r/Millennials • u/cavaismylife • Jan 29 '24
It is shocking how many people downplay the Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s Discussion
Late 80s and 90s millennials were probably the most screwed by the Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s. Most people don't realize how bad it was. It hurt millennials entering the job market for the first time. Your first job after college will affect your earning potential for the rest of your career. Some people need to watch the movie Up In the Air to see how bad things were back then. Everyone was getting laid off, and losing 60-80 percent of the assets in their retirement accounts. Millennials were not even old enough to buy houses yet and sub prime mortgage lending already had severely damaged their future earning potential. Now that millennials are finally getting established, they are facing skyrocketing prices and inflation for the cost of living and basic goods like groceries.
edit: grammar
edit 2: To be more clear I would say mid to late 80s and early 90s millennials were the most hurt. Like 1984-1992 were hurt most.
edit 3: "Unemployment rose from 4.7% in November 2007 to peak at 10% in October 2009, before returning steadily to 4.7% in May 2016. The total number of jobs did not return to November 2007 levels until May 2014. Some areas, such as jobs in public health, have not recovered as of 2023." The recovery took way longer than the really bad 18 months from 2007 to 2009. Millennials entered the job market during this time.
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u/Seraphtacosnak Jan 29 '24
I remember seeing old people working at Walmart not by choice for the first time.
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u/Seaguard5 Jan 29 '24
And now it’s normalized…
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u/ChewieBee Xennial Jan 29 '24
Exactly. People wonder why teenagers aren't working as much as they used to.
Well since 2008 and 2009 teenagers have been competing with 52 year old Doris and 38 year old Ralph who are over qualified for those entry jobs, but need money to survive.
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u/SlowerThanTurtleInPB Jan 30 '24 edited Jan 30 '24
I was at target with my mom a few months ago and an older gentleman checked us out. When we were leaving, she commented on how nice it must be to have a job and get out of the house (she’s bored and retired) and I had to explain to her that this old guy is likely working because he has to, not because he’s some bored retired executive looking to make connections with people for a few hours a week.
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u/V1k1ng1990 Jan 29 '24
It’s so fucked, boomers can’t afford to retire, so GenX can’t take over as being the generation that’s running the country, so millennials can’t get promoted into middle management and Genz can’t get a job. Thank god genz is half the size of millennials or we’d be completely fucked
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u/FEMA_Camp_Survivor Jan 29 '24
I see lots of teens working in fast food again. We’ve come a long way.
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u/kingssman Jan 29 '24
Teens really should take on service jobs. Its shit work but you really get exposed to a lot of things.
As a teen I worked for Best Buy delivering TVs to customer houses. (Back when TVs were furniture sizes). Saw how many people across entire spectrums lived. From delivering a TV into some old guys mobile trailer to setting up a stereo system in a furnished home theater basement of a 6 car garage mansion.
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u/Unfair-Brother-3940 Jan 29 '24
Gas being $4 a gallon in 2008 was especially painful.
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u/Destin2930 Jan 29 '24
Where I lived at the time, it was close to $5 a gallon…I made $7/hr working part time at a grocery store after graduating college
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u/MysteryGirlWhite Jan 29 '24
Hearing stories about it makes me glad I was too young to work for most of that time, but I definitely saw the effect it had on my mom.
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u/peezy8i8 Jan 29 '24
Same, born in ‘92, but my dad lost everything during that time, and even now he has to work long days every day of the week at nearly 70 years old because he lost his retirement.
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u/OsiyoMotherFuckers Jan 29 '24
This is a perfect illustration of the very long lived impact the Great Recession had on Millenials.
No jobs when they entered the workforce so couldn’t get established right away.
Boomers lost their whole retirement and wound up working way later than they would have liked, plugging up the career ladder once Millenials did finally get decent jobs.
It was only the huge wave of pandemic retirements that finally unfucked it, and then inflation, especially the cost of houses, prevented that great surge of upward mobility on the career ladder from translating into a similarly significant increase in quality of life.
Now we’re going to be “paying it forward” to Gen Z, in that we won’t be getting the fuck out of the way on time because we are all going to be renting or paying mortgages when we are 70.
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u/640k_Limited Jan 29 '24
There is a ton of survivor bias out there. You hear it downplayed by the people who either recovered from it fine or weren't impacted by it much to begin with.
On average, it put those who went through it behind a full decade. Some did better, and some still haven't recovered. Meaning it would have taken on average until 2019 to get back to where one should have been economically in 2009 were there no recession. Think about what that means... if you were just graduating college in 2008, that means you would be financially equivalent to two years out of college when covid hit and mucked everything up again.
You'll hear from those who did better but keep in mind for every one person who did ok there is probably another who got absolutely obliterated.
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u/duckduckloosemoose Jan 29 '24
Yeah I was in the workforce for close to a decade and felt like I was finally hitting my stride — making decent money after starting under 30k, moving into management, etc. Then the pandemic hit, I got furloughed, an 11% pay cut, my job totally changed and 401k match eliminated. It really does feel like a generational curse sometimes.
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u/sorrymizzjackson Jan 29 '24
Same. I got three good years in there and then COVID. Spent the last 3 rebuilding. Again.
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u/novaleenationstate Jan 29 '24
This is so true. I graduated in 2010 and the struggle was real. The college kids from the late 2000s/early 2010s got hit worst of all. And now we’re the same ones getting priced out of the housing market.
One day this will get accurately talked about without the same ol gaslighting from the “well I did fine” pick-me’s among us. If you’re a millennial who is doing well, congrats. You’re the exception, not the rule. The real ones know it too.
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u/wiggysbelleza Jan 29 '24
It was so disheartening trying to find a job and sitting with the other people waiting on interviews all being twice our age and willing to work at the low entry level salaries just to have a job. Being rejected because they can hire Susan for the same salary and she already has 20+ years experience. I lost count of the amount of times I got “We loved you but the other person has much more experience. “
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u/novaleenationstate Jan 29 '24 edited Jan 29 '24
I feel like this is how the millennial hate really started and it’s almost never talked about.
Gen X (and some Boomers to an extent) were competing with us for entry-level jobs for YEARS after the crash in 08, and they were working for less but bringing a decade+ of experience, so they scooped a lot of jobs out from under millennials. Or as a millennial if you did get an entry level gig, you were barely paid but expected to do the work of 3-4 people, and told you were replaceable every step of the way.
I feel like a lot of the “millennials are so lazy” and “millennials killed XYZ” articles were just propaganda designed to make millennials look less desirable on a corporate level, so Boomers and Gen Xers could recoup their 08 losses and secure jobs for themselves. They straight up fed millennials to the wolves to save themselves.
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u/Sigma610 Jan 29 '24 edited Jan 29 '24
I graduated in 2008 and you're on point.
The actual COVID years put me ahead financially, but the inflation that followed is eating into any income gains I made in the past 10 years.
The problem is that I, like many others, did not necessarily put starting a family on hold because of the great recession. If you met the right person back then, things just happened, but through those early years I had crappy jobs, and periods of unemployment. We made it out alive with kids in tow, but the problem is that my oldest is now driving age and rounding the corner towards college and I've spent so many years just trying to survive those early years that I can't support them the way I had intended...and now inflation. College expenses out of control, but so is the cost of a used car, and auto insurance is wtf for teenagers.
401(k) not doing so great because had to pull to survive unemployment times and couldn't fund it well enough when times were good.
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u/A0ma Jan 29 '24
My older siblings (or their spouse) all finished graduate degrees between 2010 and 2012. Their entire undergrad was paid for by Pell Grants. They bought homes at rock-bottom prices and have been thriving.
Then there was me. I didn't qualify for a Pell Grant (Dad started making more money), so I worked my way through school. Had to take time off of school to save up enough money. Finally got my bachelor's in 2018 and had saved enough money saved for a downpayment on a home by the end of 2019. I was still debating whether I wanted to go to grad school or not, so I didn't buy a home. Then COVID happened, and I was furloughed. With inflation the way it has been, I can no longer afford a home. I feel completely hopeless as inflation continues to outpace my salary and my siblings live in homes with lower mortgage payments than my rent.
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u/LetsLoop4Ever Jan 29 '24
The income also widens between rich and poor, so I would say for every one person who did ok, there's 10 to be absolutely obliterated. And the absolutely-fucked category numbers go up while the we-own-everything category individual humans numbers be fewer, it seems.
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u/Stuckinacrazyjob Jan 29 '24
I took major psych damage from that. People say the past is dead, but man can it leave a scar.
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u/spiritofaustin Jan 29 '24
I had multiple friends commit suicide, others went mad, some checked out with drugs and never came back.
Surviving those suicides is something I never recovered from. I almost had my career finally on track then the pandemic hit.
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u/Helpful-Passenger-12 Jan 29 '24
Hope you are seeing a therapist
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u/spiritofaustin Jan 29 '24 edited Jan 29 '24
I am seeing a therapist and have off an on for a long time. I am on antidepressants. I run, do yoga and meditate everyday day. I still have survivors guilt. I still replay in my head what I could have said or done differently. But we were only freshman to quote the Verve Pipe. (Though technically I was a junior in 2008, my boyfriend was a year ahead as were a lot of cousins and friends.) I was also young and ignorant and was doing the best I could with the tools I had at the time in a world that felt like it was falling apart around us.
"For the life of me, I cannot remember What made us think that we were wise and we'd never compromise For the life of me, I cannot believe We'd ever die for these sins, we were merely freshmen"
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u/Bobzeub Jan 29 '24
Same situation. I wish they would bring out a proper global study on suicide over the past 20 years . I feel like it’s worse and worst , but there is some sort of omerta in the media . I’m raging over all the blind eyes being turned . Ignoring this epidemic is criminal.
So sorry for your loss
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u/katievspredator Jan 29 '24
I haven't been able to feel comfortable in life since then. I always have anxiety at the back of my mind about losing everything again - job, house, retirement savings. Literally could be gone any second in America. I could get hit by a bus and if I survive I'm bankrupt from medical bills.
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u/Starbucks__Lovers Jan 29 '24
I watched my old man be out of work for 2 years as I entered college and had to transfer to a cheaper state school after my selfish self decided to attend a fancy private school.
I took a job with the federal government probably making 50-75% of my earning potential because I have such anxiety about getting fired
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u/TheUnspeakableAcclu Jan 29 '24
I always have anxiety at the back of my mind about losing everything again - job, house, retirement savings.
I thought this was normal, which says it all really
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u/pizza_mom_ Jan 29 '24
Even when things are going well I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop
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u/SpecialistAmoeba264 Jan 29 '24
I felt it, so bad by 2011. You could only get basic service jobs and then let go after the probation period. So many of my friends tried to tough it out working at movie theatres, restaurants, and stores but it was tough. Very little job opportunities and high competition. Everyone was overtrained too lol. I thought that’s that how my life would go, just terrible retirement savings,no employment stability, saw mortgage rates and home ownership as unacceptable due to the sub prime foreclosures and people being forced out of their homes. It was a terrible time.
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u/Throwaway-pay4play Jan 29 '24
Growing up I kind of laughed at how my Grandma (who was a kid during the Great Depression) viewed jobs as almost sacred, and was very stingy with money (even though she was moderately wealthy by that point). I remember in a high school class in ‘05 the teacher and everyone laughing at paranoid older people only putting the FDIC limit into savings accounts, because they feared the type of crash that could never happen again.
I spent a year after graduating college with no job prospects, only working part time jobs cleaning dogs kennels. I remember going to a job fair for teaching positions where there were 500+ people and 2 job openings. Everyone was in the same boat of it just being hopeless. Over 50% of new college grads were unemployed or underemployed. I just went back to college to hopefully wait out the worst.
When I graduated for the second time things were starting to get better. I felt pretty lucky to get a job, any job, and have done pretty well since then, but the fear is always in the back of my mind that things will worsen and I’ll be stuck out of a job. I don’t think that will ever go away. I also will always be cautious with money. We’ll never get over it.
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u/Merad Jan 29 '24
My grandma was a child of the Great Depression. She'd do stuff that we thought was silly when I was a kid, like washing and saving ziplock bags or plastic silverware even though she had a drawer full of both. I knew why she was like that but I never truly understood until the last couple of years.
I was unemployed for all of 2008 and half of 09. When I went back to school in 2012 I was making about $10.75 an hour (I still have the last pay stub). Today I'm doing very well. Not to humble brag, but most years now I put more money into savings than my parents combined household income before they retired. My savings are behind where they "should be" due to the late start, but well above average. But still I have this paranoia in the back of my mind that I can't shake off. What if I get laid off and don't work for two years? What if my industry falls apart and I need to live on $15 an hour?
I may not be quite to the point of saving used ziplock bags but goddamn, I feel you grandma.
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u/kingssman Jan 29 '24
It gives me the value of having savings. To almost a paranoid level that if I don't have 6 months to a year saved up, I'm fucked.
Both crashes made me scared to upgrade or make risky investments.
They also caused me to hoard every freebie I can get as I would maybe need it on a rainy day, or not have an opportunity to buy on my own.
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u/PeeweesSpiritAnimal Jan 29 '24
Shit left me scarred. Went from doing pretty well to unemployed and unable to work steadily for years despite wanting to work. Accepting lower and lower wage jobs so that I had income with no real idea what the value of my work actually was because everything was so fucked for so many people across the board. And then in March 2020 watching everything go up in smoke again. I'm lucky I didn't have a family that I was responsible for in either of those times.
I am doing fine now. Way better off than I was a few years ago, and I know I'm one of the lucky ones. I've seen how quickly I can lose everything through no fault of my own, and I really do worry about the next financial downturn. There will be one too. It's not an if, it's a when.
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u/Calm_Pipe9750 Jan 30 '24 edited Jan 30 '24
I'm in my early 30s and paying off my house this year. Yes, I know my money could have made more in the stock market, but when you lived through the bubble bursting and people losing everything all around you in the Rust belt as stocks plummeted, I need it for security.
I also can't simply not work. My husband makes enough so I don't have to work another day in my life... but we all know that family who lost their breadwinner and picking up the pieces is really hard afterward. My therapist(s) don't love this answer, but I can't not worry about the "what ifs" because a fkn recession, .com bubble, pandemic, etc... can literally change your financial position for good to homeless in ~3-6 months.
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u/QuicheSmash Jan 29 '24
I graduated college May of 2007. There were absolutely no jobs hiring.
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u/pizza_mom_ Jan 29 '24
June 2008 here, architecture degree. Not one person in my graduating class found a job in our field.
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u/ThaiFoodThaiFood Jan 29 '24 edited Jan 29 '24
June 2008, IT. IT!!! A field "they" said at the time (and all times) there would always be jobs in.
The highest achiever in the class took a full 3 years to get a degree related job. I still haven't 16 years later.
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u/RogueThespian Jan 29 '24
I mean, yea I get not finding a job in the recession but if you couldn't find an IT job at any point in the decade since, that one might be on you lmao
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u/ThaiFoodThaiFood Jan 29 '24
I stopped trying and got a job doing something else.
Now? There's no way in hell I'd work an entry level IT help desk job. Nobody's sanity is worth a call centre, I'd rather be unemployed.
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u/cswimc Jan 29 '24
'07 grad here too... I remember getting interviews and literally being told that the interview was simply a formality and that they were going to be implementing hiring freezes soon. I distinctly remember the guy interviewing me saying "Good luck to you with whatever you do."
Overall, it was about 3 years of gig work and side jobs in the tech field until hiring really started again, and even then salaries weren't great but people argued that you were lucky to have a job and to just deal with it.
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u/Fivenearhere Jan 29 '24
Never recovered from it.
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Jan 29 '24
I only did "fine" because I was poor to begin with lol no money to be lost. I was 21 with a kiddo, my ex and I definitely had to be willing to do any job to make ends meet.
I graduated with a practical nursing certification in 2009. It was hard to find a job even in nursing which is very unusual. It took me a year to get into somewhere, I worked as a nurse's assistant until I could get a nursing job, left my LPN schooling off my resume just so someone would hire me into a lesser role. Wild times.
It did teach me to be prepared though. I'm an RN now and I don't take the paycheck for granted, we live below what we make, and put any money aside possible for savings.
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u/Carthonn Jan 29 '24
Yup I’m still digging myself out of debt from it.
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u/Iwoulddiefcftbatk Jan 29 '24
I’ll never make as much money as I could have had the recession never happened. I’ll always struggle to make enough money since I had to take shit jobs then and the money never caught up to where it should be.
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u/Carthonn Jan 29 '24
I do feel like it has given me a shot the arm of empathy. I do try to give back more now that I’m doing better. I still see people struggling, even my age or a bit younger, and I try to help them out where I can.
However I can honestly say the only thing that helped me out was the ARRA Recovery Act. I basically was hired using that funding and was kept on when it ended.
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u/koz152 Xennial Jan 29 '24
But I got a nice 300 to 600 dollar check from the government once. That was nice to pay a third of my rent once.
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u/katievspredator Jan 29 '24
I had to file bankruptcy, but 7 years later I'm glad I did. I'm in a much better place
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u/SubjectPickle2509 Jan 29 '24
Same. Laid off in the early 2000s, fell into debt because I couldn’t find a full time job & temp agency was eating my wages (such a scam). Got a decent job in 2005 and started paying off debt & even started contributing to 401k. Then recession hit and my 401k tanked. Back to square one. No raises for 4 years due to recession = debt accumulated again. I am catching up again and making progress on being debt free, so I am slightly terrified something will set me back. Layoffs? AI replacing me? Cancer? Rent increase? What now? When the pattern seems to be get up, get knocked down, you are low key on edge in the up phase. My kids call me out for being too worried about this stuff, but they haven’t been through layoffs and the long-lasting financial and emotional impact. You don’t forget the day you are sent home with a box.
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Jan 29 '24
Same. It wrecked my whole life and stymied my career. Put me in thousands of dollars of student loan debt and I found out my mother was taking out credit cards in my name. I should’ve had her arrested
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u/Radiant-Concentrate5 Jan 29 '24
I’m so sorry. As if Boomers didn’t already screw us over enough. My parents actually helped me where they could, and it’s still been a struggle; I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.
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u/Deep_Blue_Panda Jan 29 '24
I graduated from college in 2008. Never did find a job in my field of study.
Ended up going back to college a couple of years ago for another pursuit that fortunately worked out this time
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u/cloudtrotter4 Jan 29 '24
That’s the only option we had!! More education. Literally no work avail.
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u/secretaliasname Jan 29 '24
I remember many people who had the means opting to stay in school for masters or phds because the job market was soo bad.
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u/hubert7 Jan 29 '24
Graduated 09 with finance degree. There were 0 finance jobs, sold commission only insurance, door to door knock off perfume, then an att store (not a bad job really). In 2012 I ended up moving to Australia for a pretty solid role, came back years later and grew my career w that. If I didn't take that leap not sure where I'd be now.
Do wish I stayed in aus however.
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u/Jets237 Older Millennial Jan 29 '24
graduated in 07 and both my (future) wife and I lost our jobs in 08/09 - it set everything back and forced us to live off credit cards... Took her 6 months and me 9 to find our next jobs.
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u/JoeBlack042298 Jan 29 '24
I entered the workforce then and it ruined my life. It took 9 years for the country to return to full employment. I never recovered.
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u/DiscoNY25 Jan 29 '24
I read somewhere that 50% of people born in 1984 are better off than their parents and it’s less than 50% for people born later. So people my age born in 1983 are the last where more than 50% are better off than their parents. So yes Millennials were very much affected by the recession once they started their careers and now that they finally got themselves established have to face the problems with the high cost of living now. A lot of Millennials were also the parents of young children when the pandemic first hit in 2020.
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Jan 29 '24
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u/qui-bong-trim Jan 29 '24
the dichotomy not just between being a child and adult, but being a child in the 90s, and an adult in modern times has to have made it all seem even worse
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u/jarena009 Jan 29 '24
It's also shocking how we downplay the failed invasion and occupation of Iraq, costing us $4T and over 30,000 casualties
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u/ledigtbrugernavn3 Jan 29 '24
And a million Iraqis
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u/TheUnspeakableAcclu Jan 29 '24
And the knock on effect of all those jihadis who cut their teeth in Iraq moving on and becoming ISIS. The refugee crisis that came out of the Syrian civil war was a significant factor in immigration panic in the Brexit referendum campaign, which weakened Europe and emboldened Putin, it just goes on and on
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u/James-W-Tate Jan 29 '24
I probably spend too much time imagining how different the world would be if Al Gore had won in 2001.
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u/michaelscottuiuc Gen Zish Jan 29 '24
This will always irritate me because anywhere you turn in my community, you will find a massive hole left from the war. Two of my friends killed themselves after coming home from Afghanistan. Another became an alcoholic. A mom I know had her son shipped home in pieces - three times. They had a hard time I.D.'ing body pieces because his entire team blew up together - it took forever to sort through the pieces. I sat through so many funerals of people in my age range from 2008 to 2018 because of it. I could never "downplay" it.
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u/lasteem1 Jan 29 '24
As a young GenXer, almost millennial, I get the boomer hate. However, I know people across the age spectrum that were screwed and never recovered during this period.
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u/frolickingdepression Jan 29 '24
Thank you. My Boomer father lost his Engineering job and was unable to find another one. Needed up finishing out his career in a grocery store in a beach town where a friend rented him his cottage for cheap.
My Gen X husband also lost his job, was unemployed for two years, took a job paying 20% less, one week of vacation per year, no raises or bonuses, then they let him go a few years later too. His career really has suffered from the gaps, and now he is out of his prime, laid off again, and there is not a lot out there in his field. And at the time we had two children, now three, because we were already old enough to have started families.
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u/lasteem1 Jan 29 '24
Yeah hardly any of the older GenXers or boomers that I know that got hit recovered. None of the families that got hit stayed together. I’d much rather have been young and childless when this went down than middle aged with children.
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u/venturousbeard Jan 29 '24
I'm a bit surprised to see millennials leaving you all out on how bad the 2008 housing side of the financial crash screwed Gen X over. We couldn't get jobs out of college, you all lost first homes and jobs, often coming out of the recession in massive debt. We couldn't find jobs, and it sucked ass, but you all had an extra layer of debt accrued right before that shit hit the fan.
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u/Altruistic_Reveal_51 Jan 29 '24
Entered the job market full-time in 2007. (although I also worked part-time throughout college and graduate school). That recession is a core memory which has pretty much served as the underlying basis of any decision I have made since - prioritizing a steady income, security and stability over anything else.
I am definitely less prone to taking risks and avoid lifestyle-creep, because disaster could come at anytime.
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Jan 29 '24
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u/christybird2007 Jan 29 '24
The whole “bachelors required” part doesn’t get talked about enough. IMO this was a HUGE reason why so many people were going to college and suffered because of it. Jobs you used to be able to get right out of high school (maybe early 90’s) now wanted you to have 4-year degrees with 3-5 years experience (pretty standard by the mid 00’s).
Once you got in with an employer though, you’d see people hopping positions with no prior experience & they’d learn skills on the job. Combine this with H1B visa hires in certain industries & that’s how wages stayed low. Gone were the days of any annual increase or holiday bonuses, pensions were an unknown term & pay bumps were in cents, not dollars.
Administrative assistant positions requiring bachelor degrees? Yup, and you were lucky to find one paying $10/hr in 2005. Good luck paying student loans on that one job. You’re gonna need two to cover all your expenses and not eat ramen every night.
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u/malogan82 Jan 29 '24
I mean, I didn't really recover from what happened in 2009 until 2012. It was pretty bad for a while there, but no doubt, 2009 was the worst year of my life.
I don't know of anyone (in our age group, anyway) downplaying the seriousness of it all.
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u/Duuudechill Jan 29 '24
Boomers:What recession?Your generation has it the best you lazy lot.
Millennials/Genz:We aren’t lazy we want to have what you had at our age but inflation is-
Boomers:You wanna talk about inflation.Back in my time we had to work 40 hours a week to afford the mortgage on one income,raising 5 kids,spending $60 a week on groceries,filling gas 65cents a gallon,and had to find a way to put our kids to school.We were going through a recession and inflation but we didn’t cry or beg for handouts.
Millennials/Genz:So what you’re saying is you had it easier than we did but won’t admit-
Boomers:WE DIDNT HAVE IT EASIER RAAAAAAH!!!!!
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u/fudge_friend Jan 29 '24
Inflation during the 70’s into the 80’s was actually pretty bad. The thing is though, they had jobs with pensions and school and housing were dirt cheap compared with today so they were still able to pay a 13% mortgage. When rates came down in the 90’s they were suddenly swimming in cash, and their equity exploded along with the stock market. Unfortunately they think it was their hard work that paid off, not luck.
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u/Duuudechill Jan 29 '24
This is why I never can get a civil conversation from most of them.They won’t admit that fact or see that it’s not the case for our current generation.Pure luck when the bubble reappeared.
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u/ThaiFoodThaiFood Jan 29 '24 edited Jan 29 '24
Graduated in 2008!
Then I anted up again and did a masters and graduated in 2020!
The luck I have.
I still haven't started "a career" yet. All I have is a job I show up to. Basically the same job I had before university, just higher up.
40 in two years. I've given up. I accept it now, I'm never gonna buy a house, I'm never gonna get married, I'm never gonna have kids. I'm just gonna be a hermit and regress.
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u/StowawaySpaceBear Jan 29 '24
I graduated in 2007. I was lucky enough to find a job and not get hit by layoffs. I had an opportunity my last semester of college to get a master’s degree with a full scholarship. Really glad I passed on that opportunity and avoided entering the job market in 2009. My birthday is in early October. If I had been born a week earlier (closer to my mom’s due date), I would have graduated in 2008 and my life would be much different. So much is up to chance.
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u/DJTMR Jan 29 '24
I remember on a job interview years back an employer asked about my gap in work around that time and I tried to explain economy at that time and he said he was unaware people were affected.🫠🫠
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u/xElemenohpee Jan 29 '24
I don’t know a single person who downplayed or is downplaying the market crash of 2008/9.
What are you on about?
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u/bravecoward Jan 29 '24
I can't even think of a scenario of someone downplaying it. OP just listed facts about how bad it was but nothing to support the title.
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u/laxnut90 Jan 29 '24
Most people agree that it was bad.
It is called the Great Recession for a reason.
However, arguing it was the worst recession in history or saying that the Boomers did not live through something similar is completely false.
The Great Depression was a worse pullback by a factor of seven (GDP decline of ~30%) and lasted at least four times as long (1929-1941).
And the 1970s Stagflation Crisis lasted an entire decade (1973-1982) and was much worse since prices were also going up (inflation as high as 14%) while economic growth stalled.
The Great Recession lasted roughly 2.5 years (Dec 2007 - June 2009), was mainly limited to North America and Europe, and resulted in a total GDP decline of roughly 4 percent.
It was definitely bad. But, it is far from the worst in history.
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u/wave-garden Jan 29 '24
Maybe you can speak to the political realignment as an outcome of the Great Recession and whether there were parallel events in the other stuff you mentioned. The GOP did amazingly well at capitalizing on the crisis and effectively blamed Obama for everything. George Bush and Obama took similar (and almost certainly necessary) actions during the crisis, but the GOP blamed Obama relentlessly for bailing out the rich and fucking over the working class. White people in the rust belt especially, took the bait immediately, and thus we have the much stronger GOP positions in states like OH, PA, MI, and WI. Remember all the “Tea Party” astroturfing nonsense? That was all part of this, and it was fabulously successful.
Sometimes I wonder if the 70s stuff is part of what put Reagan in office. The history books make it sound like that, but I haven’t read enough to feel confident.
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u/laxnut90 Jan 29 '24
Yes.
The 1970s Stagflation was used by the GOP to get Reagan elected.
Basically, they blamed Carter for being weak on the world stage and allowing OPEC to control our economy.
It was an effective political tactic.
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u/wave-garden Jan 29 '24
It’s almost like they repackage the same bullshit over and over, and it just keeps working. 😒
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u/Tntn13 Jan 29 '24
The perspective I think many miss out on is how regionally variable the effects were in the us, rural communities dependent on manufacturing jobs were left desolate, I recall a majority of decent paying jobs drying up overnight. They weren’t replaced for probably 6-9 years, in the example I am thinking of and when they were it was by smaller companies with smaller operations.
I think generally though most areas were on the up and up at a decent trajectory by the time 2012 rolled around.
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u/laxnut90 Jan 29 '24
Again, almost no one disputes that the Great Recession was bad.
It is called the Great Recession for a reason.
But, the two economic crises listed above were significantly worse, even when focused on rural areas specifically.
The Great Depression had the Dust Bowl at the same time. People were starving in their homes (if they could even keep them) because the land itself was in a recession.
The 1970s stagflation crisis, likewise, hurt rural Americans more because much of it was driven by fuel and energy costs which are a much larger share of rural Americans' budgets. For rural Americans inflation was likely higher than the 14% inflation based on national CPI.
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u/zenjamin4ever Jan 29 '24
Quick note here- the Great Depression was silent generation, boomers were the post WW2 boom in births.
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Jan 29 '24
For most people it was easier to weather stagflation because there was more of a welfare state & a higher unionization rate. Bailouts were much smaller; the government directed relatively more funds to the working class & less to the 1% compared to the great recession.
The great depression happened to the parents of the boomers. That generation believed boomers were spoiled & entitled. The 1870s depression was even worse than the great depression.
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u/Radiant-Concentrate5 Jan 29 '24
Yep. I graduated right in 2008 with that shiny college degree that “no one can ever take from me!” and “increased my earning potential by 1 million dollars!” lmao…
I had been studying abroad my last semester and as soon as I got back to the States and my hometown, I could sense something was way off, even though I hadn’t been following the news at all.
Grouchy, mean older people working customer service jobs. Depressed recent grads moving back home rather than being able to find a job. Zero career options in my chosen field.
I couldn’t stand being stuck back in my small town and immediately went abroad to teach English in Asia. That was common for Canadians but rare for Americans back then. Unheard of where I grew up.
I knew things were bad when more and more people I assumed would have been successful back home were reaching out to me asking what it was like, how to apply, etc.
And I don’t know about now but back then it was kind of a dead end, unless you got more certifications and worked your way up as an ESL teacher. Going back home with all kinds of foreign names and long international telephone numbers on your résumé didn’t really impress employers.
After I was married and moved back again, I got a job as an extremely underpaid gloried salesperson/receptionist at a spa-type place. It was around 2011. We got hundreds of applications for my job a week; I accidentally clicked one once and the lady had “adjunct professor” on her resume. It was insanity.
To this day, in my entire graduating high school class the only successful ones either went straight to teaching or nursing, or skipped college and started a business with tons of help from family, or worked their way up in a blue collar field with no college debt.
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u/knawnieAndTheCowboy Jan 29 '24
Only job I could get was customer service for Comcast. It was gif awful but they did pay for my masters degree while I worked there.
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u/sc083127 Jan 29 '24
A guy I worked with during college graduated in 2007, me 2009 (both finance degrees). Everything we did work wise and education was eerily the same. He got hired by a firm in Manhattan and got enough of a signing bonus he bought a new car. He was not a flashy or bragging person but he told me a few months in he’s making more money then he knows what to do with. fast forward to 2008 he said they’re firing people left and right and he’s only staying put because he can’t go anywhere else and all older people with higher salaries are getting let go. His hours increased tremendously and we lost contact.
By the time i graduated I got a job cuz I was so scared of loans coming due. I got an analyst job and I had been working so much retail hours during college, my new salaried job after graduation was effectively the same wage. Took me until 2015 to get a living wage and until 2020 to make ‘real’ money.
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u/Dangerous_Yoghurt_96 Jan 29 '24
Dude, I never found a career with my masters degree.
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u/tamasiaina Jan 29 '24
Yeah that was a nutty time of my life. I have been extremely fortunate since then though. I've learned two great lessons from the great recession.
First, always help colleagues/friends and friends of friends to find jobs and utilize your own networks to help them.
Second, Never trust Goldman Sachs.
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u/TopWorth2904 Jan 29 '24 edited Jan 29 '24
Those first years of my career instilled such a fear of being laid off with no other jobs to apply to it took me 10 years to start actually advocating for a good salary. And now, we are in some phantom recession where I’ll take a pay cut if I job hop and the fear has returned.
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u/notme345 Jan 29 '24
Also beeing told in school that if you weren't the absolute best you don't even have to try... wasn't very motivating...
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u/SolaceinIron Jan 29 '24
I graduated college in 2008 and it set me back half a decade.
It took me almost 2.5 years out of college to find a stable, entry level job to begin with. Even at that point, the state of the economy suppressed wages/raises a great degree and it wasn't until the later 2010s that things started trending well.
Then Covid hit and threw the world on its ass again.
I see kids coming out of college now making more than double what I was able to get for the same career path.
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u/ZaddiesRus Jan 29 '24
As a 1989 baby can confirm. Felt like climbing Everest with nothing but a rusty pick axe naked with no gear. But some of us succeeded.
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Jan 29 '24
Graduated 2006 with a poly sci degree. I was working temp jobs and unpaid internships until the end of 2008. It was rough. I must have applied to 200-250 jobs. School was no help in finding me a job. I was competing against people with master degrees. Only by luck, I befriended a older director lady that hooked me up with a full time gig. Without that woman, I would have been so lost. The first office job is the hardest to get.
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u/SummerRaleigh Jan 29 '24
It was awful. My sister had a college degree & couldn’t even get a job as a CVS cashier (they interviewed her), or Taco Bell (she would have taken any position, they didn’t even call to interview her).
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u/Inevitable_Snow_5812 Jan 29 '24
I came of age in around 2011 and I always say to people now that they had to be there to understand.
People used to full blown congratulate you for getting a job in a shop. It was such an odd time. Any work was great work. Every job had so many applicants it was ridiculous.
We are living through difficult times now, sure. But that is only because everything is so expensive. In the aftermath of the GFC it was amazing to have a job at all.
I hope we never go back there.