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Chrysler has filed, has been purchased by Fiat and some plants will start to re-open by the end of the month.
GM has filed. It looks like they've sold Saab. It looks like Saturn is being purchased by Roger Penske. I'm waiting to hear who's honoring my warranty.. GM or Saturn. No word on Pontiac or Hummer yet.
Michigan's unemployment rate has hit 14.1% with estimates that it will reach 20% before we've hit bottom.
My ex-husband is a financial analyst in the steel industry. They have not sold any steel in two months because of Chrysler and GM plant shutdowns so they have implemented rolling layoffs. He will be laid off for one week each month until things get better. Therefore, he just took a 25% pay cut but he doesn't know for how long. I don't know if he'll qualify for unemployment for those weeks. It's better than losing your job completely, but I don't think those people will show up in the unemployment figures. Essentially, they are underemployed, not unemployed.
Visteon, a major Ford supplier has filed Chapter 11. They've been laying off people for months and have struggled since Ford spun them off years ago.
Foreclosures continue to rise at astronomical rates.
The irony? My own department is having a hard time hiring and retaining people. We've had 4 epidemiologists give their notice over the past two months. Why? Their husbands/fiancees have had to relocate to get jobs because they worked in the auto industry. Recruiting people to move to Michigan when their spouse/fiancee can't get a job here is nearly impossible. We had no external applicants for our department chair position. We have been trying to hire a biostatistician for a year and can't find one. New grads are leaving the state in droves.
Everybody around here is just trying to figure out where the bottom is. It appears that it won't hit until mid 2010 when all of the Chrysler/GM plants that are closing and the new buyers for these companies/parts of the companies have taken over and made their changes. We're all still holding our breath to see just how bad it's going to be and what happens next.
On the plus side, my home value has dropped so much that my property taxes are getting lower and lower. My ARM dropped another 2% for the next year. These changes in my mortgage payment will pay for one grad school class and eases my budget quite a bit. My personal financial situation is better than it's ever been. That is actually leaving me with a sense of guilt as I watch people all around me struggling to remain in their homes and keep their electricity on. I guess it's like survivor's guilt.
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