The Economic Downturn..

[Tripe]

Yeah see do they also have a core group of business classes too, you know marketing and the like?

Anna's a knock-out though, that sounds shallow but it happens to be true, she really should look into talking to a print agency which would bring in some funds.

[wurwolf]

I'm guessing that your daughter would be an out of state student for Georgia, correct?  If she's unwilling to attend a state college for art design, then strongly encourage her to delay entrance to the school until she's established residency in the state. Generally that means spending a year not being supported by your folks, but that varies from state to state. Find a community college in the area with a related program (commercial design, web design, business, just anything that might transfer over) and have her attend that while working. Or attend a state school for the first two years and then transfer to Savannah.

But I can not recommend spending $35k a year on an art degree.

Well, the school in Savannah is called SCAD; evidently CAD is sort of an umbrella for art schools, since there's Delaware College of Art & Design (DCAD). There also happens to be a PCAD here in Pennsylvania and it's located in Lancaster city, a 20 minute drive from our house. She would get the same education without the overwhelming expense, but I suspect that what she really wants is to get out on her own and go to a whole different area. And I can sympathize with that, really, but I can't see that it's worth that huge debt.

We talked about taking basic courses at another college, either a community college or another, cheaper art school, but SCAD doesn't accept transfer students. So that's out.

She is pretty, that's true, and we've talked about the possibility of supplementing her income by modeling, but she seems hesitant to look into it and I'm a little leery of it all because I don't want to see her getting mixed up in some shady photography thing.

I will try talking to her about it again this weekend to see what she's thinking, as it's been a little while since we've discussed this. Thanks for the advice, everyone.

[Tripe]

You do need to get a good agency, if you like I could have mine suggest some in wherever it is she ends up.

[wurwolf]

You do need to get a good agency, if you like I could have mine suggest some in wherever it is she ends up.

Thanks. I'll mention this to her over the weekend and let you know what she says.

[RVR II]

..And to think this is what I wanted to do (work in the Space Shuttle program) when I grew up in the 80's

Space workers struggle a year after last shuttle

Published July 15, 2012

Associated Press

TITUSVILLE, Fla. –  A year after NASA ended the three-decade-long U.S. space shuttle program, thousands of formerly well-paid engineers and other workers around the Kennedy Space Center are still struggling to find jobs to replace the careers that flourished when shuttles blasted off from the Florida "Space Coast."

Some have headed to South Carolina to build airplanes in that state's growing industry, and others have moved as far as Afghanistan to work as government contractors. Some found lower-paying jobs beneath their technical skills that allowed them to stay. Many are still looking for work and cutting back on things like driving and utilities to save money.

"Nobody wants to hire the old guy," said Terry White, a 62-year-old former project manager who worked 33 years for the shuttle program until he was laid off after Atlantis landed last July 21. "There just isn't a lot of work around here. Or if so, the wages are really small."

White earned more than $100,000 a year at the end of his career at the space center. The prospects of finding a job that pay anywhere near that along the Space Coast are slim.

"I could take an $11-an-hour job that is 40 miles away," he said "But with gas prices and all that, it's not really worthwhile."

More than 7,400 people, who once had labored on one of history's most complicated engineering achievements, lost their jobs when the shuttle program ended last July. While other shuttle workers in Houston, New Orleans and Huntsville, Ala., lost jobs, those areas had bigger economies to absorb the workers. In less economically diverse Brevard County, the mainly contractor positions cut by NASA accounted for just under 5 percent of the county's private sectors jobs.

The Kennedy Space Center's current workforce of 8,500 workers is the smallest in more in than 35 years. In the middle of the last decade, the space center employed around 15,000 workers.

James Peek, a 48-year-old quality inspector for the shuttles, has applied for 50 positions with no success since he was laid off in October 2010. He has taken odd jobs glazing windows for a luxury hotel in Orlando and working as a security guard. He has no health insurance and incurred a $13,000 bill when he was hospitalized for three days last May.

"With most companies, it's like your application goes into a black hole," Peek said. "We're struggling to stay afloat."

Jobless space workers have signed up for Brevard Workforce's job placement and training services. Slightly more than half of the 5,700 workers the agency has been able to track have found jobs, but more than a quarter of those positions were outside Florida. Those jobs have been in the fields of engineering, mechanics and security, according to the agency.

Brevard County's unemployment rate spiked in the months that the shuttle program wound down, going from 10.6 percent in April 2011 to 11.7 percent in August 2011. It has since declined to 9 percent, a result of a smaller workforce as many former shuttle workers either moved away or retired earlier than planned. Brevard County has added 2,700 jobs since the beginning of the year, but many are in the southern part of the 72-mile-long county where information technology giant Harris Corp. and airplane-maker Embraer are located. Jobless space workers in the northern part of the county jokingly refer to those high-tech workers as "their rich cousins."

Some local employers are finding that the former space workers' salary demands are sometimes too high.

"STOP sending former Space Center employees," one employer wrote to Brevard Workforce, the local job agency, in a comment included in its monthly committee report. "They have an unrealistic salary expectation."

Taxpayer money allocated for job training programs for displaced space shuttle workers also is dwindling a year after the program ended.

Adding to the difficulties of finding a new job is the age of many of the former shuttle workers. Many spent their entire careers working on the space shuttles and are now in their 50s and 60s.

In between sending out resumes and meeting at networking events, many of the space workers are volunteering at Kennedy Space Center, giving tours to dignitaries and providing oral histories to tourists who stop by the Vehicle Assembly Building.

Even though many of the older space workers like White had years to plan for the end of the shuttle program, they stuck around, hoping to prepare the orbiters for displays in museums in Florida, Los Angeles and Washington after the program ended. They expected younger shuttle workers to move over to the successor Constellation program whose goal was to send astronauts to the moon and then Mars. But the cancellation of the Constellation program in 2010 increased the competition for those few jobs left prepping the shuttles.

Some shuttle workers, such as Kevin Harrington, had been holding out hope that the program announced after Constellation's demise — a heavy-lift rocket system that would launch astronauts in an Orion space capsule — would offer immediate widespread job opportunities. But the plans announced last year won't have unmanned test launches of the Space Launch System for another five years, and the first manned mission won't be for about another decade.

Private-sector companies, such as Paypal founder Elon Musk's Space X, are starting unmanned launches from Kennedy Space Center, but their need for workers doesn't come close to what was required for the shuttle program.

"We expected a little more action from our government, at least in figuring out what direction we're going to go in," said Harrington, 55, who worked on the shuttles' thermal protection system earning about $80,000 a year. "Ultimately, that would inform which direction we would go in. A lot of us thought, since we have such deep roots in the community, we could wait it out. It was hopeful at first. Now it isn't so hopeful. Things aren't moving fast."

Many of the former space workers find camaraderie and job tips each Friday at the weekly breakfast of the Spacecoast Technical Network, a group created by former Kennedy Space Center workers. Just hours before 70 members dined on eggs, biscuits and coffee at a recent meeting, three Chinese astronauts parachuted back to Earth in a capsule halfway around the world. For the space workers, it was yet another sign of the growing competition facing the United States as a leader of space exploration. At the moment, the United States has no way of sending astronauts to space in its own vehicles, and NASA is relying on the Soviet-made Soyuz capsules to send U.S. astronauts to the international space station.

One of the network's founders, Bill Bender, recently joined more than two dozen other colleagues working on a reconnaissance project for a contractor in Afghanistan where they are earning six-figure annual incomes.

Bender had been out of work for about a year from his job on the cancelled Constellation program when he took the one-year contract to work halfway around the world.

"As the months passed, I began to realize the hard reality that things I had known and taken for granted no longer existed. Stable work, good pay, benefits, etc. were no longer a reasonable expectation," Bender wrote in a recent email from Afghanistan. "As time went by and it was getting closer to a year without a job ... the (Afghan) opportunity looked better and better. The money was very good due to compensation for hardship and danger."

Those who have remained on the Space Coast without jobs are cutting back on small luxuries. Harrington has trimmed back on eating out and vacations.

Al Schmidt, who worked 27 years at the space center, has cut back on using his car and utilities at home to save money. The 60-year-old's unemployment benefits are running out soon, and without a new U.S. space program offering ready-to-go jobs, he is contemplating retirement, something he doesn't want to do.

"I live day to day. I can't afford new cars or lots of groceries," Schmidt said. "From where I sit, there is nothing coming online soon enough to resolve my problem."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/15/space-workers-struggle-year-after-last-shuttle/?test=latestnews#ixzz20j0lOr00

[Thrifty]

Some of these guys are in kinda dire straits financially, it seems.  I don't understand exactly how.  News that the space shuttle program would be shutting down had been coming for years.  They had time to prepare.

It's also saying that they're being snubbed for jobs because they're demanding too much.  It's like they never heard the phrase "beggars can't be choosers".

It's skilled technical engineering work.  There has GOT to be something they can do with those skills outside the field of space exploration.  Methinks maybe they're just searching too narrowly.

[Darth Geek]

Some of these guys are in kinda dire straits financially, it seems.  I don't understand exactly how.  News that the space shuttle program would be shutting down had been coming for years.  They had time to prepare.

It's also saying that they're being snubbed for jobs because they're demanding too much.  It's like they never heard the phrase "beggars can't be choosers".

It's skilled technical engineering work.  There has GOT to be something they can do with those skills outside the field of space exploration.  Methinks maybe they're just searching too narrowly.

Keep in mind, though, a lot of them are older (which makes it harder for them to find anything), have homes and kids and some grandkids. With the family ties like that, and housing market the way it is, up and moving is a lot harder for them. That and probably a lot of their wealth was tied into their homes, which just tanked a few years ago. Not to mention that they are living in Florida, which as I understand it is not exactly a cheap place to live.

[k1]

I've been trying to refinance our mortgage for a long time now. We're ALMOST at the point where we found a way that our current mortgage company will accommodate our request for a hardship modification. Everything has been preunderwritten and were just waiting on a letter from my wife's doctor regarding her being out on disability (causing us to be late on a few payments since she couldn't work).

It's been like pulling teeth to get this letter. We've been going back and forth with the drs since March. Ridiculous.

[Bob]

I've been trying to refinance our mortgage for a long time now. We're ALMOST at the point where we found a way that our current mortgage company will accommodate our request for a hardship modification. Everything has been preunderwritten and were just waiting on a letter from my wife's doctor regarding her being out on disability (causing us to be late on a few payments since she couldn't work).

It's been like pulling teeth to get this letter. We've been going back and forth with the drs since March. Ridiculous.

Refinancing is such a painful process.  I almost went insane with mine.

Mine insisted that I owned a company in Nevada that was going bankrupt and it took me a month to tell them they are idiots to think that.

[Thrifty]

Some of these guys are in kinda dire straits financially, it seems.  I don't understand exactly how.  News that the space shuttle program would be shutting down had been coming for years.  They had time to prepare.

It's also saying that they're being snubbed for jobs because they're demanding too much.  It's like they never heard the phrase "beggars can't be choosers".

It's skilled technical engineering work.  There has GOT to be something they can do with those skills outside the field of space exploration.  Methinks maybe they're just searching too narrowly.

Keep in mind, though, a lot of them are older (which makes it harder for them to find anything), have homes and kids and some grandkids. With the family ties like that, and housing market the way it is, up and moving is a lot harder for them. That and probably a lot of their wealth was tied into their homes, which just tanked a few years ago. Not to mention that they are living in Florida, which as I understand it is not exactly a cheap place to live.

I see what you're saying.  It's funny, because I keep hearing both "young, recent college graduates can't get jobs, all the older people are getting them!" right along with "old, experienced people can't get jobs, all the younger and cheaper people are getting them!".  Makes you wonder if there's some magical age where you can get work.

On the housing front, this is why I am still skeptical at the notion that buying a house is such a good idea.  Not only is it presented as a good idea, but it's presented as the ONLY idea; you would be foolish NOT to buy a house.  They say that housing is an investment.  Then the economy tanks, your house is worth less than the balance on your mortgage, and you're too shackled to the house to relocate (so your mobility in finding new work in case you lose your job is limited).  Point that out and I always get a "um... well that's an aberration.  you should still buy a house."

[Bob]

Of course, most houses didn't go down in value.   I know mine did not. 

[k1]

Of course, most houses didn't go down in value.   I know mine did not. 

Ours did.  Dropped about 80,000 in value because of about 9 homes in our neighborhood who all defaulted on their loans and were foreclosed on. 

[Darth Geek]

Some of these guys are in kinda dire straits financially, it seems.  I don't understand exactly how.  News that the space shuttle program would be shutting down had been coming for years.  They had time to prepare.

It's also saying that they're being snubbed for jobs because they're demanding too much.  It's like they never heard the phrase "beggars can't be choosers".

It's skilled technical engineering work.  There has GOT to be something they can do with those skills outside the field of space exploration.  Methinks maybe they're just searching too narrowly.

Keep in mind, though, a lot of them are older (which makes it harder for them to find anything), have homes and kids and some grandkids. With the family ties like that, and housing market the way it is, up and moving is a lot harder for them. That and probably a lot of their wealth was tied into their homes, which just tanked a few years ago. Not to mention that they are living in Florida, which as I understand it is not exactly a cheap place to live.

I see what you're saying.  It's funny, because I keep hearing both "young, recent college graduates can't get jobs, all the older people are getting them!" right along with "old, experienced people can't get jobs, all the younger and cheaper people are getting them!".  Makes you wonder if there's some magical age where you can get work.

On the housing front, this is why I am still skeptical at the notion that buying a house is such a good idea.  Not only is it presented as a good idea, but it's presented as the ONLY idea; you would be foolish NOT to buy a house.  They say that housing is an investment.  Then the economy tanks, your house is worth less than the balance on your mortgage, and you're too shackled to the house to relocate (so your mobility in finding new work in case you lose your job is limited).  Point that out and I always get a "um... well that's an aberration.  you should still buy a house."

Oh, I concur about the bullshit "you must buy a house" crap. I still get that pressure from my parents. And my conclusion is pretty much what you said.

As for the older and younger people getting jobs, it varies depending on what kind of jobs. Older people can't get the kind of jobs they had with the salary they were relying on, because of younger cheaper people getting them (unless the job was simply cut). And younger people have to fight with people with a little more experience to get what few jobs there are available. Cheech and Chong said it best: "Things are tough all over."

[Bob]

Of course, most houses didn't go down in value.   I know mine did not. 

Ours did.  Dropped about 80,000 in value because of about 9 homes in our neighborhood who all defaulted on their loans and were foreclosed on. 

I have not really figured out the general housing situation.   I know the prices of homes in Houston have gone up, and in other cities the opposite is true.

[Thrifty]

Of course, most houses didn't go down in value.   I know mine did not. 

Ours did.  Dropped about 80,000 in value because of about 9 homes in our neighborhood who all defaulted on their loans and were foreclosed on. 

I have not really figured out the general housing situation.   I know the prices of homes in Houston have gone up, and in other cities the opposite is true.

Sounds like a gamble, like any other investment, and not the "OMG BUY A HOUSE IT'S GONNA GO UP IN VALUE FER SURE!!!" crap I'm always being fed.

When I want to invest money, I'll put it in a damn mutual fund.  I can keep track of that shit from anywhere in the world.