The REAL Unemployment Rate Survey Thread: How Do You Fare?

[BushFungus]

I would like some responses to the question of how you feel your job prospects REALLY are.

Are you having a hard time finding a new job?
Do you agree with the White House that outsourcing is good for America?
Do you feel like President Bush cares about your employment situation?
Do you feel better when President Bush repeats his repititious mantra, "The economy is strong and growing stronger?" Do you agree?
What industry are you in? Is this industry thriving or declining?
Have you seen your job outsourced?
What do you think the REAL unemployment number is?
Are you afraid that CAFTA/FTAA will result in a greater number of jobs outsourced?
What is the REAL unemployment rate? Do you think it's greater than 10 percent?

[mcscajun]

1. My work went to India a little over two years ago.

I'm currently working part-time for a fifth of my old salary.

I was in IT for a major global bank; now I'm office help in healthcare.

The REAL unemployment rate is easily double the official stats, so yes, it's greater than 10 percent.

The UNDERemployed rate is even higher, I'd guess.

[HockeyMom]

7. Man I know in IT out 3 and a half years

20 years in field. Job off shored. He has gotten a few months contract work here and there. The last consulting job he had was supposed to be for a year. He was there for 4 months and they called him in, said they ran out of money, and to pack his things.

He cannot pay his mortgage anymore and has put the house up for sale. He wife left him last month and went to live with their grown son. Last I heard from him he was trying to get a job at Home Depot.

Sad, sad, story. I am sure he is not alone.

[BushFungus]

20. That reminds me...

I once saw a job ad on Monster that said, "Must be willing to relocate to Balgalore, India." I thought, what the HECK?? What ever happened to AMERICAN JOBS!!

Companies have too much greed and too much power in our government. They are salivating over the prospect of CAFTA/FTAA. Imagine setting up shop in a place where there are no environmental restrictions, slave labor, no taxes, and no SS/healthcare costs. An American company's DREAM COME TRUE!

[Patiod]

2. I'm doing well (if big pharma does well, so do I). But my brother

had his IT job off-shored.

[PowerToThePeople]

3. responses to the question

Are you having a hard time finding a new job?

YES

Do you agree with the White House that outsourcing is good for America?

NO

Do you feel like President Bush cares about your employment situation?

NO

Do you feel better when President Bush repeats his repititious mantra, "The economy is strong and growing stronger?" Do you agree?

WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK? HELL NO!

What industry are you in? Is this industry thriving or declining?

MANUFACTURING. NO NEED TO COMMENT.

Have you seen your job outsourced?

NOT MINE, BUT ONES THAT MAY HAVE BEEN MINE.

What do you think the REAL unemployment number is?

20%, 35% Underemployed.

Are you afraid that CAFTA/FTAA will result in a greater number of jobs outsourced?

AFRAID? I KNOW IT WILL.

What is the REAL unemployment rate? Do you think it's greater than 10 percent?

ANSWERED BY PREVIOUS QUESTION.

[XemaSab]

4. There was a big survey out a few weeks ago

on Bush's job approval in different states, etc etc, and 40% of the respondants said they were unemployed. Some of those may be stay-at-home moms, and there's probably a skew for people who are home to pick up the phone, but I was SHOCKED at that number.

[mcscajun]

6. "...40% of the respondants said they were unemployed."

Holy Fucking Shit, Batman!!!

[XemaSab]

12. Let me see if I can find the survey and link

Methodology makes a big difference, for example if they called at 1 in the afternoon, they would get more unemployed people.

Can't find it.

It wasn't an unemployment survey, they were asking about something else, but the number stuck out.

Official estimates are 6-12%, but I think the official estimates are totally made up. Official estimates also grossly miscount people working more than one job. Looks, from the internet search, like the government adds and subtracts hundreds of thousands of jobs every month from their official surveys based on the bias they think they have in their methods.

Would be good to know the real number, especially of people with decent educations and/or manufacturing backgrounds whose jobs have been offshored. It's got to be huge.

Here's a discussion of the different "official" survey methods.

http://www.democraticwings.com/democraticwings/archives/economy/001625.php

[acmejack]

5. And the answers are:

Are you having a hard time finding a new job?

Yes

Do you agree with the White House that outsourcing is good for America?

No

Do you feel like President Bush cares about your employment situation?

No

Do you feel better when President Bush repeats his repititious mantra, "The economy is strong and growing stronger?" Do you agree?

Please!

What industry are you in? Is this industry thriving or declining?

IT, going down

Have you seen your job outsourced?

Yes.

What do you think the REAL unemployment number is?

30 million

Are you afraid that CAFTA/FTAA will result in a greater number of jobs outsourced?

Is this a trick question?

What is the REAL unemployment rate? Do you think it's greater than 10 percent?

20-25%.

[undeterred]

8. I was laid off from a permanent IT job in March 2001

and I will go back to a permanent job on Tuesday. It took me 52 months to find a permanent job.

During those 52 months I had 30 months of contract/temporary employment and 22 months of unemployment. For 6 of those 22 months I had no income at all. I doubt that I was included in the "count" of the unemployed after my unemployment compensation ran out. I believe that there are a lot of people in the IT field who have been out longer than 6 months and have been unable to find work.

My rate of pay at the contract jobs was as much as 40% below the job I lost. Even the new job I accepted has a salary 10% below what I was earning in 2001.

For 38 of the last 52 months I have had no health insurance at all.

Millions of IT jobs have been outsourced. The only answer Bush ever gave was to help out community colleges. For someone who already has an advanced degree and specialized skills this is not helpful at all. If Bush really wanted to help the economy he should have extended unemployment compensation for longer than 26 weeks - this would have saved thousands of people from eviction, foreclosure, and bankruptcy. It would have pumped money into the economy. Instead he provided tax break welfare for the richest people in this country.

I do not believe the economy is much better now than it was 2 years ago. I think I finally got a job because I was persistent and had a bit of luck.

[KarenInMA]

9. congrats on your new job.

[undeterred]

10. thank you

I have a long way to go to dig myself out of debt- but a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

The job is with a mortgage company- one industry that's been doing well but who knows what the future brings.

[Norwood]

11. I'm very worried

I'm graduating with a degree in computer information systems, web design work mostly. I wish I would have majored in something else.

I have a feeling its gonna be a pain in the ass finding a job and I would rather not deliver pizza any longer than I have to.

Do you agree with the White House that outsourcing is good for America?
No

Do you feel like President Bush cares about your employment situation?
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
Oh you were serious..No he doesnt care.

Do you feel better when President Bush repeats his repititious mantra, "The economy is strong and growing stronger?" Do you agree?
It doesnt make me feel better, in fact my blood boils with anger whenever I hear hear the jackass say it because its a LIE!

What industry are you in? Is this industry thriving or declining?
IT, its declining

Have you seen your job outsourced?
Since I haven't graduated yet no, but I'm sure it will. Thats if I can get a job in the first place.

What do you think the REAL unemployment number is?
40 Million, give or take a few million

Are you afraid that CAFTA/FTAA will result in a greater number of jobs outsourced?
Yes

What is the REAL unemployment rate? Do you think it's greater than 10 percent?
20%-25% and growing.

[BushFungus]

13. My Two Cents

And now my story.

I have been out of work in IT for over 4 years now. My position was tech writing, which is more of a support position. Like practically all of IT, my job can be easily outsourced. But at the least, these jobs are not nearly as plentiful as in days past. :cry:

I have never gone more than two months without a job. I did enter the job market in the mid-nineties, the "good 'ol days" as I like to call 'em. Those were the days when they were literally SO DESPERATE for workers, they were pulling college students out of school to TRAIN them on database applications while PAYING THEM $70 grand per year WITH stock options.

Nowadays you can send 50 resumes per month and never hear from any of them. They don't even bother to send you a response. I suspect that the availability of the internet for job hunting plus a high unemployment rate has flooded with HR professionals with resumes from around the country and perhaps the world. Thus, they cannot possibly respond to so many applicants. Any HR folks are welcome to add their thoughts on this.

I think the difficulty also lies in so many people out of work and looking for something - ANYTHING. As a tech writer, I have also applied for other positions I wasn't quite *as* qualified for but that I could still succeed in. This is what I mean. I think people are getting frustrated beyond measure, just applying to whatever.

Meanwhile, our joker President keeps saying junk like, "The economy is strong and growing stronger." This one thing is what first made me question President Bush's sincerity back in the spring of 2003. We've heard that Orwellian catchphrase for how long now? :mad:

[skids]

15. Not hearing back...

...was a problem even during the dotcom boom. Don't get discouraged.

Companies do this the most. Usually public sector jobs will send you at least a form letter saying they received your resume, and then a second when they fill the position -- though with public sector jobs that can take up to 9 months from when you submit the resume, so...

Employers really need to get their ass in gear and treat the unemployed better. We need a national "unemployed union" :-) Of course, instead of "striking" other actions would be neccessary like 5,000 people filing resumes and attending interviews with no intention of taking the job (it's good practice, so the members would benefit.)

Do mail a second copy of your resume in in hard-copy form, though, even if they seem to encourage email. Don't rely on email or webforms. I can't stress this enough.

[skids]

14. Still unenthusiastically looking.

Yes, the job market sucks. At least in my neck of the woods. I could get a job fairly easy if I moved nearer a large city, but my field has few openings nearby where I live.

Outsourcing sucks for America. There are good reasons to engage in a healthy level of commerce, but there is also something to be said for retaining core industry and technology capability "in-house." Not that corporations feel any obligation to be part of a national trade strategy because they are happy to exist in whatever nation comes out on top, but they are really blowing it bigtime in that area.

I don't think Bush cares one iota for anything but his own agenda -- even his own public image can decay, as long as his friends and allies get more money and power in the process.

As far as the economy mantra, that's a play on words. "The economy" will of course grow. Once it has been stable for a while, it's very hard for it to do anything else but grow. If one section falters, another will be booming at the same time and the gross figures will be propped up as a result. That completely sidesteps who owns/benefits from "the economy." As far as the power structure is concerned, they are sick of having a middle class around. They prefer an upper-lower-class worker that can be bullied from paycheck to paycheck. They want their money to equate to power, and in order to use it as such, they need to make sure that people will bend over for a buck.

It also helps if those very same upper-lower-class folks think they are middle class. It helps in general if people think they are better off than they really are because they make less trouble that way and pay less attention to defending themselves from becoming economic victims. For the last few decades, this has been pushed on Americans and nowadays the vast majority of those people who aren't dirt poor think that their socio-economic standing is one or two notches above what it actually is.

I'm in a very niche market of IT, that being Wide Area Networking. I was not outsourced, I quit because I started to see signs of incompetance and corruption from a reorganized upper management and did not want to spend my talent making them richer nor watch them destroy what I had been working on for the years before they got ahold of the purse-strings.

I have no clue what the real unemployment number is. I think a more accurate rating of economic health from the worker's perpective is how many employed people have better opportunities to apply for.

As far as CAFTA/FTAA goes, I don't think anything short of the "executive class" gaining a newfound appreciation for the talents of the American worker will stop outsourcing. Of course, such people tend to be stuck-up idiots with little or no ability to encourage a tight organizational gel, so they blame their own incompetance on a "lack of good help" (essentially, on the quality of the American workforce) and until the shareholders apply enough downward pressure to get the incompetants removed, nothing will improve.

Fortunately for me, I saved bigtime when I was employed, so I have a good war chest to work with. I credit my Dad for that the most. I even remember one time when I was pulling an all-nighter on a fund-drive for an activist group at college when he asked me how much money the group had raised. I said about a thousand dollars, and his counter was if I got a college degree and a good job I'd make enough to donate that much per month to the cause. I know he was only part right (dedicated labor and a membership base that feels it has a stake is something money can't buy) but I took his general point to heart, and now I'm very glad I did.

[BushFungus]

16. That's good...

Skids wrote:

"I'm in a very niche market of IT, that being Wide Area Networking. I was not outsourced, I quit because I started to see signs of incompetance and corruption from a reorganized upper management and did not want to spend my talent making them richer nor watch them destroy what I had been working on for the years before they got ahold of the purse-strings."

:toast: :applause:

Kudos to you, skids, for your integrity in standing up for what is right. IT is RIFE with this kind of thing.

[wicket]

17. Lost my job 4 months ago when my company went under

Still unemployed...

[BushFungus]

19. Doncha Love It

Oh, and I love it when the company has layoffs, then have a public statement like, "This restructuring will be a great benefit to this company. Because of our action, this company is now positioned for further success and we will all benefit from it."

SO WHAT! Why do I give a hoot about what happens to the company now!!

What they are really saying is, "All laid off workers who we just screwed over are to pack up their desks and be escorted out by security by noon today and it's easy for us to say because even though we just play golf all day anyways we will always have our jobs and you'll still be laid off."

Nah, I'm not cynical...:think:

[proud patriot]

18. self employed and under employed

hopefully we can get more accounts soon .