Watching this economy is like watching a drawn out car crash

[Fanman72]

This ain't your father's recession. We're seeing a fundamental shift in our country, mostly for the worse. The groundwork has been laid for the past twenty years and only in the past year and a half has our market reacted to it


Anyway, what does that spell for us engineers? Nearly all professions have been hit hard. RELATIVELY speaking (which doesn't account for much) are engineers in a "better" position than they were 5 years ago compared to other white collar jobs? I know law, finance, consulting, sales (both corporate & the sleazy car type), accounting, actuarial, etc. have all been hit hard

 

[ctopher]

Not sure where we are headed, but doesn't look good in all areas.
We won't know for sure until a 'real' war starts. War usually gets us out of recessions or a depression. Then engineers will be busy....IMO.

Chris
SolidWorks 09, CATIA V5
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[IRstuff]

Gloom and doom, doom and gloom.

flashback to 1980, "How to Prepare for the Coming Crash, or something like that, purported a fundamental change in the economy, and the need to stockpile weapons to protect your possessions from the maraudering hordes. Well, that never happened.

The people that actually have the wealth and power are pretty old-fashioned and set in their ways. They manipulate the economy to their own ends, regardless of what it might appear to us, on the outside.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[abusementpark]

I live in Louisiana and things have been pretty steady.

 

[ajack1]

Most but not all of the problems go back to greed, we as consumers have borrowed more than we could afford and the banks in order to maximise profits have allowed this to happen and all this was built on the back of “paper money” rather than generated wealth.

In order for things to improve we need to accept a lower standard of living or go out and borrow loads more money from banks that will lend it to anyone, I predict the latter.

However this will not happen as Flash Gordon has told us apart from saving the world he has done away with boom and bust, so there will never be a recession again and in fact this one does not exist either.

Personally I don’t believe politicians and expect highs and lows to be the norm for the rest of my life time.

 

[DWHA]

It is sad to say, but I feel this recession is a good thing. Too many people are living in a dream world and think that they can afford everything that they want. As Ajack said, people need to accept a lower standard of living. I have only been out of college for a few years now, but I see people my age who make much less than I do buying high dollar houses and cars. All of these purchases are made with almost no down payment. These people need to realize what is important, family and friends, not houses and cars.

The company I work for has not seen a slow down in engineering. Our surveying branch has been a little slow lately though.

 

[DRWeig]

I gotta jump on the bandwagon with IRStuff, the early 1980s recession looked and sounded a lot worse than this one at the front end. Turned out fine, this one will too.

Lessons are being learned, that's all -- hopefully this time we'll be done with the instant-gratification credit woes, or at least make progress on them. Maybe next recession we'll finally learn that burning oil is not the best foundation for all of industry...

Good on y'all,

Goober Dave

 

[DRWeig]

Oops, I forgot to address the OP's basic question--

I see engineering in my area (mid-south US) looking pretty stable at this time, much better than a few months back. Much better, relatively speaking, than the legal, medical, and financial communities...

Thanks for the thoughtful topic!

Goober Dave

 

[casseopeia]

Straight from my personal broker at Merrill Lynch; "This is a depression, the bottom of which was estimated to hit around mid-2009. The bottom is expected to be long and fairly flat with the slow climb back out around first quarter 2010."

As for my local economy, I'm not the person to ask. I'm seeing a lot of volatility in the area of building fornsics in Northern CA. I was told in June that I was to be let go. Managed to hang on for awhile, now I'm back out, or possibly in for a little bit more. It's given me a real bad attitude about a lot of things.

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

 

[kawh1]

Look at the dollar index. The U.S. government is printing money to "fix" the economy, with nothing backing the value of the dollar. There's $750 billion recently printed on top of a $11 trillion deficit. If there's no lasting impact of these actions, then money really do grow on trees.

Then there's the Cap and Trade debacle that's about to unfold.

I don't think this is a regular recession. The government never admits defeat. Those making money in the finance market will never admit to it, they want your money. The stock market is more indicative of people's behavior than economic strength.

On the upside, there might be manufacturing jobs coming back to the U.S. due to the weakening of the U.S. dollar.

 

[GregLocock]

You might as well get used to inflation -for the next thirty or forty years it is the only way the economy can reduce the effective savings of those who are about to retire, and allow those who are still working to pay the pensions of the retired.



Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[greengineer]

Outside of government funded projects, we're almost entirely operating as a service economy. From what I've read, the next level in the evolution of an economy is supposed to be an information economy.
Agriculture -> Industry -> Service -> Information. The companies already in the Information economy are Google, Linked-in, Media Companies, Ratings Agencies, Supply Chain etc. However, it seems to me that most of these companies do not have much purpose outside of serving as aggregators, and they could be replaced by 'free' Wikipedia like solutions.

The most profitable position for a country to be in is the
Industrial phase, but the US has long gone by that point, and I wonder if we will ever make it back.

 

[msquared48]

I heard from an attorney friend of mine who specializes in bankruptcies that small business have been failing right and left, and tha he expects a larger surge of small bankruptcies to hit the market in three months or so. That's righrt in sequence with the addeitional forclosures expected to hit the fan in three to six months.



Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

[EngJW]

I was laid of at the beginning of the year and have just turned 64. As much as I would like to work another 4-5 years, I don't see much hope in finding a job at this age. Judging from the adds on monster, if you don't match every one of the requirements they don't even want you to apply.

As long as people keep pumping out babies and colleges keep turning out engineers, it will take years before there are enough jobs to go around.

 

[metengr]

Anyway, what does that spell for us engineers? Nearly all professions have been hit hard. RELATIVELY speaking (which doesn't account for much) are engineers in a "better" position than they were 5 years ago compared to other white collar jobs? I know law, finance, consulting, sales (both corporate & the sleazy car type), accounting, actuarial, etc. have all been hit hard

I agree, and what makes this downturn in the economy so unique from other downturns is that all business sectors were affected. I really don’t see the economy returning to the pre-recession spending and borrowing level of activity nor do I see any immediate sustained recovery.

Two things that concern me about this downturn - the first is that we don't have the public borrowing money to spend on goods and services, as in the past, to revive the economy. We have drawn down on inventories, which is a good thing. However, what mechanism will revive the economy this time around.

Second, the government stimulus money experiment is only a band aid fix and will eventually run out. When this happens along with the repeal of the current tax breaks that are soon to expire in 2011, this will be the second recession (double dip) that will be far worse than the current downturn. Do you realize how much the government is spending on current unemployment benefits? Think about this, when unemployment benefits run out, what happens?