Greetings

Just had a bit of electrical work done here in the midwest (I can see my computer keys again, but I digress...)

The Electrician told me their "Bench" was packed with unemployed tradepeople.

This tracks with your datum because they serve diverse residential, commercial and Industrial clients and its already slowed dramatically

This problem will not be solved by rate cutting, the economy driven by consumerism is fundamentally broken. You can't off shore a shit load of good jobs and then expect the survivors to keep buying using their house equity. Can You?

Well you can but it leads to...

Enjoy the journey

WarLord

But the signs here in VT are ominous. I work in commercial and residential construction, and not only is it slow now, but when I speak to various players (Architect and engineers, and the people who review plans for the state) there is very little coming down the road for the summer. The bigger contracting firms that normally go after the $1 mil plus jobs are going after $50k jobs. Just today, I heard that the Bear Sterns fiasco has caused the local branch of a national company to cancel tens of millions worth of work.

To say it looks bleak would be an understatement.

It is kind of a sign of froth in the market that he can't make the mortgage on the GM Building (and that he bought it for somewhere well north of $1B). Of course the commercial market is going to go through a rough patch, if not collapse.

Then again, hopefully that'll drive down some of the crazy commercial rents, companies can lock in some benefits, and smaller companies won't be forced out of the city as fast (while big ones argue for tax breaks).

It is the circle of life.

I work in purchasing in a local government in Florida. At a Prebid for Engineering services in a nearby county 64 engineering firms showed up for the prebid... a few years ago you could have counted them on two hands or sometimes if it wasn't a big project - no one would respond because they were all busiy with commercial projects..tells me all I need to know.

John in Florida

outside of 495 around Boston, commercial real estate has gone begging with rents four to five times cheaper than in urban spaces and a reasonable pool of labor nearby. Only problem with the labor pool is it's the kind of people companies don't want to hire too many of (i.e. older folks with family commitments, healthcare needs etc.)

since we seem to be set on competing with China for lowest cost provider, we need a deflationary environment to shed debt and make people desperate off to work for a pittance. Unfortunately, the debt shedding musical chairs usually stops with the little guy who's holding a mortgage and a bunch of full credit cards. We need to find some way for the average person to be able to shed debt in amounts corresponding to the deflationary environment.

In the meantime, we should start training all those unemployed construction workers how to assemble little plastic widgets and how to feed their families on five dollars a day.

A guy there said commercial brokers said it was 100% bad. All tenants were either a) defaulting on the rent and leaving, b) not paying but not moving out, or c) negotiating for lower rents.

And the woman I sat next to on the plane had left the mortgage brokerage industry and had started working retail again.

I've been in CA for two years, and it's exceedingly bizarre to this guy from Ohio.

I've seen the construction market just drop out here. Everyone I know with acquaintances in construction were troubled, switching, or specialized so that they felt they could ride it out. It's been pretty bad since mid-2007, maybe earlier.

The weird thing? There's been a sudden spate of non-housing construction project management jobs in the Bay Area (I'm a technical project manager, but it means I keep up on similar professions), but only since the new year. PM's are the first thing you look for with a project coming up. So though there may be some work for people in the industry, it's just trickling in now.

My guess is construction period is taking a hit, and depending on the location it'll be 9-15 months for any kind of recovery. That is of course barring any OTHER economic hits.

from a company that does IT for commercial construction companies. The first indicator is a lack of investment in internal infrastructure. They saw this coming a year ago.

Interestingly, I was interviewing for a tech PM position at a construction supply company about a year ago. Suddenly that tried up as well.

In the meantime, we should start training all those unemployed construction workers how to assemble little plastic widgets and how to feed their families on five dollars a day.

This reminds me of an argument made by a Cheap-Labor Conservative who styled himself 'maptwo0' on the NYTs Paul Krugman forum years ago.

His argument was that the American worker was literally not entitled to so much as starvation wages because The Market plainly decides such things, and if The Market decides workers should work for less than starvation wages, then that's what they should work for.

Take it or go die somewhere else. Those organizing to demand greater-than-starvation wages are to be shot.

You'd probably be amazed at how many Cheap-Labor Conservatives would prefer not to pay their workers anything at all. In the most extreme cases, like Krupp's in 1940's Nazi Germany, slave laborers weren't even provided with food, water, latrines, or anything except a hole to toss the carcass into when they were done. That's even less than the nickel an hour a lot of Chinese get. Naturally, 'The Market' determines the rate, and even determines when people are disposable.

In this context, feeding a family on five bucks a day is simply an extravagance, and shows an unwillingness to complete that Race To The Bottom all the way to the finish line.

There's probably more than a few people out there trying to feed a family on five bucks a day. And a lot of them can be relied upon to vote Republican to ensure that they never get out of their holes, motivated as they are by issues of God, Guns, and Gays instead of their own self-interest.

People are easily suckered by Cheap-Labor Conservatives. Probably enough to get McCain elected.

Most of the ills of modern society can in fact be attributed to Cheap-Labor Conservatives. The list is rather long:

Defeat The Right In Three Minutes

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/RescueAmericanJobs/message/18