Drug Testing for welfare recipients

[AGDee]

You can't join the military when you're 50 and have health problems. I think you're thinking of a totally different population than the people who are losing their jobs right now. The military is absolutely not an option for everybody. My brother was turned down in his 20's with his Masters in Health Administration because he had high blood pressure.

Moving to a foreign country would be an interesting proposition. No jobs in America? Then leave. Leave the best country in the world, seriously? I would never ever consider living in any other country. I don't see that as an option for the majority of people.

Our school districts sure aren't hiring. They're cutting back. And, you need a teacher's certificate to teach. PhDs don't generally have teaching certificates or an ability to teach. Unless you're referring to teaching at the university level. With as difficult as it is to get student loans right now, I imagine college enrollments will be dropping some and I don't think Universities are going to be hiring either.

The people I know who are getting laid off are mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, statisticians, accountants, finance specialists, marketing, management.. mostly in their late 40s and early 50s. They have careers and skills but there aren't enough jobs for them all. They aren't qualified to teach anywhere because they are Masters level people. They have aging parents they are caring for and kids in high school and college. They definitely aren't in the position to walk away from their houses and family to find a new job.

I know one guy who works on the line for Ford. He worked in Michigan and his family was all here. He got involuntarily transferred to Kansas City and for the last THREE years has been maintaining two households because they can't sell their house and don't want to pull their kids out of their schools as teenagers to live in a studio apartment in Kansas City, which is all they can afford if they don't sell their house. He keeps hoping to get a transfer back here. I just see people panicking everywhere. When you go from a 6 figure income to $346 a week, you can't make your bills, even if you lived modestly. If you have a family of 5, you can't make it on $346 a week.

It's looking like major doom and gloom again. I felt hopeful for a while, but all around me, people are panicking.

[PeppyGPhiB]

Originally Posted by AGDee

Moving to a foreign country would be an interesting proposition. No jobs in America? Then leave. Leave the best country in the world, seriously? I would never ever consider living in any other country. I don't see that as an option for the majority of people.

The people I know who are getting laid off are mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, statisticians, accountants, finance specialists, marketing, management.. mostly in their late 40s and early 50s. They have careers and skills but there aren't enough jobs for them all. They aren't qualified to teach anywhere because they are Masters level people. They have aging parents they are caring for and kids in high school and college. They definitely aren't in the position to walk away from their houses and family to find a new job.

Not to mention that it is VERY hard to get a job in most foreign countries legally. In the EU, for instance, you basically must be sponsored by an employer in order to get a work visa. We make it MUCH easier for foreigners to get a job here.

Engineers, some of the smartest people in the work force, in this country are experiencing rough times. We basically outsourced our engineering to people from other countries, because our corporations wanted to cut, cut, cut spending. My boyfriend, who is seriously a freakin' genius, has an aerospace engineering degree from Michigan and an MBA as well, and he is terrified about losing his job at a large airplane manufacturer. It took him 14 years to get in there, and now that he's finally been there for 3 years he has to worry about losing his job to the economy. He used to be a rocket scientist! It shouldn't be hard for someone like that to get a good job in this country! If he, and his colleagues, lose their jobs, where are they (as aerospace engineers) supposed to go? Government contractors are laying off, NASA has even outsourced most of its work on-site to contractors. And that's just one field of engineering.

[PiKA2001]

Originally Posted by PeppyGPhiB

In the EU, for instance, you basically must be sponsored by an employer in order to get a work visa. We make it MUCH easier for foreigners to get a job here.

It's the same in the U.S. actually, employers petition for visas on behalf of the immigrant.