Unemployment in the United States
– January 18, 2011Posted in: Career
About the Author
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year.
Now I am self-employed, and you can read more about my story here, or visit my other blog: The Everyday Minimalist.
I can not fully understand how jobs can be developed when quite a few United States companies are taking their profits overseas. Take GE by way of example. General Electric’s most current initiatives to construct jet engines for the Chinese can lead to them passing over their blueprints for the engines they build. Yet another company, Yum Brands, is earning over 60% of its sales from outside the United States. Until trade policies are altered, more job losses is inevitable.
I blame the heartless Corporations!
They are run by bean counters who move jobs to the cheapest location possible and funnel money to executives. Share holders and employees only get a tiny share of the bounty. Yes, I'm getting bitter in my old age.
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Brutal! I’m grateful for my husbands job every day!!!
That\’s nice to hear!
oh, thanks! not feeling a bit depressed after this at all 🙁
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I\’m sorry 🙁
Those stats are crazy. I follow a blog where this girl has been unemployed for over 2 years now, both in London and in San Fransisco and she posts about all her interviews but never gets the jobs. But she's still trying and not giving up, and I give her props for that.
I'm really glad the situation up here in Canada is better. I mean, it's not perfect, but it's better. My parents have friends that have gone through like 4 different jobs in the last few months from both being laid off at the same time from the jobs that they had. Now the wife is a manager at a Starbucks, and the husband is a manager at Boston Pizza (both really good businesses). They had to sacrifice some things along the way. They sold their SUV and bought my old 92 Buick that I wasn't driving in order to save money on gas (they still needed two cars though) but luckily they didn't have to get rid of their house and downsize or anything which was the most important part.
The stats about people with college degrees working as parking lot attendees scares me too. It makes me glad that I already have my foot in the door of the industry that I want to work in.
And like Kevin said above, it really is true just how many people are still EMPLOYED, but of course everyone looks at the unemployment statuses and freaks out. It's also just like, how many of those people that are unemployed are actually putting out the effort to try and find jobs? There could be tons of people that have given up and are now living off friends and family or are homeless (but the bad homeless "I've given up" kind of homeless). We still have to appreciate the fact that there are still many people EMPLOYED. The recession is unfortunate, but we are all getting out of it.
This is the perfect time to be in school honestly. I was in Grade 12 back at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 when the recession truly hit. We talked about it every day in Social class. And now I'm in college learning finance and investments when we're getting out of the recession so the stocks are low but are getting better and we're just learning so much, so in a way it really worked out for me that there was a recession during these years of my life.
Phew, long comment. Thanks for the post!
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I agree that Canada is better in terms of a situation but I\’ve run into plenty of people who are still trying to even get a job at starbucks.
Yup me too. We're better but it's still a shitty economy.
My recent post the start
I'd be curious to see what the stats are for the underemployed and no longer looking as well. I'm expecting that would be even more shocking than just the tranditional unemployed stats.
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I wish they\’d post it.
Very sobering.
Depressing more like it. I can\’t believe how short of a window it is.
I heard that the actual unemployment rate is closer to 20%, given the numbers of people who have simply given up looking for work. These people no longer look for work and are learning to live on much less, another reason why the consumer mentality has tanked – they just don't have the money to spend. I know two such people very well. One of them is fortunate enough to have a high earning spouse who has taken on the primary role of income earner allowing my friend to stay home with the kids and manage the household. They downsized their lives tremendously, moving into a cheaper house and living on a budget which they never did before. The other person I know sold everything and moved back in with mom, who needed a caretaker anyway. These two people do not draw unemployment and are therefore 'not counted' as part of the unemployment rate which is regularly touted by the press and there are many,many more people like them unfortunately.
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No kidding. That\’s not surprising now that you mention it.
As Cassie mentioned, I\’d love to see stats.
9.5 percent unemployment means over 9 in 10 people who want to work are employed.
It's not ideal, but all you have to do is not be the worst candidate out of 10 people. People go crazy over 10% unemployment as if there are no jobs anywhere, completely ignoring the fact that 9 in 10 people have jobs.
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That's bullshit. There are five applicants for every job, and you can bet that for anything paying more than minimum wage, the numbers are triple that or higher. You have to be the best of five, or fifteen or sixty (as per the last job advertised at my workplace, and I'm in Australia, where there supposedly was no recession).
the stats that really got to me was "14% of parking lot attendants have college degrees" – I have friends who are recent grads of not just college/university, but from grad school, who are doing odd jobs and/or lamenting about the possibility that they may have to start at a minimum wage job until they find something in their field. It's also something I contemplated when I didn't find a job immediately after graduation. I think that if I didn't find anything after looking full time of say 3 months, I would take a minimum wage job and keep on looking. Sure it'd hurt my pride a little, but I just can't survive on pride alone.
A lot of my friends are of the mindset that they are just "worth more" than that – that since they have a degree it'd be a real humiliation for them to have to work these "lower grade" jobs. I actually have two friends who have been unemployed for 1 year and refused to take on such a job – the stat cited really puts things into perspective for people in their situations.
Or security guards I bet. I\’ve met a lot of guys/girls who have gone to college only to sit at a desk.