WELCOME TO MY WORLD

"There are two key types of match inefficiency. One is geographic mismatch. In 2008, the percentage of individuals living in a county or state different than the previous year was the lowest recorded in more than 50 years of data. People may be reluctant to relocate for a new job if the value of their house has declined. In addition, many who would like to move are under water in their mortgage or can't sell their homes.

The second inefficiency is skills mismatch. In simple terms, the skills people have don't match the jobs available. Coming out of this recession there may be a more or less permanent change in the composition of jobs.

Both of these mismatches are contributing to the long term unemployment problem - and the housing bubble was a direct cause of both. Usually people can move freely in the U.S. to pursue employment (geographic mobility), but many people are tied to an anchor (their home). And many workers went into the construction trades and acquired skills that are not easily transferable. Both of these issues make the long term unemployment problem a difficult challenge."
Business Insider

This is the absolute perfect description of the situation I find myself in today. The industry that I have worked in all my adult life, construction, will never return, at least in my lifetime, to the state of activity we've known over the last twenty or so years. Where I live the jobs have dried up and they're never coming back. I'd move if I thought I could get hired on somewhere else but doing that would require my wife to leave her job, too. Since she has a really good job with a really good company that wouldn't make any sense at all. Besides, I couldn't sell my house now even if I wanted to. Nothing is selling out where I live and I doubt I could get what it cost me to build it back out of it.

So we've decided that the best course of action is to find something outside construction. I'm not looking to make big money but it has to pay enough to at least be profitable. The deal is, the jobs that are out there are few and far between and most aren't full time. On top of it, the jobs that I do find are generally paying minimum wage and people are lined up around the block to apply for them. And most of the applicants are younger and thus more attractive to employers than I am.

I'm not writing this to whine or complain but just as a way of saying that there is a whole lot of people out here that are just like me. They are never going to be able to make the money they once did and consequently they won't be spending as they once did. All the happy talk and upbeat news of a recovery isn't fact. It can't be. Sure the guys on Wall Street are doing ok, playing around with the money the taxpayers gave them. And some of the white collar world has gotten through this relatively unscathed. But the reality of our current situation is that an awful lot of high paying blue collar jobs have disappeared. It is that part of the middle class that bought cars, boats, big screens and houses that aren't going to be spending money anymore.

For many of us the economic recovery will never happen. That's just a plain, cold fact. The rest of the economy will have to adjust to this, whether it wants to or not.