Posted on 06/05/2009 10:40:15 AM PDT by pleikumud
This recession is introducing many Americans to a novel experience -- the pay cut.
Fifteen percent of employers surveyed by the Society of Human Resource Management reduced pay in the past six months -- a threefold increase from earlier this year.
Downward pressure on salaries is intensifying. While job losses slowed in May, the unemployment rate jumped to 9.4 percent — the highest since July 1983.
The Conference Board's measure of consumers' income expectations has dipped to the lowest level in its 21-year history.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
We must do our best to flush incumbents from Congress or we will be destroyed.
This recession is introducing many Americans to a novel experience -- the pay cut.[raises hand]
I have seen a few of these over the last 3 years. I still work close too 800-900 hours overtime a year, so that makes up the hourly decrease.
(I know some people will do the math. I have 475 OT hours so far this year) There are 6 of us doing what 12 used to do.
There are 6 of us doing what 12 used to do.
Been there. In 2001/2002 I was covering the work of 4 Java programmers, 2 C++ programmers and 2 EEs. My time cards reflected 240 to 260 hours per month, but I was only paid for 160 hours. That's the joy of being a salaried employee. The company was billing my time out at $250/hour. I was in the "office" 7 days a week. I took a little time on Sundays to do my laundry and make a trip to the indoor range for a "sanity break". Breakfast was a protein shake at my apartment. Lunch was "brown bag" with an Atkins shake, a Zone or Balance bar and a 16-ounce diet Snapple Peach Tea. I usually left the office around 11 PM and ate dinner at Keith's Restaurant (a 24-hour restaurant near I-805/Miramar Rd).
It was necessary to keep the household financially intact. It looks like I may be in for a repeat of that experience in the current economy. I made the 925 mile trip home to Idaho about once every 6 weeks.
Cheaper for your employer than hiring additional workers because of the cost of benefits. If your employer was really smart, he would find a way to avoid paying extra for overtime by having you declared a salaried employee.
Thank God I’m a Federal employee!
Well, as salaries tank, so do income taxes. So do sales taxes and all other taxes. All of this will catch up with the government; and, then you'll be singing the blues with absolutely no sympathy from those who ultimately pay your salary.
My industry has had a boom year, best since Y2K, actually (garden center) and I’m pretty sure that my job is secure. However, we did more with less this year, too. I was at least 6 bodies short of what I needed to do a really bang-up job, but you work with what you’re given. *SHRUG* WE had some crabby customers because we couldn’t wait on each one hand and foot as usual, but we always have cranks. ;)
“Breaking the taboo on wage cuts greatly heightens the threat of a deflation mentality.”
This is going to be The Death By A Thousand Cuts. You might not lose your job, but you’ll be crippled financially anyway, unless you have no debt, a house that’s holding it’s value, don’t have a major medical crisis on your hands, etc.
The little crises of everyday living WILL become the big things that push some of us over the cliff.
That’s just the problem. The feds probably won’t fire people and in fact they’ll probably do anything to keep employment as high as possible. This is based on the belief that the economy exists to create jobs, which is false. Government jobs are totally unproductive by and large and add little or nothing to our standard of living. In fact it takes away resources from the private sector and in that sense lowers our standard of living.
Unfortunately for us, the federal government have the ability to borrow and print whatever deficit occurs due to lower tax receipts (assuming spending doesn’t go down, which it undoubtedly won’t). Spending is the culprit IMO.
...the unemployment rate is not a calculation, it's a 'survey'. So it depends on the integrity of both the 'interviewer' and the 'interviewee'. Liberals like the 'unemployment rate'....conservatives tend to take the employment numbers more seriously than the unemployment numbers. Finally, I'm betting that cap & trade will never get thru the Senate. ....all good points tho', great post. Here's hoping we don't meet in a soup line someday...
We just got the word, no raises this year. My neighbor across the street got put on a four day workweek two months ago. I’ve watched my home value drop 12% on Zestimate since February. What do they call that I wonder... You can’t print the market into doing your bidding, no matter what you do!
Until the Gub’ment runs out of Other Peoples Money... Which ought to be pretty soon now.
Phony reports, we might as well open up Tass and Provda offices here.
One of the 'green shoots' from this unemployment announcement was just that....little reported (Bloomberg has it) but after a 92,000 employment increase in April, government employment decreased 7,000 in May! Yeaaaah! It's small, but it's a start....a good start. Perhaps if we're lucky, those decreases will swell to a half million or so a month by the end of the year! That's the big irony of Card Check...if the nutroots are successful it almost guarantees huge gov't cutbacks!
Worth repeating, often! Great concise definition of gubermint.
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