Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

[Peaches-n-Cream]

Many people that I know have spent a portion of the last three years unemployed, underemployed, or temporarily employed. Their income has decreased as has the value of their 401K and other retirement funds. The question was "Are you better off now that you were four years ago?" My answer is "No." The answer for many of my friends, colleagues, and relatives is also "No." Maybe personal anecdotes aren't important when it comes to economics, but the question was a personal one.

Perhaps the economy of New York is different from other places because of September 11th. That was when I noticed that so many people were getting pink slips and were not able to find comparable jobs in a reasonable period of time. Those charts reflect the lives of the people I am talking about. They lost jobs in late 2001, 2002, and 2003. Personally, the last three years felt like the early 1990s all over again.

In the last three or four months many of my friends have found full-time permanent jobs with benefits and potential for growth, but that doesn't erase the last few years.

I do agree that problems with the economy began in 2000. I noticed many dot coms were downsizing, but it seemed to be limited to a very specific field. Also the value of the dot com and tech stocks began to decrease which made many people's portfolios decrease. I think that September 11th made the economy much worse.