John Henion is a freelance video producer in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was laid off from a staff position in 2008 (full disclosure: at Current) and entered into the freelance world. He blogs about unemployment at Unemploymentality. We spoke yesterday for The Real Recovery.
Life for a freelancer can be tough - especially at the beginning. John Henion moved out to California from Michigan where he'd already established himself with freelance work. In California he had none. He said the move made him "take a step back and do things I didn't want to do." For example, John was about 30 when he moved here, had already produced his own independent documentary, but found himself taking a production assistant role on "Wife Swap" just to be working. "I was beyond the point where I wanted to pick up trash on the set and being told to go get lunches," he said. "After that experience I realized I didn't need to lower the bar that much."
The goal as a freelancer is to have steady work. There are some great benefits - like being your own boss and scheduling your own time off - but there are somethings that are definitely not benefits - like not having benefits. John was lucky to have insurance through a domestic partnership with his girlfriend, but he said for many freelancers the decision about whether or not to get insurance is just whether or not you want to take your chances.
After being laid off, John said it took him about 6-8 months before he was getting steady work again. These days, he has about 5-6 return customers and pulls in a lot of one-off projects. He's been able to work himself back up to an income level comparable to having a full-time staff position. But that comes with a lot more work than just the actual time spent working. "The worst part is...I have to deal with chasing down money. Some people wait until the last minute to pay you or wait until you raise a stink. You know, they want to keep that money on their books as long as they can."
The most important thing John has found to remember freelancing is that no matter how much time he spends at an office, no matter how many new friends he makes in a workplace, being a freelancers puts him in a different position. "As a freelancer they can just stop calling. First time that happened I thought I did something wrong....When they stop calling it's not personal....They're not supposed to roll over and kiss you in the morning, just leave some money on the bedstand."
Are you a freelancer? Have a recession story to tell? Post it to The Real Recovery.
The unemployment rate hit 10 percent. This many people haven’t been jobless since 1982. Compared to 1982, our unemployed will be unemployed longer, and have fewer opportunities for jobs.
Gold continues its hot streak as it rises to about $1,100 an ounce last week.
The Hyatt Hotels Corp sold 5.7 million of its shares to underwriters at $25 each.
This week’s Women on Wall Street. Angela F. Braly, president and CEO of WellPoint Incorporated.
While traditional universities struggle with soaring costs and declining endowments, the online education sector is expected to grow at least 15% in the US in 2009.
Here's a math problem for you: The national unemployment rate hits its highest point since the 80s in October: 10.2 percent. According to a report released this week last year 14.6% of Americans couldn't afford to buy enough food. How does that add up?
Well outside of the various nitpicks that can be done to both of those numbers, one big culprit is "underemployment". We've been talking about underemployment a lot in The Real Recovery because I think it's a more accurate measure of how many Americans have been affected by the recession. If you "get discouraged" and stop looking for a job, you no longer count as "unemployed". Or, as we're talking about this week: if you go freelance part time.
The official measure of underemployment is called the U-6 and the Bureau of Labor Statistics describes it in breathtaking terms:
Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers
In October, when we saw that big 10.2% unemployment number, the U6 number was at 17.5% Nearly a fifth of the population!
You know what that does not include though? All the Americans who've taken pay cuts or reduced hours in the recession. (More digging through numbers to come).
Want to get involved with The Real Recovery? Here's two easy things you can do:
- Post your story to the group. How have you been affected? Are you underemployed? Have you taken a pay cut?
- Help me find some other numbers to look at. How many Americans have taken pay cuts?
GUATEMALA CITY -- John Wilson holds a PhD in physics and had worked in the aerospace industry for over thirty years. Today he is selling cheese-stuffed pupusas -- a native Guatemalan delicacy -- from the back of a burro-driven wagon.
--TheSkunk.orgGUATEMALA CITY -- John Wilson holds a PhD in physics and had worked in the aerospace... more
Today thousands of students took to the streets in many cities of Italy for the right to study and against the cuts made by the government and euphemistically called a reform of public schools and universities. On saturday 14, the CGIL union brought 50,000 people in Rome to call for effective measures against the crisis. In the last month there have been many other demonstrations, the protest against racism, the one of soccer fans, the protest of the police left without funds. http://www.inaltreparole.net/en/resistance/manifestazioni171109.htmlToday thousands of students took to the streets in many cities of Italy for the right... more
Hey freelance workers, this week The Real Recovery is all about you. We want to hear from people who freelance successfully, people who have gone freelance after losing their job, and people who are barely scraping by with freelance work.
Did you know: If you're freelancing, even making far less money than you can survive on, you don't count as 'unemployed'? You fall under a different category called 'underemployment' - here's the applicable part of the definition from Wikipedia:
"Involuntary part-time" workers -- workers who could (and would like to) be working for a full work-week but can only find part-time work. By extension, the term is also used in regional planning to describe regions where economic activity rates are unusually low, due to a lack of job opportunities, training opportunities, or due to a lack of services such as childcare and public transportation.
The national unemployment rate is 10.2% as of October. That's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS doesn't seem to keep a national underemployment number, which is a lot harder to nail down. But we recently saw that in California underemployment was estimated to be about a fifth of the total population.
This is another topic we want to tackle. As we're trying to put together a picture of the Real Recovery, we want to try to get a handle on underemployment estimates. We'll be working on that for the next month or so. If you want to get involved in that effort, send me a message on Current.
And this week - if you freelance or ever have - tell us about your experience by posting your story on The Real Recovery.
Congressional Democrats and mainstream media have heaped high praise on Speaker Pelosi for finally delivering the House health care reform bill, all 2000+ pages of it. In the aftermath of a liberal love fest that focused more on Pelosi’s historical win than on how close the vote actually was, the question is, will Majority Leader Harry Reid be able to duplicate Pelosi's success in the Senate? http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-28761-Reno-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m11d10-Pelosi-passes-health-care-bill-barely-Et-tu-ReidCongressional Democrats and mainstream media have heaped high praise on Speaker Pelosi... more
President Obama plans to hold a White House forum on job creation next month, an attempt to signal his concern about the growing ranks of the unemployed and build consensus on future action to stoke the economy.
Today is another sobering day for the tech and media world. Current TV has confirmed that 80 people are being let go, leaving the company with 300 employees worldwide. We heard multiple reports of significant layoffs at Current TV earlier in the day. One source, whose spouse works at Current TV, warns of a “major bloodbath today at CurrentTV, across all departments,” with cuts hitting “most of the people in the LA production office, as stuff is being outsourced.”
Current Media’s COO, Joanna Drake Earl told me over the phone that the layoffs are due to a shifting of programming strategy and are not a cost-cutting measure. Current is shifting away from in-house production and towards out sourcing segments, which will be done via acquisitions, co-productions, and the use of outside studios. Layoffs took place in Current’s San Francisco, Los Angeles, London and New York offices, but the cuts were mostly made in the production and programming areas. Earl added that this year is set to be Current’s most profitable year since its launch. See the entire statement issued by Current below.
A year ago to date, the media company, which was co-founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, eliminated 60 positions. The media company also recently canceled its $100 million IPO that was originally announced in January 2008. Current said in a statement that market conditions and the recession forced the company to abandon the IPO. And this summer, Current Media got a new CEO, Mark Rosenthal, who replaced Hyatt. Rosenthal was the former president and COO of MTV networks and was also vice chairman and president of media platforms at SpotRunner.
Current made headlines this year after two of its reporters were detained by North Korea in a relatively high-profile incident (the reporters were eventually released after former President Bill Clinton intervened).
Cable channel Current TV is broadcast internationally to 59 million homes with markets in regions including the United States, Italy, and the UK. Current also has a strong web presence, tapping into popular social media services like Digg and Twitter for special events like the 2008 presidential election.
The Guardian Media Group announced news of layoffs this morning and yesterday brought news of other tech layoffs, with Adobe cutting 9 percent of its staff. This week also brought announcements of from Electronic Arts and Sprint. We’ve added Current’s layoff to the TechCrunch Layoff Tracker.
Here’s the entirety of the email that was sent to us by a representative for Current:
Current Media has made changes to its organization, most notably in the area of television programming. Current will be shifting away from short-form programming and daily in-house production and towards proven 30-60 minute formats from a multitude of sources, including acquisitions, co-productions, outside studios, as well as Current developed and produced content.
With this change, Current made the difficult yet necessary decision to eliminate certain daily, weekly, and non-regularly scheduled programs, including “Current Tonight,” “Current Takeover” and “Current Exposed.”
As a result of these cancelations, and the shift away from a reliance on daily in-house production, Current Media eliminated 80 positions worldwide associated with the affected programs and related support personnel in the company.
This re-organization was not the result of a need to cut costs. Current Media will have its most profitable year. This financial stability will allow the company to re-allocate resources in order to put further emphasis on areas of the business believed to best position Current Media for continued long-term growth. Part of this investment will be the immediate creation of new executive positions, and teams in program development, licensing and acquisitions, talent management, research, marketing, affiliate relations and advertising sales.
As part of the re-organization, Current Media will be consolidatinToday is another sobering day for the tech and media world. Current TV has confirmed... more
This week on The Real Recovery we're looking at how the recession is affecting college grads. It's tough to graduate into such a tight job market. Especially if you've got loans. For many, going to college automatically comes with a big chunk of money that must be paid off. As finding a job gets harder - that amount of money can hang like an albatross from your neck.
The image featured here, posted on The Broke Grad Student, shows average student loan debt by state - and no matter where you live, that average is somewhere between $13K and $26K. That's a lot of money!
But despite the high costs the question for many American high schoolers is not whether to go but where to go. Are too many Americans going to college?
From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
"Marty Nemko: Increasing college-going rates may actually hurt our economy. We now send 70 percent of high-school graduates to college, up from 40 percent in 1970. At the same time, employers are accelerating their offshoring, part-timing, and temping of as many white-collar jobs as possible. That results in ever more unemployed and underemployed B.A.'s. Meanwhile, there's a shortage of tradespeople to take the Obama infrastructure-rebuilding jobs. And you and I have a hard time getting a reliable plumber even if we're willing to pay $80 an hour—more than many professors make."
It's estimated that on average college grads tend to make about 80% more per year in salary than those without a degree. That's a pretty significant and motivating number, especially when you take into consideration the higher unemployment numbers for those without a college degree that we looked at yesterday. But if you've got loans - some of that has to go to paying them off. And for grad students it's even worse.
Faced with a difficult job market and high student debts, many folks with a B.A. duck back into graduate school to forestall repayments they can't afford. But as you can imagine - that just leads to more debt. Forbes has a controversially titled article that tackles the high debts a law degree can come with: The Great College Hoax.
"Accepted into the California Western School of Law, a private San Diego institution, [John] Kellum couldn't swing the $36,000 in annual tuition with financial aid and part-time work. So he did what friends and professors said was the smart move and took out $60,000 in student loans. Kellum's law school sweetheart, Jennifer Coultas, did much the same. By the time they graduated in 1995, the couple was $194,000 in debt. They eventually married and each landed a six-figure job. Yet even with Kellum moonlighting, they had to scrounge to come up with $145,000 in loan payments. With interest accruing at up to 12% a year, that whittled away only $21,000 in principal. Their remaining bill: $173,000 and counting."
Should you go to grad school? Most experts agree it only makes sense if you have a specific goal in mind. Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist lists several points against enlisting in grad school to hide out from a recession:
"1. Grad school pointlessly delays adulthood....3. Business school is not going to help 90% of the people who go....5. The medical school model assumes that health care spending is not a mess."
So what's your experience? Did you go to college? Grad school? Did you have an albatross of loan debt? Tell us your story on The Real Recovery.
Who is faring the worst in this recession? Everyone is doing poorly - but some groups have been more affected than others. The NY Times Economix blog broke down the numbers by huge swaths of demographics last week.
The graph that caught my eye was the very first one - apropos of our Real Recovery topic this week - how are recent college grads affected?
(That said, when you break it down by education, college grads have done comparatively well - those with less education have been more adversely affected.)
The worst affected group is young, African-American men who are less educated. This neat interactive graphic compares all the different demographic slices. Where do you fall on the graph? Has that been your experience?
The current recession seems to have no limit, and the media has been pretty thorough in testing that. In some cases, it's what seems like the millionth Today Show segment on "recession chique" or how buying store brand food can save you money; in other cases, there is the New York Times' recent two-part series on the rise in teenage runaways ("Running in the Shadows", part 1 ran on Sunday and part 2 ran on Monday).
Just as people have been losing their homes due to what seems to be a never-ending rise in unemployment, more teenagers have been leaving due to a variety of reasons. What is most unfortunate is both what they do once they are out there, such as prostitute themselves, which is the focus of part 2; and how the help they can get is seriously lacking:
This week, the Real Recovery is focusing on college graduates - recent, upcoming and all-time. I wanted to highlight a few stories shared in the comment thread on the initial college stories post. If you have one - go to the Real Recovery group, click Post a Story, and start typing!
From user trangster:
I graduated this past May and applied for part time and full time jobs. After months of being rejected by employers for not having work experience because I was earning a college education at the time, I started working as a part time host at a restaurant. I recently picked up another part time job so now I'm working two part time jobs to meet bills. Hopefully I get accepted into grad school next year.
From user sugarlilly:
i am a recent college grad working in a job i love but that requires absolutely no education. sorry sallie mae, that 50 grand will have to wait.
From user Karolein:
The first term I learned on-the-job after college was "reduction in force". It was a rude awakening. I finished graduate school in a recession and it took 18 months to find a full-time, regular job. After 15 years in a nice office, I'm looking again, but instead of living at home I have a mortgage to pay. Life is cyclical.
Shares of teen apparel retailers are getting hit particularly hard Thursday in the wake of October same-store sales results. American Eagle Outfitters and Aeropostale are both down more than 10 percent after missing expectations and other teen retailers, including Hot Topic and Zumiez are not that far behind.
(Berk, C. C., 2009, October 5, par.1-2)
It's not surprising. This sector is facing some tough challenges. Teen unemployment has been at historically high levels. This means teens have less money to spend on jeans and T-shirts. According to Thomson Reuters, analysts were expecting teen apparel retailers to post a same-store sales decline of 3.2 percent, but sales actually were much worse, declining 5.8 percent last months.
(Berk, C. C., 2009, October 5, par.3-4)
As unemployment hits 10.2%, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa is the richest Congressman worth an estimated $251 million. Perhaps this is what's really wrong with this country. We need some real people in there who know what it means to work for a living.
Next in line: Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), $244.7 million;
Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), $214.5 million;
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), $209.7 million;
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), $208.8 million.
Seven members of Congress are worth over $100 million. But here's the sad part of the story. These numbers are down from their highs in 2007. Ain't that a bitch?
The biggest losers include Kerry, who lost a whopping $127.4 million; Warner lost about $28.1 million; Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) lost about $11.8 million; and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) lost about $10.1 million. Let's take up a collection. Oh, never mind. The health insurance industry is already on the case.
It's been tumultuous for the economy in the half-week since we launched The Real Recovery: unemployment benefits were extended and then October's unemployment numbers hit over 10 percent. It seems like just the right time to get to the real stories behind the economic stats.
Each week on The Real Recovery we're going to ask a big question - and then spend the week figuring out the answer with your help. For next week - we're looking at those entering the job market for the very first time.
If a tenth of America is unemployed - how hard is it going to be for recent college graduates to get jobs? For college seniors who expect to graduate in 2010? From the National Bureau of Economic Research: "The Career Effects Of Graduating In A Recession":
Graduating in a recession leads to large initial earnings losses. These losses, which amount to about 9 percent of annual earnings in the initial stage, eventually recede, but slowly -- halving within five years but not disappearing until about ten years after graduation.
Starting Monday - we're going to focus on college graduates. Here's how you can get involved:
Are you a college senior?: Post a story on The Real Recovery about your job search. Do you have something lined up? Are you just trying not to think about it?
Did you graduate this year?: How's it been out there in the job market? Have you been able to find work?
Did you graduate years ago?: How was your experience in the economic climate you had? How does it compare to today's?
You can post your story to Current by clicking the "Post a Story" button on The Real Recovery group page and then just start typing!
And also, if you want to get involved as an investigator - send me a message on Current.
U.S. Unemployment Rate Hits 10.2%, Highest in 26 Years
The United States economy shed 190,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, up from 9.8 percent in September, the Department of Labor said Friday in its monthly economic appraisal.
While the pace of job losses has slowed significantly since the peak of the recession last winter, the unemployment rate, which measures the number of people actively seeking work, continues to climb, and economists do not foresee relief until well into next year.
“There’s no doubt that the slashing and burning of jobs has abated quite a lot,” said Allen L. Sinai, the founder of Decision Economics, a research firm. “The economy is recovering, but it is a very soft recovery.”
The biggest losses came in the construction, manufacturing and retailing sectors. Health care companies added 29,000 jobs to their payrolls, and the number of temporary workers increased by 34,000 — a significant gain that could indicate employers are beginning to expand their businesses again.
The Labor Department also revised September’s losses to 219,000 from 263,000.
Dean Baker, a director for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said he did not expect declining unemployment rates until next spring. “We may be looking at very high levels,” Mr. Baker said, “barring a policy response, for several years into the future.”
The dissonance of the economic recovery, with steep job losses coming even as production intensifies and companies show better-than-expected profits, has placed policy makers in a delicate position.
On Thursday, in anticipation of the unemployment report, Congress overwhelmingly voted to extend benefits for jobless workers for up to 20 weeks. That will soothe the short-term financial pain of many families, but demands for a new wave of government relief may intensify if companies continue to cut back.
So far, the federal stimulus package has injected billions into local economies, giving states money, for instance, to finance construction projects or retain teachers. The housing and auto sectors have been propped up with government credits meant to encourage spending. But weak consumer demand and hefty labor costs are still forcing many employers to cut positions and reduce hours to survive.
The recession has forced many Americans to settle for part-time work because companies are reluctant to add full-time employees. The underemployment rate, which includes part-time workers, the jobless and those who have given up on searching, was 17.5 percent in October — the highest level since at least 1994.
Even as unemployment remains high, there are signs that critical industries are gaining steam.
Although the economy and markets will improve before businesses start employing more people, the holiday shopping season is destined to disappoint investors and children alike as personal disposable income promises to be much lower than last year.Although the economy and markets will improve before businesses start employing more... more
