Who was hurt most by the financial crisis?
The answer to this question depends on the view you take on the subject. Unskilled labor, real estate brokers, mortgage companies, banks, and financial institutions were all severally affected by the financial crisis in their own way. To really evaluate this you have to understand how the statistics are formed and how they are used.
We all hear the unemployment rates on the nightly news but many don't understand where these numbers really come from. These numbers are based solely on who is currently receiving unemployment benefits from state and federal agencies. This does not include those who are currently out of work and don't receive benefits or for those whose benefits have ran out. So to truly understand who was hurt most by the financial crisis one must understand that there is no accurate way to track unemployment numbers. What is known are that those who worked in manufacturing were hurt as far as the unskilled job market?
Unskilled jobs are jobs that don't require special education or training in order to maintain or gain employment. The biggest market for these workers used to be manufacturing and construction. Even before the financial crisis took hold on the country many workers in manufacturing had lost their jobs do to them being moved to overseas locations.
This may have saved the company they were working for at the time billions of dollars but came at the lost of countless jobs. This ever increasing loss of jobs has made it difficult for those without specialized training to find work and to maintain their lively hoods. The true number of unemployed in these areas isn't shown in unemployment rates as many of these workers have yet to find new employment and have been laid off for over a year. This doesn't include construction laborers either.
Many skilled and unskilled construction workers have lost the means of employment during this financial crisis. The reason behind this has to do in the drastic down turn of the residential and commercial building markets. There are less loans being granted for large scale new construction projects. Many of these construction workers have found work doing refurbishments and upgrades but many are still unemployed as we try to make a turn around on this crisis. The only construction related trade that wasn't hurt was roofing since they mostly work on insurance related projects. This doesn't just effect the construction of houses and building but affect the careers of those who sell them as well.
Re-Max and Century 21 have both noted a large increase of office closures in recent years. This also includes the closing of independent agents throughout the country that had no affiliation with any firm. The issues in this field came about as a result of people not being able to gain credit to purchase homes. The finance issues paired with a large down turn in employment saw large numbers of brokers being put out of work as home were foreclosed on. These problems though are only temporary as long as we can find a solution.
Finding a quick solution to these problems will help insure that we are able to replenish these job markets. Being able to maintain work for both skilled and unskilled workers is important in order to have a strong economy. As people begin to recover we will see more of these jobs become available on the market again.