During the 5 years of Bush, have you been laid off, downsized, had your...

...pay cut, been outsourced, or otherwise had your job affected by the Bush economy?

Given the funny numbers handed out by the Bush Administration, I thought we should do our own informal poll to see how deep the problem is in the job sector.

Our household income dropped to 1/6 (no lie- 1/6th!)of what it was in 1999.

Not to mention loss of $$$ in stock options, and investments etc.

Especially the stock. I will go to my grave thinking I was played on that. I ended up with a lot of worthless options that expired with the stock never at price where I could exercise them. Amazingly, huge propitiously timed stock sales by top executives drove the price down below the strike price.

Anyway, I will never again earn the money I made throughout the eighties and nineties. Oh well. I was diagnosed in 2000 with ALS and told I had two years. I don't have it, but I have had plenty of time to figure out what is really important. Trust me, it really isn't anything that you can put a price tag on.

Our gross income dropped to one-third of 2002 levels after a 2003 layoff.

Looked for work for a year, took a temp contract job in the interim. I finally decided to be a stay-at-home dad and build a more affordable house while doing some odd-jobs and volunteer work.

The fact that we're better off in many ways due to the lifestyle change (money isn't everything, it just has a big lead over whatever is in second place) in no way changes the reality - I just did our taxes today and our taxable income is about 15% of what it was.

My physical and emotional health is better, but the local merchants (except for the lumberyard)miss me.

When Bush was elected, I was sure that the job market was going to get very weak so....

We moved back home to Chicago and I was able to parlay my experience working in the Space Program to a nice, well paying job with great benefits.

However, if I would have stayed in Houston, me and my family would have suffered greatly. I keep in touch with my old co-workers and they have told me that they have experience pay cuts and decreased benefits.

* took away much of that momentum.

(we have profit sharing) is 1/10 of what is was during the Clinton years. Raises in my office went from 8-10% to 0-4%.

Because according to the Republican my child goes to high school with, he says Democrats give you nothing. She reminded this student about his take on Democrats not giving anything, when he asked to use her better resources. She helped him by giving him her tools to get him out of a jam, and all he could do was mumble.

specifically because of the Bush economy.

I ran a weekly newspaper in a county where the unemployment soared to 8% and many small businesses closed or cut back severely. Since newspapers depend entirely on advertising to survive, oops.

Bracing for summary excoriation by the LIHOP and MIHOP crowd.

:tinfoilhat:

I hold the criminals who committed the atrocities of 9/11 primarily responsible for the loss of my previous job.

rather than preventative health programs like the grant I was working for. That grant will be cut from the whole Southeastern region come this July.

be in two 2 weeks time.

but my fiancee lost her programming job in 2001, and hasn't found anything since.

She's written 2 novels and colors an online comic. So far, no income from the novels (though 1 is starting to sell) - and the comic pays about $50/month on average.

I have had to pick up a 2nd job to pay the bills, though.

my company is outsourcing entire departments & spending a lot of money doing it. I had a good severance package which helps a lot.

Comparable computer desktop support jobs are paying 40-60% less than what I was making.

The majority of desktop support work was outsourced several years back. Did you have special qualifications that were hard to off shore?

mgmt talked about it for almost 3 yrs before it happened - there was a layer of upper mgmt that didn't want to do it - took a couple of years for them to get pushed out...

My job wasn't offshored because I was one of the people who physically touch the pcs - not everything can be fixed remotely! They hired Unisys to provide the warm bodies.

When I was first hired, they wanted well trained, certified people at 1st level support. We touched servers and created network accounts in addition to user support. Now everything is specialized and the first level support is low level, not expected to have any troubleshooting skills - just able to follow instructions. All actual problem solving and analysis is done at 2nd or even 3rd level support... and of course there are many fewer of these positions...

Oh well, it's gotten me back to school anyway...

...but that's because I quit my job to briefly go back to school.

As a programmer, I've spent the last 4 years fighting to get and keep a job that won't be sent overseas. I saw the entire IT department of a company I was contracted with one by one get fired and have their jobs sent to Pakistan. I'm currently what they call "between jobs".

My husband was one of 200 IT workers laid off from a Time Warner division. I hear they have recently had another big IT layoff.

Don't want to name names, but their IT staff of about 20 was cut down to about 5 (mostly management) when I left. That all happened over about a year's time, starting as soon as some new owners came in. As a contractor, I was able to hold out longer than most, but left voluntarily due to other reasons.

The sad thing is that they sent all the work to Pakistani firms. I could've sworn Pakistan was known to harbor terrorists. Every time I was on the phone with the Pakistanis I was tempted to say "So any of you guys seen Bin Laden over there? 'Cause I heard he was there..."

Good luck to you and your husband.

I have lost financial aid.

reduced/eliminated benefits, had to switch to another profession, etc.) The shrubCo. economy has devastated millions and it takes multiple attacks to be that effective.
BTW I currently gross 20% of what I made before that shithead stole our country.

eom

except for generics.
I was unemployed for 13 months, which wiped out our small savings and left me badly depressed. But we're well off by comparison to many others.
My brother in NJ has had a horrible time finding work.
A friend of my husband's in NYC, who lost his job when the printer he worked for got wiped out by 9/11, lost his house and everything he owned.

in the 4.5 years since then, i've only been sporadically employed in professional jobs 2 out of those 4.5 years....my current jobless search streak is at 11 months....

yes, i know, i suck at life---please kill me now

pay I received for doing just one job before. I haven't received a raise in over four years and the year end bonus I used to get has been reduced to 1/16 of what it was before. Oh, and other jobs in the area I live in that are comparable to mine are paying less than I am making now.

I do hunger relief :(

and have only been able to find intermittent freelance gigs ever since then. I'm in marketing communications, and I'm now in my 50s, so I have little hope of ever really getting back on track.

The only saving grace is that my husband has a real job with real benefits, including decent health insurance.

I was working as a communications director until August 2002 when my job, and most of my department were eliminated because of severe budget cuts - everything was going to be outsourced. I was out of work for 51 weeks before I found a new gig as VP of Marketing & PR for a company that closed its doors 18 months later.

There is NOTHING out there for MarCom. And the competition is ridiculously stiff if anything decent DOES come along.

I got fed up and at 39 decided I am not going to continue to go through this bullshit for the rest of my career. I'm in school working an my RN degree and then onto a Physician Assistant program. Healthcare can't be outsourced, damnit.

I'm not sure if you live near a major US population center, but I found IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) job board to be a great resource. Most of the positions were not geographically realistic for me (upper midwest here)but there were several I was very well qualified for. Here's a link: http://jobs.iabc.com/c/search_results.cfm?site_id=65

Nice thing about it is that you don't need to be an IABC member to utilize the job board. Best of luck!

providers twice because the insurance companies keep raising the premiums and cutting back the services. My co-pays went from $15 to $25, now it's back at $20. We also have HSA's, but we use them as a supplement, not a substitute for regular coverage (our regular coverage does not include dental)

:shrug:

a freelance web programmer. There seems to not be much business to consider though. The economy seems nowhere near as heated as the Bush regime pretends.

or that's what he said anyway, later asked me for overs, the cheap labor was killing him, I said go chenney yourself mo'fo. We are still friends though, btw.
on edit to add: he had to hire two to replace me too. I loved it.

I was in a meeting the other day with some other moms and of the 6 of us, 4 had husbands laid off at some time since 2001. Two had been through it twice, and one's husband had been unemployed for over 8 months.

The excuse that "it's the economy" is bullshit. It's the corporate idiots who aren't ready for primetime that have harmed the company that employs me.

Part of an old pension type payment we got got wacked but are replacing it was a slightly higher 401k match. So you just need to add like 5% extra into your 401k to get back what you use to have free.

I've cut back costs, researched and got cheaper car/home insurance, still with all the tightening down we have done we are just treading water. The damn fuel costs and freaking FOOD COSTS are eating us alive.

Lets see raises have sucked. 1.9%, 2.5% etc. I do believe some of its just interoffice politics though I cannot and will not put all of that on a Bush economy although it does share some of the blame.

for health insurance premium has increased from $187 a month to $800 a month this year. Yikes!

About half the time, I had no healthcare.

And I was also laid off in May of 2001. Took me 5 months and about a month after 9/11 for me to get hired again. At a private bank, BTW, because all of the NCBs, Keys and such were laying off like mad at that time.

But new wages doesn't equal prosperity. Forget about luxuries like vacations, every damned necessity from food to gas to insurance to turnpike tolls costs way more and wages aren't keeping up with the increases.

Things WERE much better under Clinton.

Under Clinton, our dollar was extremely strong and a good percentage of my business was from buying in Canada, since the exchange rate was 40-49% under President Clinton's tenure. Under Bush, our dollar took a fucking nosedive, and so did any more buying abroad.

And I don't care what anyone says...Since Bush took over, people don't have the extra money they used to have to make extra purchases with. All they got with him are some lower interest rates so they can borrow on things they don't need like expensive mansions and SUV's.

It's amazing that more people don't talk about how the value of our dollar plummeted under this cocksucker.

Things have gotten better for me personally. I don't bush as much the problem as the assholes who run companies like shit.

The Bush economy has been less of an issue for me than the incredibly poor management decisions that ran our company into the ground.

After some employees bought out the firm and made some different decisions, we immediately turned a profit and I'm now getting substantial pay raises, bonus money and profit-sharing. Our business is booming, I can barely keep up with incoming work, and we're hiring new employees as fast as we can.

The one area in which I'm doing worse is the one area the company can't control -- partner benefits. The previous corporate ownership was in a state that allowed partner benefits, but we're now based in Virginia, which has outlawed partner benefits. So my partner will lose medical coverage once my COBRA runs out.

THAT I blame on the current administration.

I consider this my real JOB, not my part-time crap I have to struggle with to pay tuition.
Bush slashed student loans. He's making my real JOB nearly impossible.
I spend nearly as much time worrying about paying the bills as I do worrying about my studies.
Stupid anti-intellectual bastard...I grimace when I remember he told people to "get an education!" in the debates. With what, you pile of shit? Your daddy's money?
I wouldn't nearly fail out of Yale if I had the kind of cash he had.
I think its sad that because I don't have the cashflow, as a Dean's list student, I have to constantly worry if I can afford to graduate, while he got to spend all his time getting completely wasted and fucking around with Skull and Bones.

Way way better.

with NO warning. Told at 7 pm as leaving computer store last May "don't come to work tomorrow". Got another job in June selling cars. That lasted 4 months. Was unemployed from end of October until mid-December. Finally got another job in computers--FT with benefits and more money. Hope this one lasts!

66% of his former pay.

I was unemployed for over THREE YEARS, husband for over TWO. We finally moved back to where we came from (Midwest) and I FINALLY got a job. With me working, and husband working 2 jobs, we're STILL at less than 50% of where we were at 4 years ago as far as income. Also, I HAD good health insurance a few years ago, but was expensive, and now can't even afford to get any kind of health insurance.

I have a decent job now, but I am making less than I was at the time Smirkalicious stole the 2000 election. And paying a LOT more for healthcare for myself and my daughter.

Another thing that really sucks about losing a job you've had for a while is loss of seniority. Less time off, not fully vested in 401k, etc.

I get more per hour but I don't have any benefits. My husband has benefits at his job so I was able to take my current job. However, the contract expires June 30th and I don't know if it will be renewed. I was hired to do a specific project and when I get it done, I will likely be out of a job.

we're the ones who should be REALLY pissed.

I graduated college in December, can't find a job for the life of me! Oh well. Something will come around.

I did a backward nose dive off a semi trailer lift gate, breaking both wrists when I tried to break my fall. The lift gate was old and worn out.

Shortly after returning to work my employer created a hostile atmosphere towards me. I was repeatedly called into the office for minor crap that were often overlooked when done by other drivers. Every little thing was with a warning, and into my work record. It didn't take a brain surgeon to see they were padding my work record with petty write ups just to get rid of me and my light duty status.

I'm now working for another company and making exactly half as much as I was when I worked for the dysfunctional employer. After being denined unemployment, I sued the ex employers workman's comp and settled for 25 thousand dollars!

dumb enough to quit my job.

Since he's been in preschool I've been trying to find another job, and failing. During the Clinton administration, it was NEVER hard for me to find a job... I turned down offers all the time...

i.e, the talking point of "well, well . . . what, there were no layoffs during the Clinton years? Think again, you stupid libs (grunt, slobber)!" You know, because they can't necessarily DEFEND the mass firings, the offshoring, the real-dollar wage decline or the previously well paid jobs being replaced by lower-paying service jobs signature of the pro-corporation Bewsh years without coming off sounding like an idiot, so they, AGAIN, go back to their favorite scapegoat.

YES, there were layoffs under Clinton (yes, it ALL comes back to the Clenis). But the recovery period wasn't as painful and finding a new job after the layoff was overall FAR easier. Don't they read the statistic of the unemployment time between jobs stretched to record numbers during Bewsh?

Luckily, I was able to stay in one place during the majority of Clinton's second term before the auto industry went ankles up to Asia and started doing mass fire-a-thons to that and all related industries, which still continues to this day.

after he lost his job, there were no more tech jobs, especially for those over a certain age...

The only thing saving our bacon now is the fact he is on disability. Otherwise, we would be struggling to get by on whatever I could make in some kind of office work.

I've had to have a cut in pay for a while.

I've had raises frozen for a year.

I didn't get a raise for 4 years.

But I got a raise this year.

My health benefits are changed, but it's hard to say they are better or worse, better in some ways (prescription card) worse in others, deductible raised, out of pocket limit raised.

My retirement pension plan was stopped. I'm vested in it at the level I was at, but it's frozen at that level. Assuming it doesn't go broke I will be able to withdraw from it a lump sum if I retire at 55, or take pension at 65.

My inclination is to lump sum it at 55, because I don' t trust it will be there later.

We now have an employer matching 401-K, which is better than the employee only 401-K before.

But, that is to replace the pension plan, which makes it more of a gamble, but has the potential to be more lucrative if the market stays good.

So, I'd say, overall, my wages have not grown as fast as inflation by a long shot.
I'm expected to do more work for the same pay (less in inflationary dollars) than I used to.
I no longer have a pension building.


So it is a mixed bag of things, overall more negative.

They wanted me to stay, but all my friends were leaving, so I quit, too, and have been self-employed since, making about a third of what I was before. I haven't had any regrets though - it's been worth it to me to be my own boss, and other things in my personal life have come together that have allowed me to keep my head above water.

and moved to CA with my husband's new job. He was downsized twice since we have been out here, however, he has been at this job for 2.5 years.

I was unable to find a job and quit looking for one two years ago.

During the 5 years of bush, the demonizing of my profession has increased exponentially. He formally declared war on my profession with NCLB.

My benefits now cost me about $500 more than they did before Bush. My association in CA voted year after year to not ask for a pay increase during negotiations, but to focus on keeping benefit costs down. My association in my new state took a pay cut to keep PE and music teachers employed.

for the 53 (myself included)

The boss who laid me off was a major Bush ass-kisser with absolutely no empathy or sympathy for anyone or anything but himself.

My new job sucks, too, but I'm moving in a few months, anyway, so it's okay.