The New Depression – Hard Knocks

Condemned Home

Much of America is feeling the pain of this down turn in the economy. Lay-offs, and closures are a normal in the vocabulary and don’t carry the alarm they would have 10 years ago.

According to a recent Gallup poll, unemployment in America is 10.0% for mid-October. This is ever so slightly better than their findings of 10.1% at the end of September. The Labor Departments numbers of 9.6% for September.

Then we start to talk the underemployment numbers. These are even more staggering than the already dizzying unemployment rates. What is underemployment you may wonder. It’s defined as persons that are actively looking for work, or those that have had to settle for part-time hours that really want to work full time. It also includes those that are able to work, but have quit looking.

Mahaska County itself has lower than the National average in the unemployment range. Mahaska County had a 7.3% unemployment rate in August of this year, while Wapello at the same time had a 9.2 percent. Some other local numbers are Jasper, 8.8 percent, 7.1 in Keokuk and Monroe Counties. Marion and Poweshiek Counties round out the local counties with a 6.6 and 6.3 unemployment rates respectively.
Unemployment and desperation are so bad in Newton and Jasper County, it’s a very heated subject. Any quick glace over their local news shows how the people are desperate for work, and how the town has been wounded by the massive loss of jobs, the latest being the group of nearly 200 released from Iowa Telecom. Where foreclosures and homeless people sleeping along the bike trails at night are common, and one can walk along finding the still smoldering ashes of the previous nights fires that help keep them warm still smoldering.

Home foreclosures had been halted under what was being called fraudulent paperwork on the part of the lenders. Attorney Generals have been looking into what appears to be the lenders being swamped by a wave of foreclosures and not being able to handle the large amount that have been hitting the books in the last year. Bank of America, the largest lender in the US has said it is going ahead with foreclosures by bringing out 30,000 to 40,000 new notices in the near future.

Iowa’s foreclosure rate went up in the second quarter to hitting a record 2.82 percent, up from a 2.49 percent of 2009 in the same quarter. It is also up from the 2.77 percent of the previous quarter. 1 in 371 homes ere in the foreclosure process. We all know at least 370 people, so chance are that person has lost everything. Many people have gone to short selling their homes, this practice is used sell items off (homes) in order to to pay the lender off. Many times you will still owe the lender in this practice, but you will have avoided a foreclosure in the process.

But not all is lost, nor is it all bad. I will show how these worst of times bring about some of the best of times, in both people and their loved ones.