Fall back "survival" jobs taken over by immigrants in today's recession, unlike previous ones (2009, find a job)

[Weekend Traveler]

A Lot of my friends who are in their 40s and 50s tell me they are scared to death. Many of them work in IT or Operations, or one of those general middle management positions that are some common now days. Their job security is hanging on a thread in today's economy.

They remember not being able to find a job in the bad recessions of the 1970s, early 1980s and early 1990s. Back then they could always get a job in retail, in a grocery store, in a restaurant or in a variety of service sector jobs. These were not the higher paying nice comfortable office jobs that they used to hold but it gave them some pay and a place to go to every day.

Now, at least here in the DC area, these jobs are being held by immigrants and kids. You go over to the Mall and you will not see any white 50 year old men ringing the cash register. Or will you at the local grocery store. Or will you even see any of us driving a bus or delivering bread. Yes, if you are middle aged white and professional and you lose your job in 2009, there are are few low paying survival jobs.

[supernerdgirl]

Retailers can get away with it. Why pay a middle aged person full time with benefits when they can pay a kid, or immigrant far less for part time hours?

[gardener34]

They don't hire any one full time for retail. Usually what happens is these people end up working 2-3 part time jobs. But often they don't like to hire the people lately because no one is buying in the stores. Around here this is the first year I remember in 30 years that there were stores that did NO holiday staffing.

[gea12345]

Yikes!

yes, please keep stirring up the pot!!

Remember despite the world recession, 88 percent of America is still working!

And personally mowing someone's grass, picking strawberries, picking up trash, or busing your table are not jobs i want!

good luck with your goals!

[I_Love_LI_but]

In NYC a few kids I know of looking for summer jobs in restaurants, stores, etc., have found them to be taken by adults already before the summer break! It goes both ways!

[wanderer74]

Around here they are still largely hiring kids for most of those types of jobs. If you have a college education or more "professional" type work experience, you can't get hired for seasonal retail (as I found out). Additionally because I know a few people who work in retail, I've found out that most places prefer the people who have completely open availability - and in this economy, you can find such people. Those who are looking for a second job or trying to schedule around kids' hours in school often find it difficult to find work. When I worked at Starbucks, the only way possible to move up to shift manager - a job that paid a whopping $9 an hour and still wasn't exactly full time - you had to be available to work any hours between open and close (4am - 11pm). You can't have any kind of life around that, let alone a family.

[sinsativ]

Troll Alert, Weekend Traveler, We're on to you.

[umpatan]

Originally Posted by Weekend Traveler

A Lot of my friends who are in their 40s and 50s tell me they are scared to death. Many of them work in IT or Operations, or one of those general middle management positions that are some common now days. Their job security is hanging on a thread in today's economy.

They remember not being able to find a job in the bad recessions of the 1970s, early 1980s and early 1990s. Back then they could always get a job in retail, in a grocery store, in a restaurant or in a variety of service sector jobs. These were not the higher paying nice comfortable office jobs that they used to hold but it gave them some pay and a place to go to every day.

Now, at least here in the DC area, these jobs are being held by immigrants and kids. You go over to the Mall and you will not see any white 50 year old men ringing the cash register. Or will you at the local grocery store. Or will you even see any of us driving a bus or delivering bread. Yes, if you are middle aged white and professional and you lose your job in 2009, there are are few low paying survival jobs.

I just want to let you all know that there is still one sector that is short staffed and is booming. That is security. Working in contract security, you can work overtime even. I think I only had one payperiod where I had 78 hours in 2 weeks, being two hours short of being full time. Now that was the worse case senerio. More times than not, I am getting 80+ hours biweekly getting paid to sit and do my homework, play on my laptop watching DVD's surf the internet, and go home. While pay is meager, at $12.00/hour, if you worked 168 hours doing 12 hours a day 7 days a week, that can be $2520 with overtime every two weeks for playing around. You can basically sit around and retire, play with your nintendo DS and get paid taking on some quiet static sites around construction sites during graveyard shifts. You can even jobhunt while you are at work surfing the internet with your own laptop, or iPhone. With the advent of technology, security guard jobs have become increasingly cushy than in the past when people were only able to at best bring a book to read. I know one thing, I saved $30,000 last year just doing security work after taxes, and since the recession, security work is just booming so much that I can demand to work on cushy sites only. I wanted to share this so that you all can do likewise and kill two birds with one stone.

[Woof Woof Woof!]

Troll Alert.

Please do not feed the troll.

[KonaKat]

LOL I have to laugh, and remember a comment I overheard one day some years back. I was coming out of my little office building in Las Vegas (old building,nothing fancy). The hispanic lady who had a bookkeeping business was also leaving. She encountered some derelict in the parking lot who started to rant about "you mexicans took all our jobs". She looked back, said " De jobs was here before I came, and you didn't want it", got in her nice SUV and drove off. I just cracked up.