Economic Indicators

I have mentioned that we were at the UAR Convention last week.  This was a blessing for me as my older brother lives near where the convention was held in Midway, Utah.  It was great to visit with him, he had both of his knee joints replaced in May, and I haven't had a lot of time to visit since then.  He suffered an economic downturn as he was off healing, the shop where he was the head mechanic and shop foreman was closed by the parent company.

He is a Diesel Mechanic, and worked for a Moving and Storage Company for 21 years.  They decided, (foolishly, in my opinion) that it was better for them to outsource the service and mechanic work for the company.  It wasn't as though it was a large shop, my brother and 2, sometimes 3 other mechanics.  They were all given a small severance package and let go.

My brother is in his late 50's, he indicated that this is the first time in 40 years of working as a full time employee in various fields that he has used the unemployment insurance that he has paid into all that time.  I will admit that I have never used this either, but as Darcy and I were talking about the situation, Darcy commented that would be an interesting indicator of the economic circumstances.   How many people are using umemployment insurance for the first time in their careers? 

To me, that would really indicate what the economy is doing, there are professions that are somewhat cyclical and unemployment insurance would have been used much more frequently than other professions.  Farm workers, for example.  Anyway, just something that I had to stop and think about this morning.