Wow.
533,000 lost their jobs just before Christmas. How f*#%ed up is that?
And it hits closer to home more than you could imagine.
Case in point. I have a group of friends from law school who quit their regular law firm job last year to work for an outsourcing company doing legal work (due diligence) for companies based in the U.S. They were sent to Texas for training and flew back here to do the job. They worked reasonable hours and were earning in dollars.
And then late December, after Christmas day, they were informed that they were being laid off.
Another friend of mine, from high school, worked as an architect in Canada. He had been with that firm for 3 years already. Then, in November, his boss gave him his walking papers. My friend was speechless as he didn't expect it. But he himself told me that he should've known it was coming. Architects earn income when companies hire them to draw buildings. Those companies need extra capital from big banks. If big banks go bankrupt, these companies can't borrow money. If there's no money, there's no building. And if there's no building, there's no work for the architect.
I'm actually scared of what 2009 has in store for us. Already, hundreds of OFWs from Taiwan and the Middle East have lost their jobs due to this global financial crisis and they're all coming back to the Philippines jobless.
That's gotta affect us in a big way. I'm sure liliit and mga remittances natin this year. Then we'll see how that affects the local economy.
I sure hope our policy-makers and national leaders did their homework and installed the necessary safety measures to protect and preserve our economy.
Otherwise, the next time we 533,000 jobs lost, it might be in the Philippines.
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