No, silly- that's only in the UK. Here in Texas, we work for a living. Somebody has to feed the armadillos.
My dad's company says they may not be closing anymore (they will be keeping 80 - 100). I hate asking this but please keep us in your thoughts because he only has two years left until retirement.
I work 2 jobs...The first one is with an avionics supplier and repair shop..we will be closing out our government contract in May..but the civilian work is beginning to pile up again..so we may be able to ride this puppy out..many airlines are not upgrading their fleets right now and we are the top rated Electronic Gyroscope over hauler in the country so they are sending the older units to us for re-manufacturing..and our work comes from all over the world.. but Radio Shack..my hours have been cut severely to the point where it's almost no longer feasible to keep working there.. I have hope that I can maintain the Radio Shack position until something better comes along as a second job... Been laid off several times... the USAF..(in 92 after the Soviets went belly up, they didn't need as many SAC trained killers as before so I got RIFted) Cigna in 96 when they closed our division office locally, Teleplan in 2003 when H/P took most of the contracts out of the country ..yet somehow, I managed to come out of it alive...
I got laid off from my job as a Web Software Developer January 6th 2009. I knew that the sales had been down for a while, but I thoughy my job was "safe". I was the only IT person there. Just the day before he talked to me about some future assignments I was going to be working on. I had just come off a two week vacation, that in hindsght maybe I never should have taken. Later that day he had an afternoon meeting with his accountants. The next day my former boss calls a meeting. I am thinking he going to say something about the ruff road ahead, but he started handing out letters of recomendation and laying people off. He let go 3 of 6 employees. I was one of the unfortunate ones, but I went out with class. I am not sure if he had planed to lay us off in advance or not. Maybe he wanted to wait until after Christmas to be nice. The guy was nice, but I am willing to bet he is a below average business man..... He could have gave us some more advance notice or tell us that he may have to make some cut backs instead of blindsiding us. We did get two weeks severance pay, plus unused vaction days though. So I have been looking for a new job ever since. I had a good savings account after working about 15 months, plus I am getting like a 1000 dollars month in unemployment benefits. However, If dont find a job soon I will probably be flat broke by the end of June. The job outlook is grim where I live. There are not alot of Jobs in IT or anything else in my area, and the ones that do exsist have a lot of more qualified people apply to them than usual. I got less than two years experience, and it is hurting me bad. I am wondering if my Parents or Grandparents will take me in. I may have said somethings to my parents since moving out about 10 months ago that may hurt my chances. They where truthful statments about how I felt about them that they didn't seem to like to much, but hopefully I didn't completely burn down that bridge. Well wish me luck I got an interview with a staffing company tomorrow morning. - End Sob Story -
Word from the FIL in Canada is that he's look at around May or June this year when he'll be laid off-- baring a pick up in projects in his division that require keeping, and that the pick up requires all of the current staff, and baring a retooling and/or redivisioning that reduces staff needs.
Man, this is a depressing thread. I'm really sorry for all of you who are out of work. This is a scary time. I work for a regional veterans service agency. For now, I'm safe and our campus is doing well. But our company is really struggling at other sites. I do the treatment milieu stuff (mental health, substance abuse, transitional housing) and that's going fine (except we're getting IOU's from the state!). But our main case management contracts are with the Department of Labor, to place veterans into jobs. With our local unemployment rate being reported as 9.3%, it's getting harder and harder to make the placement numbers required by DOL. I'm hoping that the stimulus package combined with the legislature pulling their collective heads out and passing a budget will help things start to turn around.
Good luck with your interview! I'm sorry to hear about your ordeal. There are shades of my experience there. If it makes you feel any better, I got fired over the phone, on Sunday evening, when we normally come in Monday morning. Our boss always fired everyone over the phone without any in-person warning. I think she was afraid of confrontation.
Yeah, I got laid off. It sucks. But I got an even better paying job and now the office that laid me off in the first place is trying to hire me back, but they can't compete with the pay. Oh, well.
I was just informed that we're going to "rotating layoffs". Four weeks on, two weeks off. It's not the end of the world. I work a second job, so tomorrow I'm going to go and see if they'll put me on for 40 hours a week during the time I'm off. And, since I'm trying to look at the upside of this, I can now go to the midnight showing of Star Trek.
Just been on the job center plus site and it was depressing I typed in 3 different areas of jobs picked 5 job types and got nothing.
I have a friend in IT in the same boat. He lost his fourth job since 2003 at the end of November (most sent to India). He is still looking. The difference is he has over 20 years experience. I wish you both luck. The job search situation sounds terrible right now everywhere.