From our Midwest bureau:
The recession was actually not officially declared until last week, but the psychology that drives it had already been e-mailed, blogged and broadcast for months. I used to worry that my TiVo thought I was gay — doesn’t everyone enjoy a little “Project Runway” at the end of a long, hard week? Now I worry that my browser knows I am about to lose my job.
“When everyone is talking about recession, we all feel like something has to change, even if nothing has changed for us,” said Dan Ariely, author of “Predictably Irrational,” a book that explains why people do things that defy explanation. “The media messages that are repeating doom and gloom affect every one, not just people who really have trouble and should make changes, but people who are fine. That has a devastating effect on the economy.”
[From The Media Equation - Stoking Fear Everywhere You Look - NYTimes.com]
Good point. Something similar came to mind the other day when one of the papers compared recent job losses to what happened in 1974. The date caught my eye. 1974, it happens, was the year I decided to quit my mega-secure corporate job and go freelance. I had a couple of bad years, but that had nothing to do with the recession that was then in progress. They were simply the pay-your-dues bad years that happen to all new ventures (especially in a line of work where "freelance" tends to be a euphemism for "unemployed"). The recession itself was actually good for me, because corporations were laying off permanent staff and turning to freelancers, used occasionally, to fill the gaps. And I was there.
Working, as I do now, in an office that handles unemployment claims, I see plenty of the recession at hand. It's a tough time to be looking for a job. And cheery advice is not much help there. Still, there's no need to run unless you need to run.
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