You might have to take whatever job you can get until things turn around. It might not be befitting you education but it might help pay the bills. Walmart, mcdonalds, etc.
I have been looking for anything and everything as I have loans that needs to go away before they get too big.
It's just extremely disheartening to see companies not be able to bring on people and get them into the workforce. It seems like that would stimulate the economy.
Well, the harsh reality of the situation is that most companies are ABLE to hire people - they just are doing it in the wrong countries.
If you live in India or Brazil or China, your employment prospects look good - plenty of jobs because all the big Western corporations (Fortune 500) are hiring there. And not just customer service & tech support 35K-a year jobs anymore, but the professional level jobs normally taken by the American/Canadian middle class. Many big companies are moving most of their accounting, engineering, product development, product management, manufacturing, and IT jobs to countries where they can pay people $2,500 per year to do a job that in America or Canada would require an expensive college education and further professional certification.....and a wage of between 65K and 125K a year.
So companies like IBM (again, only one example - just the one I am most familiar with) offshore more and more of our jobs every year....we are left unemployed, and the trickle-down starts to occur. If I am an unemployed CPA, I can no longer afford to employ my yard guy or cleaning lady and I have to get my hair cut & colored by my hair stylist alot less often. No more Atlanta Symphony season tickets. No more eating out. No more movies. No more theatre. No more new clothes or books or DVDs or fun gadgets for my home. No new computer or high-end consumer electronics. No more 'luxury' grocery items. No more vacations. No more gym membership. And certainly no new car, even if I need one.
And with each dollar me and the millions like me do NOT have available to spend on the items above, long-term employment prospects for the individuals in THOSE fields and industries are effected.
Multiply that by the millions of middle class professionals currently out of work or soon to be offshored, and boom! Services, retail, and entertainment & leisure workers cannot then find work. It should come as no surprise that guys like you in the services, leisure, and entertainment industries find themselves out of work too....because those of us who used to pay your salaries are now barely able to put food on the table and gas in our cars....and all we can do is hope we find work before we have to give our homes back to he bank.
Really - it's not rocket science what is happening. And when they try to bullshit you with the figures that bear out a (supposed) decrease in unemployment over the past couple of months, take a deeper look. Because what you will find is that a large chunk of the 'new' employment over the past few months (in the US, anyway) has been in the form of census jobs that are extremely low paying and temporary until the census is done, or other government-sponsored temporary band-aid fixes aimed at the poor - not the rapidly shrinking middle class. I mean, keep in mind here that not all jobs are created equal, when it comes to purchasing power and the ability to keep OTHER jobs afloat by extension. A guy who is employed for $15 per hour taking the census for 3 months is NEVER going to have season tickets to the Atlanta Symphony (thus helping to keep that symphony afloat)...even though his job 'counts' the same in the unemployment statistics as the one I might have lost for $100K a year due to IBM shipping my job to India - a job which DID support the Atlanta Symphony...and Joe Yard Guy...and Sally Clean-my-house....and Simply-FABULOUS-Dahling Hair Stylist.
Bottom line - until voters in the U.S. wake up and start becoming concerned about the offshoring of all these middle class jobs by the Fortune 500, things are not going to improve significantly. Stock prices will go up because corporate earnings will be up...but the ONLY ones who will benefit from that will be the wealthy investors who own all the stock. Because guess what? Middle-class Janes like me will have to sell my own IBM stock to feed my family....because I can't find a fuckin' JOB.
What was once the middle class will sink into poverty (or near poverty) as we reach the point where we will take any menial job offered, just to eat. And we will be left with two classes - the rich and the poor.
It is happening right before our very eyes. And NO ONE is doing anything about it. Both sides of the aisle in the US government are in the pockets of the corporations...so they have no motivation whatever to save us. Because it is not us little guys, but the BPs and Exxons and IBMs and Bank of Americas and all the other giant companies who are keeping THOSE guys in those cushy jobs, massive houses, and expensive cars....while they are laying us middle-class professionals off and shipping our jobs to India.
And although you guys in Canada have no say in the matter, you guys will get screwed by our government too, because our economies are so intertwined. So EXTRA big bonus for you, because we will take you down with us, through no fault of your own!
Now don't you feel special?
So all you can do is sit up there and HOPE the American population wakes the hell UP, and stops being distracted by these bullshit partisan politics they are trying to keep us occupied with while BOTH sides of the aisle are systematically screwing us all every which way but loose. And lemme know how THAT turns out for you, because most people in this country are so fucking lazy that they would rather listen to Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh and have those guys TELL them what to think than actually grow a brain, do their own homework, and find out what is really going on here.
I'll say this for myself, anyway - I am REALLY glad that I have traveled the world so much and feel at home pretty much anywhere. Because at the rate we are going now, there is no way most people my age (people in their 40's and early 50's, maybe) will ever be able to retire and stay in the US. Given that we have been through two major recessions (both of which were directly caused by corporate greed, by the way) and the bottom falling out of the real estate/housing market in the last 10 years (our prime earning years, supposedly, and the years we were supposed to be building equity in our homes), our net worth is in the shitter, even if we saved religiously. And the Baby Boomers are rapidly eating up all hope of us EVER collecting a dime of the hundreds of thousands of dollars we have paid into Social Security over the years. Therefore, full 'retirement' for most people my age will simply not be an option. But given the lack of jobs...the only way to survive will be to move to some Central or South American country where it is cheaper to live. Because we won't have much in the way of savings, equity in our homes, or Social Security to support us in retirement, that's for damn sure. And working until you drop dead might not even be an option since the folks your age will likely force us out in order to save themselves and their OWN futures.
Most of us don't know it yet...but the accountants and other bean counters in the crowd, if they have done their homework, understand the math and know that we are headed straight to hell in a handbasket if we don't wise up, and wise up QUICK. Because most Americans have no idea what dire straits we are actually in due to the fact that our own leaders are keeping us so busy obsessing about when Obama takes his vacation and the relative PC-ness of patrolling our own borders that we no longer have our eye on the REAL ball. And sadly, some of my countrymen are so short-sighted and clueless that they won't actually 'get it' until they are living off of cat food and sleeping in the back seats of their cars at age 65...wondering why they even CARED about some of the petty bullshit they are obsessed with today.
There are times when I think to myself that it would almost be better to not know anything about financial planning, economics or accounting. Because knowing what is in store for most Americans (and by extension, a lot of Canadians) - even the ones who saved religously - scares the ever-loving SHIT out of me.
but seriously the people making near minumum wage are getting it the worst, loosing jobs to economic downturn, over seas, and to people who previously wouldn't be caught working a job that's "so beneath them"
