Well, it's finally happened. My company announced across-the-board layoffs of managment and administrative employees in all departments today. One person in my department (Financial) got the axe. So far I'm still safe. They plan more layoffs though within 30-60 days if sales don't pick up     . At least they waited until after the holidays.

8Ball and James:

Hang in there guys, with your fingernails if you have to. It's not going to improve anytime real soon, I don't see any real improvement unti Q3, right now the big question is will it get worse or can we tread water.

<fingers crossed>

Skip

Fingers crossed, bizarre_eye! And I hope 8ball and James will pull through as well!

EdwinK, did you get that job you were applying for?

Personally, I feel fairly safe working for a university that largely has public funding. My mortgage, which partially depends on stock investments, is a different story, but fortunately these investments won't have to deliver for another 25 years, so I hope by that time any effects of the current crisis will have withered away...

Things are definitely getting tough.

My company announced layoffs right before Christmas (why the hell they have to do it then, I'll never understand).  They also announced a salary freeze for 2009 and a suspension of the 401k company matching funds (6% of salary).

Being on a 5 year government contract, I am not at risk, in fact, we have more demand than we can satisfy and expect that continue through this year.

Unfortunately, my brother and one of my brothers-in law have both lost their jobs in the past few weeks.

Skip, believing that 3rd quarter will see an improvement is a nothing but wishful thinking.  With the government planning to run a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit this year and trillion dollar deficits into the foreseeable future, we are in deep doo-doo.

If there is one thing that should have been learned over the past several months, it's that when you get way over your head into debt as an individual, it catches up to you eventually.  That's what's happened in the U.S. and caused consumers to essentially quit buying and start digging their way back out.  It will take them years to do it.

It is obvious that the government has not learned that lesson yet.  A $12 trillion debt, which will cost us about $600 billion a year in INTEREST payments (25% going to foreign countries), is not sustainable.  When the government defaults on this debt, and it will happen, we will fall into a sustained depression that will rival the Great Depression.

This is the price we will all be paying for government incompetence, Wall Street greed and individual financial irresponsibility.  There is nothing the government can do to prevent it now.

I'm one of the lucky ones, I guess...I've personally had by far the most profitable and successful year of my young life. My company was struggling, but there's recently been light at the end of the tunnel.

Quoting Larsanna:

Quote:
My wife's a teacher with a steady supply of stupid kids.. and I'm a cardiac ICU RN with an ever steadier supply of obese, smoking, alcohol drinking bunch of people.. heart attacks = business for me.. (sorry to say)

I don't think those two things will ever run out! 

Well today the company I worked for announced across the board no merit based increases for 2009 and no 401k matching after March 6th. They claim it's only temporary, while the economy is the in gutter, but we'll see.

Quoting hal9g:

Quote:
And the current public school system has no responsibility here at all, right?
And the attitude of parents has nothing to do with the failure of the students?

Schooling starts with the parents, not the public system, but it's more and more common for parents to push it all onto the teachers. My wife is an experienced teacher with some very structured means of communicating with the parents - most often to no avail. Yet come "report card time" the parents will bitch and complain about why their little wonder-child is failing.. despite the fact that they've been notified about it months in advance (in due time for any child to make up the damage).

Granted the public school system is by no means perfect, but in my opinion the parents are mainly to be blamed for the failure of the kids.