Recession or Not?

[chopnhack]

Reading Jeff's post regarding Compusa going out of business made me wonder what everyone else is thinking on this topic.

[Ed62]

Yeah, unfortunately I think there's one coming in the near future.

Ed

[SARGE..g-47]

I don't think it's a full blown recession yet, but what you are seeing now is just a tip of the ice-berg for things to come. The bulding business has been devastated in the last year and the trickle down is catching up to suppliers and even mortgage companies.

Several large, well established. long term builders have closed or laid off long time employees. I got laid off 6 weeks ago after almost ten years on the job, even though the company is not building related. But... this is the first year in 24 that sales were down and not up. Most retailers are not jumping with joy over this years sales and Xmas sales could make or break some.

Just my opinion based on what I see local Atlanta and read nation-wide.

[LCHIEN]

well for one thing the PC business has been notoriously thin margins and very high levels of competition. Most of the customers are computer and internet literate as well so B&M stores suffered. I guess there could be some casualties.

As for recession vs depression, I think the way I heard it is, if your neighbor loses his job, its a recession; if you lose your job, then its a depression.

[chopnhack]

Sorry to hear your out of work ATM, Sarge. Good luck on your hunt to find good employment soon.

[eccentrictinkerer]

During the last recession, some pundit said "I choose not to participate!". With the media constantly badgering us with bad news, it's hard, sometimes, to be optimistic.

My cousin is in real estate. He says the downturn is by market. Roughly half the country is down and the other half is up. Here in Minneapolis, I have two good handyman customers who recently sold their homes for $1M+ and they both sold in less than a month.

My daughters and their husbands have good jobs. My neighbors, are all working and, in general, life is good.

I semi-retired 5 years ago. I started a handyman company, hoping to work 20 hours a week. I work 30-40 a hours a week and turn down jobs every week. I work only within 4 miles of my house. If times were truly bad, I doubt people would pay me $50/hour to replace toilets and light switches.

[LinuxRandal]

Our whole Economy is out of whack, from going to a service industry from a industrial base, to where ever we go in the future. Change happens.
I see builders having problems from holding houses unsold for years, and not building, to builders that are pulled OUT of retirement, to build Multi-million dollar houses.
A elderly couple I know sold their home here, to their daughters longtime boyfriend (common-law husband) for $130,ish. A little over a year later, due to redevelopment/rezoning, it is on the market for around 2 Mil.
Most of the companies I know connected to the building trades, have cut back on help, and eliminated, lower profitable area's of their businesses. (like the commercial side of heating and cooling where helicopters are required)
People buy JUNK, AND stuff they don't need, raise their debt, etc.........

The more I see, the more I begin to understand why several of my older friends, are more commonly saying now, "what we need is a good depression".

So much waste.

[Hoover]

One thing about a recession, it is not always the same across the country. Some areas seem to be resilient and do okay, other areas could be hard hit. The nation's economy is not about one service or industry, it is many different pieces of the pie.

The impact of sub-prime mortgages and the number of defaults is not yet fully known. This is a wild card and could turn out to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

[Knottscott]

With the continually falling dollar, trade deficit, budget deficit, foreclosure rate, high taxes, high fuel and utility costs, and rising medical costs, I don't see how we can avoid one.

[SARGE..g-47]

Sorry to hear your out of work ATM, Sarge. Good luck on your hunt to find good employment soon.

Thanks for your concern, chopnhack. I only worked 4 days a week by choice. They ask me to work 5 so they could eliminate several younger employees with little time and experience. The company is Year One by the way, which is the largest supplier of Muscle Car Parts in the World.

I said no as I am not interested at this point in working 5 days and was considering 3 in the coming year. I ask them to grab me first and attempt to save the younger ones who have families still to raise, mortgages, etc. Mine is paid off along with most debt retired and I just turned 60, so I was going to retire in two years anyway.

So... in lieu of finding work elsewhere, I just retired early. At least for the moment as I have at least 6 months of shop work to complete if I hustle. I will make a final decision in 6 months as to if I will stay retired completely.. go part time or go full time till 62. It would require me to stumble across something extrodinary to go full time as again.. at this point we are frugul and in financial position to not have too..

Again.. thanks for the note of concern.......

[BigguyZ]

I semi-retired 5 years ago. I started a handyman company, hoping to work 20 hours a week. I work 30-40 a hours a week and turn down jobs every week. I work only within 4 miles of my house. If times were truly bad, I doubt people would pay me $50/hour to replace toilets and light switches.

$50/ hour?!?! You hiring?

[Bruce Cohen]

I lost the job I was trained for (Creative Director in an Ad Agency) 2 months after 9/11. I was making a salary in the the 6 digit range.

Since then, It's been low paying positions at Home Depot, a framing company (which I got laid off from the day before Thanksgiving) and a few others I'm too embarrassed to mention.

The Ad industry is now in total shambles, quality is now a low priority, and only low salaries count.

Luckly my wife has a half-way decient job.

I'm waiting till I'm 62 so I can do a reverse mortage and at least get rid of one bill.

Doesn't time fly when you're having fun???

Bruce

And yes, I'm way more pissed than I sound

[SARGE..g-47]

As I said... the economy is just not contained to the building trade. Can we say Lee Valley boys and girls...?

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/...d722a7&k=92011

[nothing]

Reading Jeff's post regarding Compusa going out of business made me wonder what everyone else is thinking on this topic.

While we may be headed towards a recession, I don't think CompUSA is an indicator. I worked for CompUSA from 97-00. We opened the store here, and now It's closed. I went by the last day it was open just to see what was going on. It was odd, looked like a beat up version of what we started with.

CompUSA drove itself out of business with shady business practices, poor customer service and lack of loyalty to its employees. All of the good managers we had were promptly fired for poor sales records. Truth is their sales were fine for the market, but they could be higher if management willing to lie to customers was in place. The managers were also shady with how they handled employees. The result was a store that went from a well trained, knowledgeable employee base with a long term commitment to the company to a store with a high turn over rate and undercompensated employees who really didn't care about the job or customers.

I worked as a PC technician at the time. In the beginning the sales people were very good about getting our input to make sure the customers got what they needed. Later the good sales people left due to management ripping them off (literally not paying them their spiffs (kickbacks on the extended warranty which is another lie). The people they were replaced with were terrible, they would promise anything to get a sale. By the time the customer got back to us we caught the worst of it because now the techs were seen as incompetent because we couldn't upgrade a 486SX to a PII 300 by dropping in a $300 dollar processor the salesman promised would work.

Now the Techs start leaving because the stress is to high and the company is backing out on its promises of incrimental raises with each tech certification earned. I had 9 certifications from A+, Network + and vendor specific certs including IBM clustering and Enterprise servers. For all that I got $1.00 an hour more.

Before it closed most salesmen couldn't tell you what a front side bus was and the techs no longer did in house warranty repairs. They only did upgrades such as hard drives and memory. When we first opened 3 techs could average 24 computers repaired an hour, both laptops and desktops. Now it's 0.

And that is why compusa is no more. Bestbuy will follow suit in a few more years if they aren't careful. They don't lie quite as much, but they treat the employees like 2 year olds. Who wants to get up a 0700 and go to a company "training meeting" where we push each other around in shopping carts to see who knows were the most products are. /end rant

This is why I love the military so much more. It might be really really jacked up at times, but at least it's consistant and predictable. And I get blow stuff up.

[eccentrictinkerer]

$50/ hour?!?! You hiring?

Nope! I spent 30 years in sales management, now I only have one incompetent employee, me.

BTW, I'm actually charging less per hour than the big guys and most of the handymen in my area (the ones that know what they are doing, anyway).

I wish I started doing this 35 years ago. I wouldn't be taking blood pressure pills, if I had.

I feel it's the perfect recession-proof job. If the economy is good, customers are buying new fixtures and remodeling. If the economy turns sour, customers need stuff repaired and kept up.