Severance Packages Provide False Sense Of Comfort

wsj.com:

The long-term jobless rate hits its highest point on record. More than a third of those who are out of work have been looking for more than six months, making this category of unemployed the biggest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking it in 1948.

Overall, companies have been eliminating or trimming severance packages. For those who do receive severance, the median pay allotted is 12.5 weeks' salary, down from 21.8 weeks a decade ago, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Read the whole story: wsj.com

Comments

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

I'm supposed to feel sympathy for someone who got a $200k severance package and burned through it because they refused to change their master-of-­the-univer­se sense of entitlement.
Really. REALLY?

[westreal]

This is the most riveting article I have read in some time. I feel the pain of these people and hope they find work soon.

[itssafetosay]

I understand the sentiment of not feeling sympathy given the choices people made, but let me paint a picture from another perspective...I am seeing so many friends at the brink of collapse, the implications are scary.

I'm in my 40's, advanced degrees, great work history, good salary...when I left my job to start a biz in 2005, I said if it doesn't work out, I'll get another job. Things didn't move as quickly as I'd hoped, so I got a job in 2007 consulting for $6000 a month. It was easy. I looked, called, interviewed, and was offered the position within a couple of weeks. I'd never had a problem finding work. Fast forward to today - as my business dwindled to almost nothing. I began to look for work a year ago. For someone who was a "master" at getting jobs, I have found nothing; even at half the pay or less. I cut back long ago but time's run out.

Many of us have no frame of reference for what's happening. We've seen recessions. But nothing like this. I'm sure these people thought "I have the degrees and experience, I will get another job". In all my years I never could have imagined things being this bad.

Part of the problem is that people tried to live beyond their means, but there are greater implications as a huge portion of my generation falls into a hole too big to ever get out of. It's scary.

[karen1p]

I have never ever gone to an interview where I wasn't offered the job....even if I didn't want it. I am now going on month TEN in my job search.....

House will be foreclosed sometime beginning of spring....

Life savings gone trying to hold on to the house.....

Yes, we are talking BIG hole.

[itssafetosay]

I'm so sorry Karen. If it weren't form my in-laws help, we would be out of our house long ago. We are luckier than most. My husband was offered a job at 2/3 the pay, and was grateful. It lasted 6 weeks. He's got another contracting job that ends 12/4.

A good friend (Harvard MBA but not in finance), is about to lose her home. Yesterday I talked to a friend who said she has been hiding away, ashamed of her situation with a failed business - she used to have 5 contracting offers a month. Now, not one.

I am so frustrated at hearing this happen to so many people. It is getting worse and no one is paying attention. I wish I had the money to help people, to give some jobs. It's heart breaking.

For what it's worth, hang in there. You are not alone.

[oath of fealty]

Stock market surging while main street keeps getting squeezed

good articles: http://financeopinionss.blogspot.com

It looks like 9-8% unemployment is the new normal since the govt. wants ppl to be unemployed. Otherwise we would have REAL shovel ready projects and green jobs instead of the BS we have now.

[texastrixie]

I have a hard time mustering any sympathy for those profiled. The vast majority of working people get no severance package at all. Our severance is called unemployment insurance. And our new job isn't a comdown to $70k/yr from $140k, but $8, $9, $10 an hour from making maybe $18-$20 an hr.

[ResearchtheFacts]

Interesting article and a lot of lessons to be learned. Keeping up the facade that everything is ok is dangerous. While I have read blog post after blog post about people who could not afford to pay for their houses being foreclosed on and the digs.

But what is the difference when you receive a severage package and burn through it before you find new employment all awhile keeping up your old lifestyle? If you keep turning down jobs because the salaries aren't comparable then you run out of money your house gets foreclosed on and your car repoed then what's the difference from anybody else who didn't make the right decisions at the right time? Because of the amount of money involved? You mean finally as americans we are becoming more sensitive to other people's plights? Where is the fiscally conservative right posting on this blog?

[Democratt]

Stock market surging, middle America burning . Welcome to Amerika..land of jobless recoveries and v shaped recoveries for wall street.

hat tip to: http://financeopinionss.blogspot.com

the system needs to be overhauled cuz nothing seems to change .

[Shammie2000]

Hard breaking stories, but please America, come to your senses and don't send the ReThug's back
to finish the job.

[klm61]

I'm sorry, but it's hard for me to work up sympathy for most of the people profiled in the article. These are people who should have known better, who should have cut expenses when their jobs were lost, and who should have taken jobs offers they received. Most of them seem divorced from reality. The fact that they nevertheless had positions of real power and responsibility goes a long way in commenting on what got us into this economic mess to begin with. My sympathy is with the middle class and working class who are not turning their noses up at multiple job offers.

[LHoney]

"My sympathy is with the middle class and working class who are not turning their noses up at multiple job offers." ...and working multiple jobs!

[Democratt]

This more than anything else is why I don't trust Obama anymore.

The moment it became clear he wasn't going to fight to actually clean up the financial industry is the moment it became clear that the hope and change rhetoric was just that, rhetoric. All he cares about is keeping corporate money in dem hands, he doesn't dare anger his corporate sponsors.

good articles 4 slow news day: http://financeopinionss.blogspot.com

the system needs to be overhauled cuz nothing seems to change .

[FoonTheElder]

When they hire you it is, "We're one big family" and "Our employees are our most valuable resource".

When management fails again, most employees become that uncle no one likes to talk about, and get bounced without a life raft. All the financial resources have to go to the benefit of the real family at the top of the corporation.