Still, those with the most useful skills will do better than without them. What would you have people do? A couple of years ago, when the downsizings really got going here, we had a manager who gave us some really gvood advice. He said, "change is coming." You can either take some positive steps and know that you have done the best you could under the circumstances. Or you can do nothing - and someone else will make all the decisions. and I guarantee you won't like the results. It is kind of like the residents of NOLA who spent all their energy whining about what FEMA didn't do, compared to the industrious Vietnamese neighborhood who got out with chain saws and worked together to clear the streets and stack the wood. Both groups went through some tough times. The Vietnamese group fared much better.
>Still, those with the most useful skills will do better than without them.<
I've been watching the rock roll down the mountain our way for years. I am not sure my job skills, the effort I have put into keeping them current, and my willingness to take some miserable jobs has been exactly a wonderful thing.
The Soft-Handed Desk Sitters toss glib answers out, but the truth us, re-tooling yourself for a completely different field is expensive--and risky. Look at the people who re-invented themselves as IT specialists, only to see their work go overseas. I don't think they displayed a lack of gumption or smarts, I just don't think we can continue to go through convulsions of that kind indefinitely at all levels.
I am considering re-training in a medical area, but by the time I complete training the pay might be equivalent to that for delivering pizza. Life has no guarantees, but gambles of this magnitude, to be taken over and over in life, is more than most individuals, marriages, families-can weather.