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Old 09-29-2012, 02:41 PM
 
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I'm a young guy. I started working during the recession era and I do not know what it is like to work in a good economy. So what is it like?

How easy was it to get a job back then? What were the salaries like? I'm curious.
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Old 09-29-2012, 02:47 PM
 
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Salaries for experienced professionals are more or less the same. Entry level salaries are slightly lower than they used to be.

Jobs were very easy to get and it was very easy to hop from job to job. Specific salaries vary based on position and location so I don't know how to answer that question. The biggest impact I see is bonuses. Bonuses used to be 40%+ and have now shrunk down to 2% - 10%.
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Old 09-29-2012, 06:50 PM
 
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Economy was very strong. Few college graduates lacked for jobs. Those with enough experience often demanded and got jobs with hours they wanted, telecommuting, and so forth.
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Old 09-29-2012, 06:55 PM
 
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You could work your way through a State University with very little or no debt. With a Liberal Arts Degree, a company would train you in business, making about $40K or you could work in government. It was not exciting but it was secure and you got health, dental and vision insurance, holidays and paid time off.

If you were smart and went into math or science or engineering you would make $50K.

If you could go another semester with no income, and student teach, you could be a teacher.
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Old 09-29-2012, 07:58 PM
 
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liberal arts degrees have always been toilet paper
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Old 09-29-2012, 08:40 PM
 
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Default Different ways of looking at things...

The fact is that there has been STIFF COMPETITION for GOOD jobs with desirable employers for as long as I can remember and that includes stories from older relatives back through the Kenneddy era. Top emp
Ours ALWAYS have more applicants than positions and what tends to change is that when the economy is humming along the employers tend to be a wee bit more generous. When the economy stalls basically ALL firms stop hiring. You know the funny thing too is that when the economy has been humming along there are still LOTS of reasons for firms to lay-offs employees -- changes in strategy, competitive pressure, shifts in product mix, excessive capacity, etc. the differnce is that in a poor economy those laid off folks have a MUCH harder time finding a replacement job...

Salaries are a similarly not as automatically "hard wired" to the overall health of the economy. Back in the Ford presidency, through Carter and into Reagan the rise of prices WITHOUT a rise in wages became known as "stagflation". That forced many people's standards of living to ldecline AND it made clear a distinction about income and "buying power" was really more important just money in one's pay check. That leads me to stress that if firms are giving out fatter pay checks in "boom" times BUT prices are also sky high it does not really leave anyone all that much "richer", and the converse that is somewhat true of the latest economic contraction (where cheap money for re-financing debt has been effective foil to help many people maintain living standards on reduced wages...) can be a an explanation for why more folks don't dip feel as bad off as the falling ages would suggest..
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Old 09-29-2012, 09:02 PM
 
Location: Metro Detroit, Michigan
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I'm young too, but I started working when I was in HS. In general, the wages more closely matched the cost of living. You could save if you wanted to. A lot of my friends never bothered. They got hosed when the economy tanked. People didn't see this coming, so people kept loading up on debt as if that was normal. Scary thing is, it seems that behavior was what really made the economy "hum". I don't think we will be going back to that in a long time, and actually, I think that is for the best. No sense in building another house out of cards.

At any rate, finding a job was not hard if you had experience. Entry level work was harder to come by and the pay wasn't always that great. The nice thing was though, you actually didn't have as much of a problem getting your foot in the door.

These days though, I think the wages/salaries for mid level jobs have not been effected much. The problem is actually getting those jobs before someone else snags them. Companies are also very demanding and want to make sure they are getting their money's worth. I think the employment environment today is higher pressure and more demanding. Burnouts will probably be a more common occurrence. Still, companies tend to value highly productive employees just the same as ever. They know who's making the money...
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Old 10-02-2012, 05:53 PM
 
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I marvel at people that seem to talk of pre 2008 as though they were happy times. I've watched this country buy itself out of jobs as well as let the government regulate and tax them out of job ever since I can remember, so for me, born in 1965, it seems as though we've been in a perpetual recession before I was even born. True, things have gotten worse, but from what I've seen from 1970 on, each decade's gotten worse. Our lovely "global economy" caused my factory to close its doors back in the middle 90s, so I've been dealing with this ten years longer than those that were only hit circa 2008. It sucks, and it's a lot of humble pie to eat. The other fortunate Americans saying I'm lazy, the union caused my job loss, and the standards I was used to are unrealistic, and or on the dole are like pouring salt on an opened wound. It's not my fault the factory closed!

I personally thought that the 70s and 80s saw the worst destruction to our economy due to all the factories I saw close, inflation outstripping wages, and affordable housing became a thing of the past during those two decades. I obviously live in the rust belt.

Last edited by bolillo_loco; 10-02-2012 at 05:59 PM.. Reason: I am no Rhodes scholar...
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Old 10-03-2012, 10:14 AM
 
Location: Victoria TX
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Just like now. Half the people knew there would be a recession and half knew there would not be and they argued about it.
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Old 10-03-2012, 10:23 AM
 
28,896 posts, read 54,038,280 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Veyron View Post
I'm a young guy. I started working during the recession era and I do not know what it is like to work in a good economy. So what is it like?

How easy was it to get a job back then? What were the salaries like? I'm curious.
Any idiot who paid attention knew it was a bubble waiting to be popped. When home prices were increasing by 15% a year, it was an absolute article of faith that there would be a reckoning. Heck we saw the handwriting on the wall in 2004. So we put our house on the market in late 2005, sold it in early 2006 at the top of the market, and bought the biggest bargain house we could find in a nice community with excellent schools. That move alone saved us $2,000 a month.

The whole period had a lack of reality to it. The problem was that the money flowed incredibly freely, like it were monopoly money. Salaries were unrealistic, filling out a loan application was a mere formality, and nobody was paying attention to their bottom lines.

I remember working with a real estate developer who had bought an enormous tract of land and wanted to put a 5,000-home community there, complete with amenities. I was brought in during 2006 to consult on the thing. I took one look at the location, looked at the price points, and said, "There's no way this is going to fly. You'll be lucky to sell 200 homes." He had obtained a LOC for literally tens of millions of dollars, was buying tracts of land nilly-willy without even getting an environmental clearance to build near an important watershed, and had never spent the $20,000 we needed to perform an absorption study. Any rational banker would have not lent this guy money on a bet. But someone did. He plugged away for another two years until the wheels fell off. Fortunately, I had already checked out of the project and had been paid up front. I knew an iffy proposition when I saw it.

So while some people thought it was a heady, Golden Age, the smart ones knew what was coming, saved money, and were very conservative.

Last edited by cpg35223; 10-03-2012 at 11:00 AM..
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