How is the economic recovery going for you?
Posted at 5:00 AM on July 16, 2010
by Eric Ringham
(29 Comments)
Filed under: Economy
Minnesota's unemployment rate fell to 6.8 percent in June, well below the national level of 9.5 percent. Today's Question: How is the economic recovery going for you?
Comments (29)
My economic recovery is going great. I was able to land a job as a Securities Opeartions Specialist at a major bank within weeks of graduating from the University of Minnesota. Although I have a large amount of student debt I am managing it. For those still looking for work I highly recccomend using a temp agency, they make it so much easier to get a job.
I am minimally employed with a very large Student Loan debt, working every day to find work as a Radiologic Technologist. The college just spit out more techs, younger than I and they keep getting the jobs. I have worked all my life, never had to use food stamps until now, always supported myself and my daughter who is now employing me as a receptionist. We are both struggling to get / keep health care insurance. ? I could go on but I think this gives you a feel for how this economy is effecting me. I have considered ending my life because of how devastating this is to my self esteem. I am working dilegently to keep my self esteem without gainful employment but wow, it's really tough. I am female and have a rich work history as a craftsperson with excellent refs. They are never called. Our workforce is deteriorating and I have my perspective on why.
The comments today clearly illustrate the fact that too many people turn to the news media not for information but for ammunition. Whether you're a right-winger or a left-winger, the more firmly committed you are to your wing, the more you tend to be affected by the confirmation bias. The truth is, Obama is not a socialist seeking to destroy business, and Bush is not entirely to blame for the recession (Clinton supported banking deregulation, too). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias.
Yikes! It looks like Carrie and Peggy just got a refill on their crazy bitch pills.
I am a 46 year old man with a disability, (Cerebral Palsy). I have a college degree and have worked in the Social Services, (nonprofit) field for the past 20+ years. Last December I was let go from a St. Paul nonprofit company for which I had worked for the past 13 years. Even though I have a college degree and years of experience I have yet to find a job. For the past several months there have been a number of news stories on television & radio, (including MPR) on the effects of the unemployment rate on different groups, (woman, people of color, older Americans, etc.) I have yet to hear or see stories on how the unemployment crisis is affecting people with disabilities. It is a known fact that the unemployment rate for persons with disabilities is two to three times the rate of the national average, yet little or no attention is given to it. How is the economic recovery going for you? Not well, but I’ll keep searching for work and know that I will eventually find something………What’s the alternative?
There will be no real economic recovery until we have Hemp/Cannabis/Ganja as legal as garlic and tomatoes, maple trees and honey bees, butterflies and catnip! Economy and ecology should never be separate. We need to get off our addiction to petroleum and prescription drugs that profit only the few. Re-learn to grow, re-learn to heal, re-learn to create...
Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere! - George Washington, U.S. President
Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country.
- Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President
Some of my finest hours have been spent on the back of my veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as the eye can see. - Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President
We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption. - John Adams, U.S. President
Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?
- Henry Ford
Industrial Hemp Information
http://www.votehemp.com/
To have full Economic Recovery let us
End Hemp Prohibition
World Wide NOW!
The criminalization of Hemp (and unjustly re-labeling it marihuana/marijuana) was unconstitutional...Prove me wrong!!!
I am a 46 year old man with a disability, (Cerebral Palsy). I have a college degree and have worked in the Social Services, (nonprofit) field for the past 20+ years. Last December I was let go from a St. Paul nonprofit company for which I had worked for the past 13 years. Even though I have a college degree and years of experience I have yet to find a job. For the past several months there have been a number of news stories on television & radio, (including MPR) on the effects of the unemployment rate on different groups, (woman, people of color, older Americans, etc.) I have yet to hear or see stories on how the unemployment crisis is affecting people with disabilities. It is a known fact that the unemployment rate for persons with disabilities is two to three times the rate of the national average, yet little or no attention is given to it. How is the economic recovery going for you? Not well, but I’ll keep searching for work and know that I will eventually find something………What’s the alternative?
Oh Carrie,, you poor misguided sheeple:-)
If this video is a left-wing nut... then yes I would consider myself a right-wing nut.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/29/congressman-says-borders-secure/
Oh Peggy, I see you too are one of those right-wing nuts. So sad. Educate yourself my dear. I listen and read from all sorts of news sources. Try it sometime, you might actually learn something.
Carrie, If one actually does some independent research they will find FOX news to be one of the more accurate news reporting sources.
Fox also covers stories that are more than what some bimbo paints on her fingernail.
Then again if you blindly choose to believe other news sources without investigating - this is still the USA (at least for now).
If you're sincere, my apolgies Dan. It just sounded an awful lot like something a right-wing nut would say. Sadly, they believe FoxNoise....
Awwww... Dan has a sad. Nobody understand his attempt at satire.
I do not feel recovery. My husband has changed jobs several times but is still no where near his pre-recession salary. My sister is going to walk away from her house since she can't get enough out to cover the mortgage. I am most worried about college junior son and college freshman daughter who will come out of school with lots of debt and not many job prospects. Someone in this country needs to come up with the next big idea that can be manufactured here - where are you?
I graduated from Carleton College in 2009 with distinction in my major, and I have been unable to find a job ever since. The only difference that the recovery has made is that some minimum wage jobs that I could have done without my college education are now responding to the resumes that I send them.
Yes, the recession started in 2007,
BUT, with the TARP and "Porkulus" bills and all the other Keynesian "stimulus" legislation, we've DOUBLED DOWN ON A BAD HAND AND LOST.
I laugh and laugh because in my economics classes in the mid 80's at the U of Mn the consensus was that Keynesian economics doesn't work. So, that means that Obama/Pelosi/Reid jumped off the high dive into the deep end of the Keynesian economic pool.
For my company, things are Gung-Ho like never before. REALLY - Gung-ho like 4X the best year of 2007.
However, my company sells to precious metal, Oil exploration, and the military.
Therefore, people are buying gold and silver, we are running out of easy to get at oil, and the USA global military-police force is ramping up in a BIG way.
Am I fearful..... HELL - YES!.... but as a good Boy Scout I am getting prepared to weather the shit storm that IS coming. This is not a paranoia type thing, just building up my knowledge and application of skills needed to make it through Great Depression 2.0
Keep in mind during GD1.0 we had 1/3 the population and a significant portion of them lived on farms and had skills to hunt, fish, self defense and gather----Do you?
Our politicians have been selling us out since the late 1950's. BHO and his Czars are only the most recent and flamboyant of them all. Hope and change ---- what kind of a leader bases OUR future on HOPE? We need a leader that bases our future on a simple logical PLAN,,, and this Change he is touting is not the Change I want.
DTOM
The Pioneer Press headline writer got it right: :
DECLINING JOBLESS RATE AN ILLUSION
The DEED Commissioners' PR Spin about an avg. of 916 new jobs bring created for each of the last 12 months is dwarfed by the reality that 18,000 Minnesotans have left the job market in the last two months!
The Recovery is fiction no matter how often the political hacks tell business owners and the jobless; "the recession is over".
I thought things had turned for me in early spring when I got multiple projects from a local company I've worked for numerous times. Unfortunately, they've been aquired by a larger firm. I've now submitted four months worth of invoices representing hundreds of hours of free-lance work and have yet to see a single check. And for those of you thinking I'm at fault for not demanding up-front payment, that's not how it works for the individual free-lancer in my field. You do the work, THEN you pray you'll be paid. Always have been before. If I don't find something else fast or if I run out of things to sell on eBay, I'll be in foreclosure. Thanks, corporate America.
Uh, Dan, we entered the recession in late 2007; well before Obama took office 2 years later. Not a terribly great argument to say that Democrats caused the recession, when a large part of the problem came from deregulation that was a huge part of the Republican policies of George Bush. There is enough blame for everyone to share.
The economic recovery is non-existent for me; I work at the University of Minnesota, where we have had major cut-backs and salary reductions. I am not going to complain, however, as I am thankful I have a job in the first place. But I haven't seen any effects of this supposed recovery.
Oh and by the way Dan, the recession did not start in January 2009. It started in 2008 , when W was in office. Clinton handed W a budget surplus and W and his cronies spent $, cut revenue and failed to regulate the financial system. Then they handed President Obama the big deficit and financial crisis that he and the Dems in Congress (despite the Repub party of no) have finally started pulling us out of. Sure there's still a lot of work to do but why would we want to go back to the failed policies of the Republicans that got us into this mess?
I think everyone got burned, including myself. I think everyone (including businesses) are going to change the way they look at money. That is not good for the consumer driven economy. But, maybe we shouldn't have a consumption based economy, it clearly isn't sustainable.
When people start being more fiscally conservative at home, then the government will do the same. It is hard to ask the government to cut back when citizens are buying boats/cars/clothes/atvs/huge homes/etc that they cannot afford. It's a cultural thing nothing more/less. So, when families are making cutbacks, we should expect our government to do the same. This includes not starting unfunded wars AND not resurfacing roads that don't need it.
I'm fortunate. Things are going fine for me and my family. I know many are still struggling though. It takes time to dig ourselves out of the mess that the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress left for us. Things are slowly moving in the right direction. The U.S. economy is kind of like steering a big ship. You can't turn it on a dime. Jobs are the last thing to come back after a recession and until they do, many people will not think things are going well.
Fear?
You mean how are we going to pay for all this runaway spending?
Fear?
You mean like me be 45 and having to pay for all the baby boomers before me?
Fear?
You mean like all the new financial regulations that just got passed will force all the banks into a very risk aversive mode that will starve all businesses wanting to expand to be short on credit?
Fear?
You mean like Obama/Pelosi/Reid trying to pass "Cap and Tax" thus making utilities more expensive for ALL businesses, thus sending more jobs overseas?
Fear?
You mean all the borrowing from China and the printing of money will cause inflation, thus eroding our retirement investments and buying power?
I keep hearing that the unemployment rate has decreased in Minnesota, but then I hear that private businesses are weary about hiring new employees. Well, I've been unemployed for a year, have applied for over 300 jobs in that time (nationwide) and have only received 4 interviews. I am well educated (Bachelor's from the University of Minnesota) with several years of experience in my field. Economic recovery? Sure, maybe for those people lucky enough to have Sr. or VP before their job title. For those of us without those good graces, I guess the motto should be "better luck next time."
In reality, my life is stable -- job, home, health, friends, family, even retirement savings. But there is FEAR around me. Is this fear real?
Or is fear an emotion that we take on because the recession has made us aware of limits -- limited value of retirement accounts, limited value of home equity, etc. I continue to work to wake up and realize that my security is not in what I acquire or control, but in relationships.
I have so much--including my material assets--which has come to me without much effort on my part, but to which I am called to care for responsibly: air, water, land, nation, family, community.
This is what I am striving to do: push fear away and live in the joy of seeing all I do have, and living fully thankful.
there seems to be an improvement in the economy, and there seems to be a reform in bank regulation-it takes time and patience!
The economic what now?
As the previous posters pointed out: Democrats have destroyed the economy. Until they got control of all three branches of the government, everything was peachy. Then, Jan 20, 2009, BAM! Instant recession.
Which is good for them, because all they want to do is tax businesses out of existence so they can give all government money to unemployed pregnant single mothers addicted to crack. Sure, it's a short-sighted strategy - once the businesses are gone, who will they tax?? But it's absolutely what they are doing. Of that there is no question.
What the heck am I even doing, posting this on a liberal-media bastion like MPR???? Nobody knows. I'ma go watch more Fox News.
What economic recovery? Private business is so afraid and uncertain of what the Obama/Pelosi/Reid job killing machine is going to come up with next that they will just keep their hands in their pockets for a long time.
Recovery??? I see no recovery occurring yet at this point. I retired in 2001 and began receiving Social Security. As soon as President Obama took over, he suspended the COLA for two years. The fear of the growing debt has caused the stock market to take serious declines. At 74 years of age, I may have to seek part time employment. In my mind the real decline began when the Democrats took control of congress. The six years under President Bush were very good for my wife and I.
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