Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Guv'mint jobs

I am kinda hopin' that mine may last for a bit, though I certainly am not thinking that it will be the case.

Right now, we are sitting at an unemployment rate of around 15-20% in the real world.  Even the guv'mint says it is above 10%.   All of those unemployed are not spending any money.  The economy is heading into worse territory because of that lack.  Tax revenues are down.  Government borrowing is up.

So, now the states and the local governments, not having the convenience of their own printing press, are looking at cuts.  Needless to say, these will be at the worker level.  I seriously doubt that the program directors will ever get cut, they will just cut the hell out the budget, lay off all the state employees that actually do something, and leave the politically connected bosses in place to keep the facade of the organization.

But a lot of those state and local workers are going to be out of work soon.  Another hit to the employment parade.  The loss of all these state programs is going to cause probably an equal number of jobs in the contracting and provision areas.  Ouch...gonna leave a mark there.  But those job losses will add to the decline in money moving through the system.  So things get a bit tighter.  I alway laugh at the morons who want to tear apart government now.  Oh, it will make the books better, but lets say we lay off half the guvmint workers right now.   There is a total of around 155 million worker bees here in the good old USA.  When you look at non-doctored figures, best I can tell, one in five of us is unemployed or so crappily employed as to make the definition a joke.  That make's the number of folks livin' crappy at 30 or so million.  Add another eleven million to the unemployed list and you are at around 27% unemployed.  Oops.

I am wondering where it will stabilize?  I am not getting the feeling that the end is in sight.  I think that there is too much fraud and waste and stupidity that has yet to be uncovered to think so.  I think that right now we are just getting into the thick of the process.

So, my little minion job at the vaspa will keep going for a bit.  I will manage to get by on the less that is my salary, and I will truly try to be grateful for the blessing that this offers.  My small amount of debt will continue to decrease.  I will learn to live with less.  If I can hold on for another 14 months, I will achieve the exalted status of "permanent" and when I couple it with actual good job performance, I may well be able to die peacefully at work in fifteen years.

3 comments:

Mayberry said...

Where I work, a shoestring budget is good times. We've been told to cut 10%, and will likely face further cuts when the legislature meets again. And Texas is doing "good" compared to other states....

Jacob Gittes said...

Good analysis.
Question: do you really want to spend the rest of your life at that job? Is the comfort of stasis, the illusion of security, really that great?

russell1200 said...

Hopefully, they will make the cuts through work week cut backs. That is a much much better alternative. Less stress from layoff fears, and the extra work load you have is the one you are familiar with.

Cutting out two Fridays a month gets you pretty close to 10%.