Not really a feeling shared by many. One not shared by myself as the fresh-faced graaduate ready to take on what the world can throw at me. Which doesnt actually seem to be that much and, actually, it seems to be me who is doing most the throwing, throwing inadequate cv's devoid of relevant experience at 'potential' employers; tantrums at having to tidy my room on a regular basis, as opposed to the pile I grew in my student house; and, evedintly, the throwing out of any plans I had to continue living the (student) life-o-reilly post university.
The fact that recent graduates may be having a hard time of it in this current climate is a fact. Not that I would know having lost contact with many other alumni after the glorious, sparkling, tingly, magically glossy bubble of university burst, spraying fourth the sad suds of post-grads back to their prospective ends of the country and, subsequently, down the drain of dark realisation that: after much pleasure, comes great pain.
Graduate recruitment site www.get.hobsons.co.uk states that the credit crunch has meant capping on the hiring of new employees to help reduce costs. Baker Tilly (graduate recruitment micro-site) surveyed 100 graduate employing companies finding that, during this month, the number of companies reducing costs rose from 26% to 45%. Thats a 20% increase in less than two weeks (the article being released on the 14th march 2009).Of course it is to be expected that everyone and everything will be affected by the financial crisis. It is naive to believe that there is an rock somewhere we can climb upon to watch the waves crash far below, to then slowly receed back into booming house prices and soaring consumerism. It will do, and has, and has done so before, effect everything. But that isnt to say that you dont have a chance in hell at finding that not-so-perfect job.
The net has merely shrunk, if you cast it out into the proverbial sea of career opportunities you may not drag back as many to shake a spoon at as you may have had during a time of economic climb, but there is still a haul big enough to offer a few tasty morsels. instead of getting the right combination of your CV and covering letter falling on the right persons desk, with the right history for the job, and having the perfect interview being a chance once out of a hundred, it may be one in one thousand, five thousand, and so on, but that will be enough.The financial crisis is like a snake shedding a skin. Once it has reached a size, what holds the creature together in is no longer durable, it must shed its old skin to grow another stronger one. Society is shaking free the crap, the rubbish, the parasitical baggage that has clung to its back, parasites benefitting through the years of economic boon and the consumers market. But it is these parasites that need to be shook free lest we stagnate, clutching to us our cheap plastic goods we bought with loans we could never pay back.
Assuredly new business will grow, it is a terrible thing to see these small, meek business fall alongside the untouchable tyrants, clinging together in their final throes as they vomit goods as empty in value as their shop floors are now, but it has to happen and has happened before.
We can see this in the consumer and credit-based economy enjoyed by 1920's America crashed in 1929, with one third of the US workforce out of work by 1932 and the economy having declined by half. It took World War II to drag that nation back to its feet fully, with great military spending boosting growth, generating jobs and industry. The US savings and Loans scandel of 1985 took a bail out of $150 Billion to rescue the economy, but it served to strengthen the bigger banks and weed out the smaller, weaker rivals, laying the foundations for mergers and consolidations to bolster the retail banking sector of the 1990's. In 1998 hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management needed to be rescued by a hot cash injection of $3.65 billion by the very banks that had invested in it, in turn rescuing investors, US credit markets and interest rates.
There is also the trigger of the UK house-price bubble of '88-'89, the largest peacetime one-day fall of the US stockmarkets in 1987 where losses began through the widespread belief that takeovers and insider trading on borrowed money dominated a slowing down US economy. A number of different technological and worldwidefactors meant that the Federal Bank of America and other banks lowered interests rate. the market recovered quickly but not without damaging house prices and the pound.
So it is easy to pick out reacurring trends, great pain usually follows great pleasure (in this sense I am pointing to the trend of high spending and a consumer based market quickly being followed by liquidation of businesses, creditors and lenders, and so joblosss, interest rates varieing and everything else you can peg onto the "credit crunch" occuring). Damage is done, shares drop, people grumble to varying degrees, and great action, albeit through cash intervention or reasons for rise in industry, is required to ease the world through for a few more years before it happens again, and again, and again until something else happens. Because there are only so many skins a snake will shed before it can shed no more.
