, beauty products, credit card swiper systems – being paid only when you get a client? Then this is for you.

Are you interested in sweating to line up clients and recruits in a multi-level marketing finance scheme for a company that has incurred fines from the National Association of Security Dealers for fraud and misconduct? Then this is for you. Make sure you have a firm handshake, bright smile, dress appropriately, and have your résumé in order!!!

Welcome to the LA Career Fair at the Radisson where it costs $10 for parking in a lot so cramped that even though the parking is valet you'll still be worried your car will get dinged. I opted for a nearby free park at $13.15 for 2.5 hours.

The line to sign in stretched across the upper lobby and down the hall to the end of a very cramped corridor with no air conditioning. People in business attire fanned themselves with their brochures and résumés. A KCET reporter from SoCal Connected scurried around looking for a head of household so her network could pimp stories of family desperation to inflame pathos for media consumption. When most of the people in line informed her they were single, she moved on. Everywhere you went, there was someone with a huge lens trained on you.

A reader writes:

I’m a member of a long devalued profession, librarianship. These days, we are busier than ever as people look for ways to meet budget.  The library offers books, audio books, movies, internet access, access to databases, job search tools, and continuing education opportunities and all for free. You can’t beat that.  You may have to wait your turn, but your turn will come. 

In gratitude for the services we provide which are in great demand, the county commissioners just cut our budget, and the governor just announced additional cuts as well.