Posted on 11/22/2008 7:53:40 PM PST by mathwhizz
“You just sit and you worry,” said Pat Weber, a construction administrator in Fennville who was laid off more than a year ago. “In the last year, I’ve put in for more than 100 jobs. I stopped counting after 110. It’s just so defeating.”
All around Fennville and its neighbors here in southwest Michigan, front lawns are peppered with for-sale signs and merchants complain about slow days. But while this remains a beautiful place with none of the obvious blight of Detroit on the other side of the state, residents say the hardship beneath the surface is very real.
It is the same story in other parts of Michigan, as the state’s already entrenched recession — in at least its fifth year, according to economic experts — digs deeper as a result of the recent global financial crisis.
New data show the state’s unemployment rate crept up to 9.3 percent, almost three times what it was in 2000, and, along with Rhode Island, the highest in the country. Just last week, Herman Miller Inc., an office furniture company based in Zeeland, Mich., announced that it would eliminate or lay off 400 to 650 workers, many of them in western Michigan. SKD Automotive, an auto parts manufacturer in Jonesville, Mich., where it is the largest employer, indicated it would eliminate 300 jobs.
As a result of the steady job losses that began in the summer of 2000, 1.82 million Michigan residents, or close to 20 percent of the population, are now on some form of public assistance, including food stamps and home heating credits, a record for the state.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Because salaries depend on the Value of the Marginal Product. We are talking about areas where no competent workers who desire work are unemployed. If you go there and offer to work for less than the Value of your Marginal Product, you will be hired.
Good luck with your job search!
Yet, somehow my family survived :)
Union membership has been nosediving for at least 25 years. Even in Michigan Union membership has declined significantly. The UAW has seen its membership plummet from a high of almost 1.7 million to under 450,000. Card check is not going to save the unions. Most workers do not want unions and intrinsically understand that unionization means a loss of jobs.
You are an unemployed 40 +, undeducated production worker who lost their job after 15 to 20 + years with your plant. You have a mortgage on maybe a 60 - 100 thousand dollar house and a car payment and kids in high school. The unskilled job you were working paid you around $19 - $21 per hour which allowed you to pay the above as well as all your utilities and save a little.
You just lost your job!
If you say sell the house then you are telling that Eastpointe resident to move back into the crack neighborhood in Detroit that he moved out of...........
If you are suggesting that this now unemployed, unskilled production worker move out of state, what makes you think he can find a job out of state when he has to compete with equally unskilled individuals already living in that particular area?
And if you suggest that this person can find any job if he/she is willing to work minimum wage then I must remind you that it has always been the conservative republican argument that minimum wage was never intended to support and raise a family, it was for entry level training only........
And you are criticizing people living in Michigan? As bad as Michigan is, its got a long way to go to become the pit New Orleans is.
Stay strong fellow Texans, support our businesses, encourage them, keep on keeping on.
You mean the fear that the Wolverines may never again beat Ohio State?
You’ve probably already done this, but I’ll mention it anyway. If you have family or friends out of state, have your husband check out those areas. At least he might have a place to stay while he looks and a local recommendation.
Ohio State? Hah! Right now we are worried about them beating Toledo.
Well the good news is that the Wolverines could beat the Detroit Lions.
I criticized those in N.O. as well. But there are many of us who have and still are getting back on our feet on our own.
BTW, I was only criticizing the unfounded reasons to not move on, namely the idea that Texans would somehow mistreat people who moved from Michigan as was posted earlier.
That was not my argument. I understand when real difficulties lay in one’s path. I was critical of those who pile on imagined difficulties to the list. Especially when it was an absolutely unfounded assumption about the fine folks in Texas.
Not unfounded and not imagined.
“How about looking for work in another state? Hm?”
I have a friend from MI who does exactly that. Over the past few years he’d travel to areas (HI/LVNV) where the construction trade was bustling. No need to stay in MI whining if there aren’t any jobs there.
my neighbor tried that. got laid off and found a job in another state. couldn’t sell the house so he left his wife there to take care of it, still couldn’t sell it, dropped the price og the house by $45,000 from original asking price.. its still on the market.
when there’s no one buying up houses, its hard to sell yours so you can leave.
You have the sympathy of a gnat and are too thick to understand when you are told you are being crass.
FEMA ain’t comin’ to bail us out Sweetheart, No nice trailers in other areas. Millions from churches are not coming into our states, including YOUR pocket (because mine gave to you) We are on our own.
I have el zippo sympathy for you people who sat in the way of a hurricane and then bitched when it hit ya. And if you think the lovely people of Texas were thrilled to pieces when all the refugees from NO invaded on them, you’re nuts. You should have seen the threads here. They are polite but how much can they take?
Best to be silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and be one.
“....as the state’s already entrenched recession — in at least its fifth year,...”
Blown away yet?
>>No need to stay in MI whining if there aren’t any jobs there.<<
(OMG this thread is amazing)
Whining. Please read the thread before you start with such ignorance.
Not everyone is a construction worker, thank you.
>>Blown away yet?<<
LOLOLOL!
Yep, just like Hurricane Katrina.
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