So we’re in a recession. But we may not officially be in a recession until months from now when we can look back and say we’re in a recession. Friday it was announced that 240k jobs were lost in October alone. This means that we lost a total of 411k jobs in September and October alone. 1.2 million jobs have been lost in 2008 thus far and we’re not done with the year yet. I think November and December will be worse than economist can predict.
Consumer spending in September fell 0.4%. I believe October it will be the same. 40 retailers show a slow down in spending with only Walmart making gains. Apparently people are starting to cut back and consider what the future might hold.
I asked earlier in the week about “Cutting the Price of Goods“, where I mused if Sony would cut the price of the PS3 because people would not be buying the expensive toy. Many said no, that people would find a way. And the PS3 yes I know has a Blu-ray player. But with this pretty disheartening news about jobs and consumer spending, I’m wondering if Sony considered what this economic meltdown would mean to their sales?
I have to ask, are they thinking the recession will rebound by the end of the year? Due to the election of a new president, so is there hope for change? I don’t think it’s going to happen immediately or soon. I think perhaps we’ll rebound end of next year.
So when you do think we’ll rebound?
5 responses so far ↓
1 Kristy // Nov 9, 2008 at 11:12 am
I think that this will be a pretty long recession. I’m not sure when it will rebound, but I would guess not until 2010 sometime.
It doesn’t matter who was elected President, they are not going to be able to just come in and fix the economy right away. It is too big of a problem.
2 Jimmy @ Wealth Is Boring // Nov 15, 2008 at 12:12 am
Kristy’s right on the money. It took us YEARS to work our way into this recession and there’s absolutely no way we’re going to come out of it quickly.
If I could offer one piece of advice to anyone worried about the current recession, I’d tell them to ignore the doom and gloom being propagated by the mainstream media and stay focused on common sense savings strategies.
The U.S. has made it out of a number of recessions before and we’ll make it out of this one as well.
3 fengshui // Nov 15, 2008 at 12:36 pm
“I have to ask, are they thinking the recession will rebound by the end of the year? Due to the election of a new president, so is there hope for change? I don’t think it’s going to happen immediately or soon.”
Kind of hard to “bounce back” and spend spend spend when people don’t have jobs!
4 Pearl // Nov 16, 2008 at 12:19 am
Since the beginning of the 2006 election season (2-1/2 years ago) we’ve been hearing about the economy being bad, even though it wasn’t, mostly because that story line fit the mass media’s political preferences. Now that it HAS tanked, my guess is that, after about March or April of next year, and after Congress has passed some heavy-duty tax increases and business-killing measures, we won’t hear much more about it for a while. We may see a return of heavy-duty inflation, since most people living today haven’t seen it and won’t recognize it for a while. Of course, that’s always assuming we’re lucky and don’t face another 9/11 or worse.
Eventually, it will be bad enough that it can’t be ignored. High taxes, high inflation, high unemployment, low growth – Jimmy Carter all over again.
I watch this happening again, just as it happened in the late 1970s, and wonder why it is such a mystery to so many. And then I remember that I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976, and even in 1980 – whichever, it was the last time I voted for a Democrat for President.
It’s time for a new generation to learn the same old lessons. Good luck – and hope you learn faster than I did!
5 LivingAlmostLarge // Nov 16, 2008 at 8:21 pm
It was not great during 2006 for many job sectors. There was job loss during that period as well. Was it like now? No, but it certainly wasn’ted great.
I don’t think necessarily that we’re in the same situation. A lot of things have changed, including the type of jobs we have no. Now we have a lot of job losses coming from white collar as well as blue collar. Before it was all blue collar in 1970s.
Now outsourcing is for all white collar professional jobs.
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