economy question.

ok i am the first to admit i am politically uneducated.. do you guys and gals think that the economy is rebounding. holding steady, or still in the toilet.. i ask because of some stuff my MIL was saying.. it reguards health care and how that is going to still be the doom of the economic rebound.. so i am shopping for others thoughts.

No, I don't. Seems to be holding steady.

If you take the real unemployment number (not the made up one that doesn't count you if you are out of benefits or quit looking for work), then ADD the "underemployed" number (people working PT who want to work full-time) and you are at just over 19%.

We are picking up and seeing more work. Getting better but our costs are up eating into our margins. We're in an industry that fights price increases.

So we take more jobs with slimmer margins but we are all employed. I wouldn't buy any vacation homes, large boats, motor homes, or $25,000 Harley's at my house yet.

Save, save, save!

We'll be fine as long as the smoke and mirrors hold out.

It was getting better. I saw recovery signs like busier restaurants, more help wanted signs, and new businesses opening. Then gas jumped 50 cents in two weeks. If we hit $4/gallon national average again, it's all over.

I work worker's comp, so my workload is directly related to the number of actual people working. Our numbers have been in a tailspin since 08. I'd say actual unemployment (people 18-70 who can physically work but don't have a job) is around 25% in my state.

I am one of the underemployed people... just waiting a month until work picks up again. Last year was better than it has been since the economy tanked.. so I am not complaining.

If you read the news.. the people business is having right now is that worker productivity is faltering.. that is good for those who are un and underemployed.. but bad for those that are working.. means that the companies have finally maxed out how hard they can work their people

BARNCA wrote: ok i am the first to admit i am politically uneducated.. do you guys and gals think that the economy is rebounding. holding steady, or still in the toilet..

all of the above, some parts are recovering well, some are not. How that affects you probably depends on your type of job. If you are in construction - especially housing - things are probably still shakey. If most of your income is from wallstreet investments, you are probably doing much better. Most people are probably between these extremes.

Likewise, your asset allocations affect how you feel. There are plenty of people who have recovered their stock losses but who are still upside down on their homes. The people with the majority of assets in their homes are hurting more than the ones who were more diversified...

i can only speak for what i see in my little corner of the universe, but things seem to be picking up around here.. of course, a lot of that North Dakota oil field money is spilling over into this area due to a lot of companies from around here doing work out there..

but the company i work for- a multi national company that makes food packaging equipment and has locations in several states and something like 6 countries- is also doing pretty good and we have work for the next couple of years lined up.

Elantra gets 40....errr wait, ooops, I'll just back out of the room

I'm at the Northern End of a state with a bubble economy and housing bubble problem (NV).

Unemployment is still pretty bad - similar to what Javelin is seeing if you factor in people who've pretty much given up looking for a job - housing is on the skids in most areas apart from the one we'd like to buy in and just listening to the anecdotal evidence through the grapevine discretionary spending is also still pretty dead.

Everything I read suggest that the whole thing is very regional - there are areas where the economy is doing pretty well (around DC, for example), and there are areas that are at depression levels with not much measurable improvement over the past few years. Up here at Lake Tahoe, there is a lot of vacation homes (especially on the CA side) and over here in NV, there's lots of pensioners that used to be comparatively well off, but there fixed incomes weren't so fixed after all.

My work, which is tied in with the automotive industry, is booming right now. I'm writing new client proposals all the time.

We used to have a bell we rang when we got a new client and we had to stop that because we'd be disturbing people with the damn ringing all the time.

Now is the time for me to ask about a raise.

We are busy and trying to hire people, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of people doing what do ( consulting engineering) with pharma experience.

I'm at 110% billable for this year, so far - which is the highest I've been in the 11 years I've worked here.

So for me, the economy is ok. My bills are getting paid. My house is worth a lot more than the remaining mortgage balance, and my job looks secure. Given others are nowhere near as comfortable, I have little to complain about, other than a lack of free time and constantly being exhausted.

First, DON'T listen to the mainstream media for anything. You have to do your own research. That being said, only 64% of people are working full-time according to Gallup. Unemployement is 9.1%, 19% for underemployed. Not good. Now this is a scary site:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

These numers supposedly comes from the Bureau of Labor, the IRS, and US Census. At the top right, you can go back every four years until 2000 to compare. If these numers are correct, 10,000,000 more people are "Actually Unemployed" today than in March 2008, over 4,000,000 more "Official Unemployed". Nearly 20 million more on food stamps. I have researched this site with others and found it seems correct.

If gas breaks records, which is possible, than it will get even worse. Face the facts and don't drink the Kool-aid.

Although I am not a fan of the current administration, the economy seems to be steady, maybe even at the beginning of the upswing. My job is not necessarily a good indicator of economic times being that it is tied to safety of the gas line industry and has to be done regardless of demand. But if you look at the stock market and the decline of new unemployment claims, the economy appears to be headed in the right direction. A fuel/oil crisis with a war with Iran looming is the thing I worry about. If gas prices do hit $5 a gallon, that will be the E36 M3 re-hitting the fan economically speaking.

Note: I do not want to start a war argument, this is strictly looking at fuel/oil prices without bringing the left or right stances into it.

My little microcosm is rebounding. I attribute that not to government policy, but our personal policy of "Market like crazy while our competitors are struggling." It worked.

It all depends upon where you live.

But with that said it seems that just about every part of the economy has been getting better except for housing. It's not been getting better from what the current admin has been doing, just getting better cause it's time.

Keep in mind that better doesn't mean great. I keep track of all kinds of numbers and trends and the trends are putting us back on course before the derailment. But keep in mind this is an election year and strange things have been known to happen then, just look at the last one.

It's also the time to pass all kinds of bills with great headlines to try to garner votes, but when you look at them the bills just have good headlines with little to back them up.

The big O just said he's going to make it easier/cheaper for people to refinance their FHA loans, but when you look behind the smoke you find that it's a very limited number of people who are eligible for the program and most of those would have already refinanced by now. Electioneering.

Everyone finally agreed to pass the payroll tax extension, but they fought about it for a while. They weren't fighting about the tax extension it was which pork project to tie to this bill with a great headline that everyone has to be for and which will get them votes. And FHA mortgage insurance increase was one of the things that was tacked onto the tax extension.

Now some Senators are wanting to raise fees on conventional home loans to pay for the oil clean up in the Gulf. Sounds noble, will get attention so that they can show everyone how hard they are working for you and to get you to vote for them.

Unfortunately a lot of Americans get their news from headlines.

the economy stinks and is getting worse.
unemployment (real numbers) is up
people spending money is down (even on needs)

internetautomart wrote: the economy stinks and is getting worse. unemployment (real numbers) is up people spending money is down (even on needs)

The economy is a very personal thing and not everywhere and everyone is in great shape.

I was looking for the info talking about Home Depot being about 29% above expectations, but I couldn't find it. I did find all these tho -

These are all direct quotes from data feeds.

"Household debt increased during the fourth quarter for the first time in nearly four years despite a continued drop in mortgage borrowing, according to the Federal Reserve." Debt means spending.

"The private sector added 216,000 jobs in February, according to the latest national employment report from Automatic Data Processing."

Apple is worth more than many countries

"JOBLESS CLAIMS REMAIN NEAR 4 YEAR LOW - Initial jobless claims fell again last week and remain at the lowest level in four years, as the employment situation continues to improve.

Weekly claims have been lower than 400,000 (the benchmark to show recovery) for most the past four months."

"The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the 13,000 mark Tuesday for the first time since May 2008, after briefly flirting with it since last week."

"NAR: Pending home sales hit 21-month high! Pending home sales rose to their highest level in 21 months in January, according to the National Association of Realtors, as agents signed more contracts for existing homes."

"REMAX SAYS THEIR SALES HAVE RISEN FOR THE 7TH STRAIGHT MONTH - “If sales continue ahead of last year’s pace and inventory does not increase significantly, we could start to see increasing home prices this year,” RE/MAX CEO Margaret Kelly said."

It seems to be picking up around here. All my friends have found jobs straight out of school.

It is picking up because that is the story line that the media are feeding to us. It is an illusion. The reality is that is is not picking up, none of the underlying causes of this mess have been dealt with, we are just deeper in debt, and the big banks just got bigger. They used to be too big to fail, now they are too big to jail.

Some economic indicators show improvement, but those are usually either things measured in dollars and since inflation is vastly understated it is easy to make it look like there is a recovery. The auto industry is looking good, unless you look into it and see that the increase in sales were zero or near zero interest rate loans to folks who have bad credit and really will not pay the loan back. This is just a repeat of the housing sub-prime fiasco except with cars this time. Retail sales may be looking ok, until you see that companies like Target are making a large percentage of their profit not from selling more goods, but through their store credit cards where they get people to buy things they cannot afford and then sock them with high interest rates.

Unemployment keeps getting better, but the reality is that they just keep monkeying with the numbers by removing people from the workforce. The number of people working is not going up and the number of people not working keeps going up and up. Food stamps though is a booming business, one which JP Morgan profits nicely from more and more every day since they get a cut from everyone's EBT card transaction.

Major big box retailers have dug themselves in such a hole that they will not make it out without their own bailout. Best Buy, Lowes, CVS, Walgreens are essentially zombies at this point or at least heading that way. Too many stores, not enough sales. I expect either major layoffs or outright store closings for some of these companies in the next couple of years.

Gas prices keep going up. Good thing we bombed the crap out of Libya in that un-war. It wouldn't have mattered too much, since the supply of oil is pretty much at its peak and oil will only get more and more expensive as time goes on. This will have a further drain on the economy on top of our massive debt load.

The shipping industry is hurting - take a look at the Baltic Dry Index for an example.

Tax revenues are plummeting. Everything under the surface tells me things are crappy and getting crappier. It is only the headlines that try to put a positive spin on any of this. Interesting times are ahead.

"Meh" around here. Lot of folks out of college still looking for jobs, some folks still in college have jobs. I'm going to be out of college soon and currently do not have a job. Don't know what I'll do, I really do not ever want to caddy again.

From a slightly economically-inclined guy like myself, I would describe it as "holding steady - in the toilet."

My problem with it (editorially speaking) is that pragmatism seems to work better than the lies we're being told. We're fat lazy americans right now. I'm not reactionary by any means, but I do have respect for the America that came around in about 1942. We entered a (highly supported) war and we collectively said, "Ok, so I can't buy a new car and my homemaker wife can't wear pantyhose while she needs to work while I'm getting gangrene from a bullet wound fighting Nazis. Life is still great." Could you imagine what would happen right now if the government forced all the automakers to build something else for the war effort in the middle east? What if the government said that we will no longer have consumer plastics available to us because the crude oil is needed for tanks and planes in Afghanistan? I think we'd throw a tantrum.

These days we're involved in an unpopular war and we're saying "dang, it sure costs a lot to fill up my Escalade and I had to buy my designer jeans at Marshalls."

I'm probably the most progressive person I know, and I'm not saying that one war is better than another... I'm just saying, there was something to be said for the "can-do" spirit that America used to have. It feels like we're all (again, collectively) sitting around on our $500 laptops waiting for a decent candidate who we think will magically solve all of our problems.

Jobs and the economy feel the same to me. I feel like we're so stuck in our training. So you spent five years as a textile manufacturing equipment repair technician. That doesn't mean you have to find THAT job again. Find yourself out of work? Put an ad on Craigslist that you own a paintbrush and a roller. "You buy the paint, I'll put it on your wall." Put in an application at Starbucks. I spent 7 years managing auto repair shops and was in charge of 13 of them (7 of which I was able to get off the ground and oversee their genesis). I have an interview on Monday at a local chain of new car dealerships. If they offer me an executive management position, great. If they offer me the position of toilet scrubber and I need the money, I'll take it.

The economy is in our heads. I'll explain that. The economy is made up of money that doesn't exist. We put so much stress on it that it rules our lives. The "economy" as we perceive it will be fine. My concern is that the way our capitalism is structured, it might kill half of us before it rebounds. Rather, America has become a land of individualism instead of community.

My best advice? If you see someone who needs help, offer it. If we try to get through this by hoarding and hoping, we'll end up perpetuating the individualist and exclusive class-based society that led us here in the first place.

^I think I just found my magical candidate. Curtis for President.

curtis73 wrote: From a slightly economically-inclined guy like myself, I would describe it as "holding steady - in the toilet." My problem with it (editorially speaking) is that pragmatism seems to work better than the lies we're being told. We're fat lazy americans right now. I'm not reactionary by any means, but I do have respect for the America that came around in about 1942. We entered a (highly supported) war and we collectively said, "Ok, so I can't buy a new car and my homemaker wife can't wear pantyhose while she needs to work while I'm getting gangrene from a bullet wound fighting Nazis. Life is still great." Could you imagine what would happen right now if the government forced all the automakers to build something else for the war effort in the middle east? What if the government said that we will no longer have consumer plastics available to us because the crude oil is needed for tanks and planes in Afghanistan? I think we'd throw a tantrum. These days we're involved in an unpopular war and we're saying "dang, it sure costs a lot to fill up my Escalade and I had to buy my designer jeans at Marshalls." I'm probably the most progressive person I know, and I'm not saying that one war is better than another... I'm just saying, there was something to be said for the "can-do" spirit that America used to have. It feels like we're all (again, collectively) sitting around on our $500 laptops waiting for a decent candidate who we think will magically solve all of our problems. Jobs and the economy feel the same to me. I feel like we're so stuck in our training. So you spent five years as a *textile manufacturing equipment repair technician.* That doesn't mean you have to find THAT job again. Find yourself out of work? Put an ad on Craigslist that you own a paintbrush and a roller. "You buy the paint, I'll put it on your wall." Put in an application at Starbucks. I spent 7 years managing auto repair shops and was in charge of 13 of them (7 of which I was able to get off the ground and oversee their genesis). I have an interview on Monday at a local chain of new car dealerships. If they offer me an executive management position, great. If they offer me the position of toilet scrubber and I need the money, I'll take it. The economy is in our heads. I'll explain that. The economy is made up of money that doesn't exist. We put so much stress on it that it rules our lives. The "economy" as we perceive it will be fine. My concern is that the way our capitalism is structured, it might kill half of us before it rebounds. Rather, America has become a land of individualism instead of community. My best advice? If you see someone who needs help, offer it. If we try to get through this by hoarding and hoping, we'll end up perpetuating the individualist and exclusive class-based society that led us here in the first place.

Curtis nailed it.

I'm gonna add something for people who think things are getting better.

When you loose 50% of your value, a 50% increase will only give you 75% of what you started with.

Additionally, "improvements" are monthly. When we hear "WooHoo! 5% improvement!", that's 5% over last month's dismally low pit.

I'm not a pessimist- I'm glad to see some movement in the right direction. But the economy is not "better", it's just that things aren't quite as bad as they were last month.

I don't think the improvements are real, they are just reactions to the pressures that exist. If you put enough pressure against a log jam, SOME water will flow through. Doesn't mean the river is clear again.

I'm not drinking the KoolAid. Things are tough, and they are gonna remain tough for a very long time (because Curtis nailed it). It's an entirely new paradigm.

With that knowledge, I can pick myself up by the bootstraps and start over.

JoeyM wrote: ^I think I just found my magical candidate. Curtis for President.

I'll second that! Even better if we can get him into 'Speaker of the House'.