For others, a new career direction isn’t so much about money as simply re-evaluating their priorities in hard times. That’s been especially true in the financial industry. Tal Dehtiar, who heads up Canada’s MBAs Without Borders (MWB), a charity that helps send business people to work on development projects around the world, says the number of applicants is way up this year. “We’ve seen people saying, ‘I’ve been let go by Bear Stearns or Morgan Stanley, and it’s finally time to do something positive with my life.’ ” Those who do get overseas postings in places like Kampala and Liberia are often choosing to stay to wait out the recession, he adds. “There is no rush to come back.”
Last year, Elayna Yussen was working for a struggling financial services firm when she decided to take a position through MWB in Tanzania. “I made a very good move,” she says, noting that a few months after she left, her former company closed its doors. Yussen is now back in North America and looking for work again, but she has no regrets. Her stint overseas has given her not just a new perspective, but has convinced her to pursue a career doing more socially minded work. “I think it most definitely forces people to sit down and evaluate what they really care about, and it opens people up to things they wouldn’t have tried,” she says.
Those who experience these kinds of major life changes are, of course, in the minority. For most, the recession is still a trying period fraught with worries about job losses and declining retirement savings. But one of the things that’s easily forgotten amid all the bad news and plummeting consumer confidence is that for those who still have jobs, disposable income levels haven’t really changed. Putting off big-ticket items and choosing to pay down debts is a prudent reaction to hard times. But many will also find that the prices of some goods they buy on a daily basis are falling along with the cooling economy.
Take, for instance, the price of gas. Last summer, it was topping nearly $1.40 per litre. At that price, keeping two daily drivers on the road could cost families a few hundred dollars a week. Lately, that bill has been nearly cut in half as the price of oil has fallen dramatically. Many consumer goods have also seen price declines. In fact, the latest U.S. retail sales figures shocked many analysts when they showed a slight rebound in January, which some attribute to the discounts retailers are offering as they try to move growing inventories. Sales at electronic and appliance stores were both up.
But perhaps the most surprising bright spot in this economy is that people aren’t really all that unhappy. Research has shown that during hard times, people do experience lower levels of happiness at first, but once things stabilize, they return to their usual selves. “People are really good at adapting,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside, who studies happiness. What’s more, people are very attuned to relative status and social comparisons, she says. Meaning that if you keep your job while others around you are losing theirs, you might find yourself feeling slightly happier. One recent study, notes Lyubomirsky, also found that if you live in a region of high unemployment, you’re not made as unhappy by being unemployed yourself.
One of those who counts himself among the “recession happy” is Floyd Holborn. He, like Geister, was laid off from Kitchener Frame after over a decade on the job there. But after spending a few uncertain months among the ranks of the unemployed, Holborn decided to turn his woodworking hobby into a new career. He’s taking some small business courses, and with the help of a local development agency, he’s started Floyd’s Custom Kitchens. So far, says Holborn, things have been going pretty well. He misses the steady paycheque from his $20- to $30-an-hour manufacturing job, but “I don’t necessarily miss the work,” he says. Lately, the 37-year-old has been busy drawing up quotes for design and remodelling projects he hopes to land, and he already has a few contracts on the go. He has the recession to thank for it. “I’ve always wanted to do this. This was perfect timing.”
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