80,000 job losses, unemployment spikes

[Wild Style]

Steve

Wow, thats a crazy story. I agree with you too about mobility. It is not a easy under taking to pack up and move.

[bibit612]

Steve - rep to you and bless your heart for doing that for this family! May good karma come back to you in terms of continued good business. My sister in law had that happen to a co-worker who was relocated by the company from Virginia to New Jersey by Verizon and within 6 months laid him off! That really bites. I relocated my family to Charlotte from CT knowing full well that it may be short-lived. We never burn our bridges from where we left so that in case we need to return, we still have our job and business contacts to help us along with a new job search.

[Steve Hazzard]

Originally Posted by bibit612

Steve - rep to you and bless your heart for doing that for this family! May good karma come back to you in terms of continued good business. My sister in law had that happen to a co-worker who was relocated by the company from Virginia to New Jersey by Verizon and within 6 months laid him off! That really bites. I relocated my family to Charlotte from CT knowing full well that it may be short-lived. We never burn our bridges from where we left so that in case we need to return, we still have our job and business contacts to help us along with a new job search.

Thanks for your kind remarks. That story happened 18 years ago, and remembering it still puts a smile on my face. There is nothing as temporary in life as an employment position that could literally vanish overnight. One can never re-cross burned bridges, either physically or socially.

[KevK]

Here in Atlanta we have not seen a bit of slowdown. We are still going like bonkers here with more jobs than they can fill. In fact we had a bad storm a few weeks ago that blew hundreds of windows out of downtown buildings that are still out because they cannot hire the glassworkers needed to replace them!

[KevK]

Originally Posted by HappyTexan

Wild..Texas is just starting to feel what the east and west coasts have. There are some folks with the opinion that Texas won't feel this crunch and that it's limited to those states with big subprime mortgage holders like California, Florida and Arizona.

I think places like Texas and Georgia will feel less of it than places like Ohio and Michigan will. People really ought to think about moving down here. Almost 1000 a day do!

[KevK]

Originally Posted by Wild Style

rofl true, true. But if they are doing that bad, they may not have the ability to pick up and move.

cdelena

thank you for the info!

Why? Are their legs broken?

[KevK]

Originally Posted by Steve Hazzard

IMO, you're taking a rather simplistic view of the mobility of the labor pool. The majority of employees can't simply uproot their family to move from a labor surplus market to a labor shortage market. The imbalances of available labor are often skill specific and are narrowly segmented. A person with skills "A, B and C" is not going to fit into a labor market that is requiring skills "D,E and F".

In my 12 years as an owner-operator for United Van Lines Household Goods Division, I moved many single persons and families from and to all points in the US and parts of Canada that were specifically for employment purposes. Some followed through successfully, many did not. The worst case that I recall was a young couple with several children and a pregnant wife that I moved from the East Coast to Arizona, the company went bankrupt 4 months after the family arrived in Arizona and had purchased a new home. The whole situation was so sad that I privately moved the family back to the East Coast on my trailer at no expense with the exception of fuel and labor. The story had a happy ending as the husband found a terrific job in Connecticut.

That might be but the FACT is that, even if you lose a job here in Georgia, finding another in our booming economy is much easier than it would be up north. I know because I lived up there and in the midwest for years and years. The skills that the auto worker has in Detroit are the same essentially that Toyota, Kia, Nissan and Honda want down here in TN, AL and GA. A tool and die maker or a stamping operator for Ford can do the same job here. Not only that but it is cheaper to live here and the weather is fantastic.