Welcome Carnival of Personal Finance readers! Thanks to MoneyNing for holding this week’s Carnival!
If you’re like me and you’re lucky enough to have been employed almost all of your adult life, including some teen years before you were an adult then you’ve probably spent slightly less time thinking about unemployment. However, the numbers I keep reading have gotten my attention. Supposedly we have lost over one million jobs in the United States this year (and its not over). I was reading this quick, but easy to read article on how to read unemployment statistics and have some further thoughts.
The first thing is this: not all jobs that are lost indicate that positions elsewhere didn’t open up, companies are hiring, its just harder to find the same position for more, or possibly the same wage. I know that sounds only partially optimistic, but you have to remember that jobs do exist and it is not as if highering has ceased completely. Some companies release workers in one place and hire them back on in another position elsewhere. I am aware of people who were hired on in an alternative positions after being told they would be released from their current positions.
The second thing is that companies are looking for qualified employees and often that requirement is on-site staff. Some companies, like one of my clients, are willing to hire remote contractors who can work from a distance as long as they get their job done. If you’re a company based in Dallas and Yahoo! lays off 1,000 qualified and well trained individuals (or 10 for that matter) those individuals have to be willing to relocate to take the job openings that might exist elsewhere. If a company is hiring but no qualified individuals are available they either don’t fill the position, compromise and hopefully can train up a candidate, or they could outsource or contract out the position. This impacts job statistics.
I am very concerned about the state of the economy because we are really reaching a point where the symptoms of the problem are reaching into many, many sectors of the world economy. However, I don’t prefer to just take statistics at face value because I’ve written a statistics package before and I know that not all numbers actually report something useful. I regularly had users request features that made absolutely no sense. It wasn’t that the reports were not based on numbers, its just that they were reflecting reliable or accurate information. The Unemployment reports are very, very similar in that not all information can accurately be taken into account.
This morning I got up extra early to have coffee with a friend and as we talked he told me that his finances were tight and that he wasn’t able to make money very easily at his sales job. He has a job, but its not delievering an income. He’s skewing the numbers because he counts as an employed individual, but he’s not getting very much commission. This is probably not very uncommon.
There is one upside to the possible unemployment situation: its probably causing folks to evaluate their lives and their relationships. More families are probably attempting to get out of debt and save money to deal with periods of unemployment. Of course the downside to the same information is that foreclosures, which are often tied in with financial despair and unemployment seems to have a higher right along with divorce. So unemployment can have some impact on divorce rates and marital tension. I am still researching this to get more solid numbers and figures and you can expect another post about that information hopefully soon.
While this post hasn’t been the most inspirational of posts, I wanted to draw readers’ attension to the facts, to the problems in the reports, and to the idea that there are some non-employment related details that all folks need to consider. If you’re employed, attempt to save as much money as possible to weather a period of unemployment. if you’re unemployed make sure you’re looking all over the United States (or outside of the United States) for jobs because it may be that a relocation will net you a new life with a better job, even if you have to deal with climate changes. Tough times are tough, but they’re also the opportunities for growth and finding deals that don’t exist in better times. Keep and eye peeled and let me know what you think.
