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Speaker 2: Hey, Carrie, this is Robert Ian with conker Change dot com.
Over the past thirty days, there has been a slow, steady,
and escalating series of announcements about layoffs at major US corporations.
Microsoft is laying off six thousand employees, approximately three percent
of its global workforce. Facebook is laying off about five
percent of its staff. Dell has announced a reduction of
twelve thousand employees. UPS is laying off twenty thousand people.
Oracle is laying off eleven thousand, which is seven percent
of its workforce. Boeing announced just over two thousand worker
cuts as it begins a planned company wide reduction that
could total ten percent of its workforce. Southwest Airlines announced
it would be laying off about fifteen percent of its employees.
As these stories make their way into the news cycle,
it's often sporadic and these stories tend to bypass most
people's threshold of conscious awareness, unless, of course, they work
at one of those companies or know someone who does.
When you begin to look at the totality of just
these layoffs over the last thirty days, plus all of
the downsizing being performed in the US federal government by DOGE,
as well as all of the small and mid sized
companies that are in the process of doing the same thing,
a picture comes into focus, representing a tale of two economies,
the one often talked about by mainstream media, and the
second economy, the one you are instinctively aware of that
you feel in sense, which begins to emerge as we
look at and understand the implications of these layoff announcements.
I recall with great clarity the US economy as it
headed into the two thousand eight financial crisis. Heading into
and in the very early part of that crisis, there
was much talk, very similar to the talk and act
actions of today, about efficiency. As business began to contract,
the first round of cuts were often necessary because they
cut out the fat in an organization, duplication of services,
unproductive projects, wasteful initiatives. Cutting fat is healthy in any
economic scenario because it helps make an organization lean and mean.
But as the two thousand and eight downturn deepened and accelerated,
the second round of cuts moved from lean and mean
to personal and painful, because now more and more people
were being laid off. Cutting people from an organization is
like cutting the meat away from the bone. The similarities
between two thousand and eight and what's happening now are
uncomfortably similar. People are being asked to take early retirement,
there are job reductions, and the very incentives that attracted
talented workers in the first place are being eliminated demographically.
In two thousand and eight, it was often older workers
in their fifties who lost their jobs, but in many
cases they also lost a large portion of their retirement
and even their homes. The signposts are in front of
us again, we ignore them at our own peril. Extras
and non essentials have already been cut. Employee layoffs and
location shutdowns are now accelerating in two thousand and eight.
In two thousand and nine, this process quickly escalated until
those very sane companies began to cut the bone out
of their organizations by cutting back on the very infrastru
structure that made them competitive and functional in the first place,
things like customer service and experienced sales professionals. There's two
things missing today that seemed to exist in abundance five
and six years ago. Optimism and certainty. Optimism about the
future and certainty about one's chances for achieving success. For
most people in families today, varying income levels even up
to a few hundred thousand dollars depending on family size,
are just a higher level of break even behaviors have
changed over the past five years and continue to change.
Instead of buying a new car, some people maintain an
older one. Instead of buying a new recreation device, people
buy something on Craigslist or Facebook for fifteen or twenty
cents on the dollar that may only be a few
years old. When people eat out, if they eat out,
many do so when they can get specials like two
for one appetizers and simply call it a day. In
the struggle to survive day to day, week to week,
and month to month, what many are missing is that business,
the very lifeblood of our economy, is slowly being cannibalized
once again. First the fat, then the meat, and soon
the bone. Think about the financial and personal change you
have experienced since twenty twenty. Now imagine the potential of
that same degree of chain or more over the next
five years. Think it can't happen. Think again, if you
could go back in time just five short years, what
decisions would you change that have impacted your life and
the life of your family. Forbidden questions can lead to
innovative thinking. They can result in groundbreaking answers. So ask
yourself the difficult and challenging questions about your current situation,
anticipate the future, act on it in advance, because five
years from now you'll be glad that you did. And
until next time. This is Robert Ian with conquer Change
dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks Carrie, thanks for listening to carry Less's financial Survival
Network solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go
to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more
than ever,