We've had lay-offs here - mostly marketing folks.  Not taking on any
additional business in our line of work because of lack of market
liquidity.  My bosses and I have been pretty bored lately, mostly
putting out little fires here and there.

Las Vegas, NV-- Even in a city full of money we're going broke! There
are halting new home building, closing down most stores out here, most
companies are either going bankrupt or laying off a % of the emloyees.
I am in construction and we have no new homes relesed to us next year
(6000 for the year) this year was slow and put most small construction
based companies out of business and we had 12000 new homes this
year... its a sign of the times... pay is going down, food is going
up, daycare is going up, insurance is going up I don't know how most
will survive this before it gets better in 2010. (no I dont see a
lasting effect of getting better until then, the numbers don't lie,
our politicians do!) Good luck to everone and your families! :)

Buffalo, WY - I work for a construction company servicing mainly the
Oil & Gas Industry.  We have seen out of state contractors come in
over the past year or so and undercut us by 40-60% in bidding.  I just
don't know how they can work that cheap... I guess you do what you can
when you are hungry.  Anyhow, the slow down is quickly coming in.
There have been quite a few small businesses close shop after decades
in business. This industry is very volatile at this level, depending
on oil prices, but there is a noticeable slow down in all other
sectors in this usually booming state.  Our company is reorganizing as
a result of all this... more to gain efficiency to remain competitive
but a massive slowdown and subsequent layoffs wouldn't surprise me.  I
have seen competitors in the area close there doors recently,
hopefully we won't.

South Florida here, not so good. Lot's of short sale and foreclosures.

Central AZ.  Things are really starting to tighten up around here
since a lot of the economy was based on building houses.  Now many
people are underwater in their mortgages, foreclosures & short sales
dominate the landscape, and many small businesses have been forced to
close.  I personally haven't known anyone to lose their jobs yet, but
many are worried about the possibility.

Ranger7,Mexico, go figure...California is the safety valve for the
place.Mexicans work hard here in California,You can't take that away
from them.I have traveled the world, and I have seen migration
parallels like Mexico /California everywhere I go .Mexico is one big
corrupt mess.The open arm policy is not so open anymore.I was stopped
immigration at road blocks 4 times from California to Arizona along
interstate 8.

Southern California.

Entire company laid off due to a big merger (several thousand people).
Some will continue to receive severance for quite some time. So I
don't even know if ADP would report this as a lost job since I still
get letters from them. (With respect to the NFP report today)

I started my own business and also trade full time.

San Francisco - until just recently i was saying 'what recession'
whenever we went out to a nice dinner or a bar.  That seems to have
changed in the last few weeks and now those same places are only half
as full.  Of course houses here are still going for over 2 million.
Retail holiday sales will get slaughtered and that's when the other
shoe will drop for even large urban areas.

Atlanta GA, Hiring Freeze all over and layoff started in some
companies.

Bangor area, Maine. Own a micobusiness, a trade publication for a
segment of the financial-service industry; four years in business,
doing no business locally. The business is doing...well, about the
same as last year: holding steady but little growth (I guess we can be
thankful for our "nicheiness"); I make a living. The local economy --
underpinned by several big regional hospitals, a university, a small
GE plant, some military -- is never vibrant, but may be less subject
to economic ups and downs than other places. RE sluggish -- some
houses on the market for 2-3 years. A news item the other day talked
of the state's new to hire more people to process UI claims, up (I
think I heard) 85% this year over last year statewide. With demand for
luxuries down and gas prices still high, Lobstermen are having
trouble. A local pulp mill employing about 200, shuttered for several
years, just got a second reprieve from a group of PE investors; what
comes of that remains to be seen. That follows a sketchy scheme to
turn the mill into a bio-fuel plant, a year-long charade that managed
to suck in $30 million in fed-gov grants before going abruptly belly
up last June with nothing -- not a thing -- to show for the money
spent (let's hope they put their swag into CDOs...)

No : He means Northeastern Oregon.

Oceanbo, Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....excuse me...I'd just come back from
war.
It was 2 weeks after I'd had my helicopter blown up with me in it.
I was on a foot bridge in LA.
Two immigration cops jumped out of nowhere and I froze. One had a gun
on me.
When they announced who they were and that they were checking to see
if me and my very Scandinavian looking blonde head were Mexicen, I
lost it.
I told the one without the gun, who I was, and where I'd just come
from.
I then told him, "Your partner has three choices, he puts the gun
away, I stick it up his ass, or he shoots me."
He immediately put the gun away.

rangerf7 & oceanbo:

Here is a little something I posted yesterday.  I lived along the
border for forty years and saw the good, the bad and the ugly.  Like
most cultures, there are honest persons and dishonest persons.  Our
welfare system needs fixing though...

"Actually, you should move to Mexicali, Mexico, apply for citizenship
there, get multiple wives, forget the job and make babies as fast and
often as you can.  Come to the US and sign up for California welfare
under as many aliases as you can imagine(welfare workers are not
allowed to ask personal information like nationality) and have your
checks sent to a PO Box in Calexico, California. Pick up your checks
once a month and live like a king in Mexico.  If you get caught; you
will be deported but not prosecuted.  What a country!  This has been
going on down there for over thirty years.  They bust a couple of
fraud cases there nearly every year, but I have yet to witness a
prosecution.

Have a nice day!"

Delaware resident with property values in the suburbs off about 20%
and expected to fall another 10% in the next 6 months. Mild
unemployment starting to creep in. Philadelphia worker in a law firm
and although we have moved to a spending freeze we are not as worried
about this because people -f or some strange reason LOL - need lawyers
when they aren't paid by other people :) No one I know anywhere has
ANY free cash and everyone is buckling under. I see neighbors selling
cars and yardsales going up in frequency. My neighbor has even
switched from corona to pabst blue ribbon and he is a die hard corona
fan. Me I'm thinking of switching from PBR to white lightning if this
gets much worse. Philly mayor just announced tons of city budget cuts,
haven't read what they are. Does anyone know when the banks are
actually going to start releasing the money to the people to use? Or
are they going to hold it and buy stocks at this low level and then
sell when the market bounces in 9 months making a ton of profit on a
govt loan designed to help the common people? More importantly, when
are we going to stop finger pointing at Dem/Rep and realize we are all
Americans and kinda phucked if we don't join together on a common
plan? I mean seriously, if we had spent that money on building solar
on every standing building we could at least afford to have heat this
winter...start knitting sweaters and hats people...;)

Southern Cali
Multiple open reqs for emplyees and nobody is trying to get hired.
Business is great here.  We're all on O.T. since we can't find any
emplyees willing to work.  Unemployment must pay nicely or something.
People are using the economy as a scapegoat to stay home.

work in commercial construction in california, for a very big general
contractor, we went to the first wave of layoff's in the range of 10%,
next wave is coming. Unemployment in Construction and Financial
Industries is running at above 30% which is the depression rate, other
sectors will catch up soon. We lost 284K jobs in US in SEP revised
from 159K, so Oct numbers of -240K will be revised into -400K in Dec
for sure. Average 500k jobs being lost every week, with no replacement
jobs available, watch this unemployment number to soar dramatically
high in the months to come.

I'm from the Northeast -- Northern Massachusetts.  Everybody reponding
here is scaring me, as we don't seem to be experiencing much of what I
read here.  There are more houses hanging on the market for longer
than before, but no sign of vacancies and eventually everything seems
to sell.  Less home construction than before, but still significant
activity.  I'm a partner in a very small wireless telecom consulting/
staffing company and business is good... very good.  We're looking to
hire.  Personally my retirement has been delayed by the loss of much
conservatively-invested money in the market, but my bonds are doing
OK.  In the non-personal picture, life here seems to go on pretty much
as before -- certainy there's speculation and worry, but no visible
signs of serious trouble.  I'd be interested if others in the
Northeast are seeing the same, of if my neck of the woods is just an
island..... or we just haven't been hit yet.

It sounds like there are alot of problems going on out there. If only
we knew to the full extent how many. Could you imagine getting
together tens of thousands of people together that have lost their
home, there job, or both, and then having some type of event,
televised, radio brodcast, streaming on the net, every way possible,
so everyone could see all the people we have right here, right now, in
the worst situations they could have ever imagined. To be able to
bring everyone to reality with the actual problems we, we being the
american people, not "consumers", are facing. And then try to help
each other out, try to help find an answer to our problems, and stop
waiting for someone else to solve the problem. You know how
heartbreaking I'm sure that would be to have to listen to the
countless stories of entire families on the street, be it because of
their house, or job? I've read about a few of them, and yes we can
debate here for hours about how they shouldn't have taken the sub-
prime loan they couldn't afford, or gotten in so much debt, but we are
past that now, and it's taking everyone down. I'm married and have a
kid, and I don't care what it takes, I will fight the layoff's and the
price increases, and cut whatever I have to keep my family alive. I
just hope that other families have that chance to also.

Why do you suppose he didn't just shoot you?

You are an idiot or ignorant person! Unemployment pays only 60% of
your salary for the past 12 months average, no wonder no one wants to
come join your company because their 60% unemployment benefit is
probably substantially higher than what your employer is offering!

Paperwork, explanations and a little fear.

Atlanta Ga - I work in land surveying which is a true measuring stick
of where developing home construction and comercial construction is
going
I seen the 91 recession the 2000 slowdown , but nothing like this.
There is virtually
no work to be done period. Companies are bidding work at prices from
the 1970's
This proffession generally will tell you where the economy is
headed.Without
construction you have no economy because virtually every industry
needs
this for their buisness one way or the other.

"Average 500k jobs being lost every week, with no replacement
jobs available, watch this unemployment number to soar dramatically
high in the months to come."

You mean 50k, right?

Columbia River Gorge, Washington

I work in the building industry; the division of the company I work
for has gone from 12 full time employees to 3 half time employees. The
local plywood mill cut their prices to what they were selling their
product for ten years ago and still couldn't sell anything so no they
are doing massive layoffs. Logging has come to a virtual stand still;
normally it is easy to get firewood permits, this year they are only
issuing to "local residents".

At half time I am paying bills but that is it, and I don't really
expect to have the job much longer.

Real estate they say has only dropped like ten percent; but I have
friends in the business and what properties are sells are selling for
50-70% of what they would have one and half years ago.

I personally think this snowball is just getting started.