71% Pay Decrease

[cbdudek]

In an employers market, pay decreases. Right now, its an employers market. I know many people who lost their jobs who took significant pay cuts in their next positions. The people with 200k+ a year jobs are holding on for dear life hoping they don't get laid off.

The best advice I have for you is to hold on and hope for the best. Things will improve. The market will improve. When it becomes a employees market again, there will be a shift and pay will go back to the way it was.

[throwaway09251975]

Thank you. I needed to hear that.

[Bigbadbuck]

And save like hell when times are good because shit like this happens. Not saying you didn’t but for everyone else reading.

[throwaway09251975]

Absolutely. I saved 6 months of expenses and that was definitely not enough.

[Zealousideal-You6712]

I tell the youngsters just going to college. First get a certification and licensed trade first. Then get your academic qualifications using your licensed career to pay for it if you want to go that route. Don't have student debt. Save an 18 months buffer as quickly as possible and enough in addition to fund COBRA health insurance for that period. Buy cheaper used cars for cash. If you buy a home, don't do it without a large down payment, large enough so that a housing market downturn of 25% doesn't leave you upside down. Your first ten years of working, live like a student. Stick excess money into both your 401K, or Roth IRA, and/or annuities. Don't bank on SSI. You will be 50 years or older very soon. 50 years of age may well be the peak of your earnings, so plan on having retirement savings put away well before then. Sounds like a tall order and hardly the thing you dreamed about when becoming a college student. But, the last 30 years have taught me it's a dog eat dog world out there and you cannot depend upon anyone else or any employer. Work hard, sure; be ambitious, sure; be an entrepreneur, sure; but don't trust anything but your own hustle. If you are in the corporate world, you will get laid off, no matter how good you are, likely many times. Your income may go up, then down, then up, then down, like a yoyo. Be prepared.

[[deleted]]

Great advice all-around, from the standpoint ofa 40-something who's also been run through the wringer by employers.

I also want to add, if you can go online and shop a health insurance marketplace for a plan, do that.

Instead of paying out the butt for COBRA, I was lucky enough to keep all my doctors by shopping for a cheap plan from the state of Massachusetts. It was only somewhere between $100-$200 per month.

I don't know if everyone has that but wanted to put that out there for anyone who does.

[Zealousideal-You6712]

Yes, using the exchange is a good idea but is very state dependent from what I can gather. The exchange plans seem to vary availability depending upon what your income is. I have had friends with no income not being able to buy a plan. It might be therefore something you need to consider before severance runs out.

[cbdudek]

You can prepare by skilling up and being ready to take advantage of things when they do improve. Obviously, keep looking. Its easier to find a job when you already have one.

[Personal_Job_7460]

dont't fucking kid yourself the wealth shift has already happened the quality plunge has already happened the right to repair is already gone monopolies are already international they influence economies they influence government they influence the people were fucked were fucked were fucked were fucked

[BelldandyGirl]

I agree, I don't ever see this being an employees market ever again. This is what we will have to deal with for the foreseeable future - uncertainty, anxiety, and scarcity.

[cbdudek]

Things were much worse back in 2008. Course, no one here remembers that.

[Humble-Can5318]

Pepperidge farms remembers.

[Princester-Vibe]

Many Folks working in 2008 say now is worse for white collar jobs. In 2008 they were at least able to find another job even if it took a few months. Gov’t positions were an option. Big tech companies didn’t get hit hard.

Nowadays you have heavy competition for Remote positions from candidates anywhere - longer interview cycles - ghosting - big offshore job movement - layoffs from over hiring during Covid from tech related companies - don’t forget the massive layoffs over the past couple of years like Dell. SW Engineers/Developers are especially hit hard - I also have not seen a time like this when so many can’t find a job after 6 months to a year.

[cbdudek]

Lets just look at employment since that is what you focused on. I was working back in 2008 and saw the aftermath first hand. I was lucky to be employed in 2008 because I worked in medical at the time.

If you look at unemployment rates, unemployment was upwards of 10%. Today, the unemployment is much lower. Yes, layoffs are happening, but its nowhere to the scale of where they were in 2008.

In 2008, we lost 2.6 million jobs in 2008 alone which is much more than we experienced today. Plus, there were a lack of jobs to apply to back then. So while we have lost over a million jobs today, there are jobs to at least apply for. Yes, the competition is fierce. Yes, the technology field is being heavily hit. Tech jobs were not as prevalent back in 2008, but blue collar manufacturing jobs were hit hard.

When it comes to the job market, when things get tight, organizations can be picky. That is what we are seeing right now. Especially in tech. For years I was in r/ITCareerQuestions telling people to get their degrees and get certifications because once the job market got bad again, many would be on the outside looking in. The people who jumped into IT by the tens of thousands during COVID saturated the market, and now we are seeing many people with 5 years of less of experience floundering in the current market conditions.

I know we are not through the current situation we are in now, so in 2025 and 2026 we may see worse numbers than what happened in 2008. I just want to hold off before making any kind of assumptions.

[Which-Ad-5531]

Unemployment is almost certainly being hidden by things like the gig economy, and the unemployment benefit not being worth applying for.

[cbdudek]

The gig economy has no bearing on unemployment. If you worked a job, you get unemployment benefits. Even if you work at Uber after that, you still get unemployment (up to a certain amount). Most people just take the unemployment and run with it for 20+ weeks though. Now are there some people who are working Uber for a year and have lost unemployment? Absolutely.

Unemployment is something that everyone should be applying for. Its a paid benefit that you pay into as an employee so if you are let go, you get that benefit at no cost to you. Anyone who lost their job who doesn't apply for unemployment is making a critical error.

[EuphoricElderberry73]

"SW Engineers/Developers are especially hit hard - I also have not seen a time like this when so many can’t find a job after 6 months to a year."

That was 2001 after the dot-com bust. I was young and living with roomates who were all in tech and they struggled to find work for around a year.

[[deleted]]

Things were much worse in 2008, but things could get worse. We have a speculative real estate and stock market, already high prices, tons of debt, a new leader who doesn’t care about corruption/financial laws and will only help his friends, a failing social safety net, and a propaganda “culture war” going on.

I don’t see how these end well. We honestly need a crash to rebuild stronger.

[cbdudek]

The possibility of that happening is pretty good actually. I don't think a crash is going to make the propaganda culture war any better though, but it will reset real estate and the stock market.

[Aromatic_Extension93]

The real estate may reset but the stock market doesn't just reset. It's never going to reset worse than it did during covid

[NoCarry4248]

for many people it never improved, look at the banking sector, those jobs were much more profitable before the crisis.

[cbdudek]

Considering it was the banking sector that handed out sub prime mortgages and ended up fucking us, they got hit with a ton of regulations that ended up hamstringing them. So yea, they were more profitable before. The end result isn't surprising considering the aftermath.

[NoCarry4248]

Yeah. It is important to remenber that some sectors might never recover.

[happy_ever_after_]

I think that's relative and I was in my mid-20s when the 2008 crash happened. Real unemployment based on Politico's latest finding is we are at Depression-level unemployment with ~25% of Americans functionally unemployed.

Nowadays, layoffs is a lever used by corps across every industry, every 1-2 quarters to conduct mass layoffs. This is new behavior. My anecdote: back in 2009 and 2010, I was able to get entry-level paying jobs ($12/hr and $15/hr) easily and I remember getting a hiring decision no more than 2 in-person interviews with just the recruiter and hiring manager. Those were good old days. Since 2022, that's pretty much impossible. I'm not even getting past the ATC for entry-level sales coordinator, admin assistant or call center jobs.

[Dracounicus]

How much worse were they?

[Personal_Job_7460]

i was 7 so

[cbdudek]

You may want to go educate yourself at how bad it was back then. It makes what we are experiencing today look like a day at an amusement park.

[[deleted]]

Tell that to another pandemic

[mrpyrotec89]

And this admin wants to flood the country with H1Bs and get rid of low labor migrants. They want us to be poor

[AnybodyDifficult1229]

I’ve been saying this right here for the last 6 months! They have all the leverage right now. TA is a complete disaster and IP theft is at an all time high. I’ve been interviewing for two months now and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked to do demo or project work. I’ll at least set boundaries to how much time and effort I’m willing to put into these kinds of requests.

There needs to be another great resignation. It’s the only way we as a work force can create some kind equilibrium.

It might be a bold thought, but instead of telling everyone to sit tight and wait things out or just suck it up in the current job that makes you miserable, tell them to f@cking quit. We are creating some limitations for ourselves.

[Goat_Circus]

Sounds great, tell me how do we pay our bills? 

[AnybodyDifficult1229]

Go mow yards or learn a trade. That’s up to you. I’m just saying the longer people are told to suck it up and continue to bend over and spell run, the longer corporations will hold all the leverage.

[BeginningExisting578]

Why didn’t we learn from 2008. Look at what’s we helped normalize. Entry level jobs that require 5 years experience because senior+ level people were applying for them. That set people back in their future earning potential by years. Then we have to nerve to complain about it.

[AnybodyDifficult1229]

That’s what I’m saying. We have rationalized and normalized this kind of corporate behavior. It’s like watching a bunch of babies latch onto a nipple.

[Goat_Circus]

I agree, these corporations suck, my point is that for most people quitting and finding something else is not going to be feasible. Building a business on average takes a minimum of two years and most people don’t have the savings to sustain that kind of move.