How good/bad/catastrophic has the recesion been for you personally? Have a moan.

pay freeze since Jan 2008. Lots of redundancies through 2008/9, but my team's only loss was through a "jump before push" move.

Now there are 3 of us developers looking after software maintenance, implementation & development at 3 sites in UK, 2 in Hungary, one each in Czech, Poland & Romania, and assisting our 2 colleagues in France with their 8 sites. Busy? not 'arf

holding company in Tampa went through Chapter 11 in the first half of 2009 wiping out nearly $2 billion of private equity debt in the process, but things are starting to look a bit rosier now – they're now talking about strategic acquisitions and payrises…

so i reckon a -1 on your scale

oh, and my band's starting to take off too

About an 8 or a 9.

Started a business with a friend in November 08. He basically screwed me when he was offered a government job. Business folded 5 months later. I had broken even and he had amassed a 7k debt but he still wants me to pay half of it for him.

Unemployed for six weeks. The first time I had been unemployed for 13 years. Didn't handle it well. Got a well paid but awful job with a 100 mile commute and a psycho manager.

Now been offered a partnership there but also have an offer of a public sector job doing more worthwhile work for less money. Wife wants me to take partnership my gut isntinct is no but I don't know what will happen to the marriage if I don't take it.

As a teacher its been fine so far although I have a feeling I could get roundly screwed in the next 5 years.

I guess Im in the middle of the scale
Self employed flooring fitter
last year had to go on a 6 month mortgage holiday which helped out greatly over the worst bit second half of the year work still crap but the lights kept me afloat just .

This year I seem to be doing 2 weeks work in each month so just manageing to pay the bills but nowt left for luxuries
starting to ebay anything I find around the house that I dont need .
to pay for the new forks and save up to take Mrs T for a holiday .

Dont see it getting great in the near future.

6 months or so short time working – losing 16% pay / month
Final salary pension scheme affected – company closing it down

1 for me…work in oil industry, which is about as secure as you can get, though i dont want to tempt fate too much…worst case scenario means i can always go back to the NHS, assuming that it still exists in the next few years!
The better half is also NHS so it might affect us yet, but she is only part time so it wouldnt be any huge problem for us.
The crash in house prices in our part of the world is great news, as give it a couple more years we might be able to buy soemthing that wont be a financial millstone for the rest of our lives..and before everyone starts about how it will affect them, no one complained when prices were rocketing so much that huge numbers under the age of 30 are totally priced out of the market. Having said that i wouldnt actually wish anyone to lose their homes, just for prices to come back down to 'normality'.

Been very busy the last 4 years, but that project is successfully coming to an end and I'm being given internal projects. This is always a bad sign.

So far no impact, but I'm worried.

Job-wise I haven't been affected at all.

However, I try and spend a couple of months each year in the UK, and with sterling tanking against the euro everything I buy just got 20% more expensive.

Money cut in 08 couldnt stand the people I worked with so when money went it wasnt worth staying. Got another job for less money outside of my trade. Made home life hell money wise, but great as i wasnt ranting about the muppets I had to work with.

That job dried up so went night working, money not bad but didnt see the wife and the riding suffered. Got layed off as it was for a company dealing with the rover group.( sould of guessed)
Got another job at my skill level but a lot lower rate. I couldnt get a pay rise out of them, so left.

only to find out the manager who I was dealing with got layed off for being usless. I then get taken back on at a decent rate.

So all in all Started out as a 6 now at a 2.

Life……….Its a funny old game 😆

Made redundant in March 09 from a specialist Construction services company that could only survive in the good times due to mis-management – as soon as the recession started, it was downhill all the way.

The market is still as deceased as the proverbial dodo and I've become full time carer whilst the boss goes back to work on half the money, since, after 6 years as a full-time mum she's still more employable because my skills are so niche.

TBH I hated my job and the lifestyle it required (hotel living and away from young family all the time) so I was quite glad to be made redundant. 15 months on I'm still out of work, vastly happier, a stone lighter, much fitter and actually enjoying life instead of working it away.

Financially we're treading water and there's not a lot of slack in the system and we could do with being able to switch the mortgage back to repayment this year instead of interest only.

50/50 for me I guess. I've gained and lost.

I don't have the mullah to get nice bike kit, but it doesn't just sit in the garage whilst I'm in another part of the country either.

Seems to be a common theme ScienceOfficer. Management were all technical experts at a guess?

Not really – Just evidence of how how ego and ambition can get you somewhere. Couple that with bargain basement prices to buy the work and you've got nowhere to run and no-one good enough to find decent enough cost savings or re-negotiate contracts.

Anyway, its been a good lesson for me. I fancy a change these days.

last year, job i hated till end of march then new job i love 2 promotions and pay rises and another promotion on the cards so its been all right so far!

june 08 – turned down a phd in medical engineering to go cycle round nz with the idea of getting a job when i came back ….

returned in april 09 – just after the melt down – managed to get my old job at the bike shop back …. applied for every engineering job i could find – circa 150 – never heard back from any ..

girlfriend decided she was going to be a teacher and was doing her pdge at aberdeen so we moved up here got a job in alpine bikes for a payrise that covered the difference in the living costs up here . The magical postcode change meant that companies i was applying to seemed to be interested . and i got an interview. one interview later = 1 job.

managed to escape the loop of the cycle trade and get a healthy pay rise in the process.

so probably also a -1 but largely down to luck ! – but very glad im not stuck in dundee doing that phd id be up the wall !

I am in Brazil and it's really interesting being here at this moment in time. Brazil is currently running a $250billion surplus, which my GF tells me is genuine, as opposed to there being hidden "off-balancesheet" fiddles. The economy is growing at 5% a year, and in terms of jobs, many corporations are struggling to keep hold of high flying graduates when they get their first jobs after leaving uni. Many older Brazilian companies are seen as conservative, stuffy and too restrictive compared to the sexy newer tech companies like Google for example.

My GF is pretty well connected in the business world and once I have completed my writing she has a lot of contacts lined up who have said they would like to meet me. It seems there is a lot of energy and creativity in Brazil, and so long as you have the contacts, looks like employment is not going to be an issue for me.

After saying that, there are downsides. I love the country, but there is poor infrastructure, and there are no nice suburbs to live, most living is in apartments in the centres of huge cities. There is still the well known problem of poverty here, and one wonders just how sustainable the growth is. It certainly is not sustainable for the planet.

Many consumer goods here are way more expensive that in other countries due to the high taxes (state and country-wide). There is nothing such as social security, and medical things etc have to be paid for.

So yeah, Brazil is a great country, but living here is very different to how you imagine it to be, for example living it up on the beach at Rio. The country is simply enormous, and most travel is by plane rather than train or car.

So yeah, I have nothing to moan about – should be able to get a job, but will be sure to miss many things in the UK despite it being up the toilet really.

running about 8.5, It would be nice to be earning some proper money

Recession? Just waiting and seeing.

im in the public sector – and can see the dark clouds scudding towards me!

Total crap the last few years, and seeing no change.

9

A sequence of events:

– Completed second degree in Architecture
– Shortly after Architecture & Construction folded,
– Lost job and any prospect of finding a new one in the profession I had invested 7 years of my life and countless thousands of pounds in.
– Started to work privately, Software licenses, PI insurance (for someone newly qualified) and unqualified (uninsured) competition able to work for less that half the cost saw off that opportunity in a matter of months.
– A university reunion an the Job Centre.
– Several hundred applications later I am invited for tests to start a Project Management role within the civil service. Pass. Interview. Offered Job, start date pending. Job canceled.
– Overqualified and inexperienced in a competitive/flooded job market.
– I live with my parents
– I design bespoke quality management systems (ISO 9001, 14001, 18001) for less than minimum wage on contract.

I have my health and some pretty bloody brilliant parents.

Not worked for 14 months, hoping for first interview next week for a job I have offered to do for free for a period just to get my foot in the door.

I design bespoke quality management systems (ISO 9001, 14001, 18001)

That sounds very grand, but having exposure to that myself – You poor bugger. 🙁 😈

The recession hasn't really effected me, last summer my wife was taken ill and things were very touch and go for awhile, my manager wouldn't give me time off to look after the kids when the wife was in hospital, so I walked to be honest I hadn't been happy for a while.
Took 7 or 8 weeks off, sold a few things to keep afloat and applied for any job that came along, turns out the first job I applied for I got, money isn't great but the hours are, plenty of time to spend with the wife and kids.
Just looking around for a better paid job at the moment, things are looking very good.
Wife starts uni in september which is good as well.

Pretty sh!t – not personally as such (still employed, on a good wage) but my wife has had it bad (probably like every other small business that is run by self-employed people) – it's been much better in times gone by for us and the last 2 years have been pretty grim…able to pay the bills but have no cash to spend on stuff (family is fed, clothed and watered; bills are paid and that's pretty much it).

It could be much worse – we could be unable to pay the bills…but compared to how it was it's been pretty sh!t and it isn't something I'd wish on many folk as it's grim.

For those in worse positions…it's not something I'm envious of and I do hope everyone recovers quickly and hopefully doesn't make the same mistakes that got us here!

I was holding my breath as the recession 'started' but in actual fact we had been doing spade work to get a good stream of stable work in the door. By luck more than judgement we had a few long term stable contracts that saw us through to our biggest year ever. We also picked up work where perm staff had been laid off which made me feel dirty. But it put food on the teams table which was important to me. Cashflow suffered with many months of 6 figure holes due to dragging on payment. On balance though we got through with me only chopping one person for performance reasons. Now expanding but we are definitely more careful with planning and expenditure. Thoughts with all those that got nailed by it, If there is anything I can do to help let me know.

I'm probably about an 8 or 7.

Missed both rounds of culling at work, though I did have to suffer a 20% pay cut (still currently suffering it). But hey 80% of something is better than 100% of nothing right!

However the reduction in income meant I had to make some severe spending cut backs, this caused major friction between me and the ex and well as you can tell from the terminology we are no more.

Other rubbish has happened in-between all that but life appears to be getting better now though and I seem to have more free money than I had before. Obviously me ex was quite high maintenance 😉

Deleted. Can't be arsed anymore.

let you know at the end of the month