Everything was fine. Eugene and I were living in my hometown. We had two little girls, and I was pregnant with a third. He had a good job at Skagit Corporation, the largest employer in town. Then, out of the blue, a much larger company bought Skagit and promptly shut it down. They used it as a tax write-off, people said.
That’s how my husband lost his job.
What happened next was harder to understand. For eight months, Eugene searched for another job and was unable to find one. No one seemed to be hiring engineers.
We weren’t suffering, though. My parents lived across the street; my dad built our house; and my grandma held the contract. Still, no one likes to be unemployed.
Eugene wasn’t the only engineer having trouble finding work. Boeing was in the process of laying off sixty percent of its workforce, and Seattle’s unemployment rate had risen to about 13%. This now-famous billboard on the way to the airport was put up by a couple of real estate agents.
That was when Eugene heard that an international organization, Asian Development Bank, had an opening for a mechanical engineer. To make a long story short, he applied and got the job, and we spent the next 22 years or so living abroad, mostly in the Philippines, but also in Vanuatu.
So… that was how I understood our story until President Trump slapped huge tariffs on almost the whole world and economists and bankers and Wall Street people started talking about a possible recession or even a depression or, worse yet, stagflation.
(Stagflation: high inflation combined with low economic growth and high unemployment…. A little bit of everything bad.)
One of the economic experts pointed out that the last time our country suffered from stagflation was the 1970s. Oh! Now I get it, I thought. That was exactly the time when Eugene couldn’t find a new job.
Strange how distant problems and decisions (like an oil embargo and the end of the gold standard*) could contribute to something that would so thoroughly alter our family’s life for so many years.
* There were multiple reasons for the 1970s stagflation. It’s complicated.
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MAGA = Make America GROAN again!
What your story illustrates is the importance of support systems during a period of stagflation. Family support of the like you had in the 1970s are far from the norm now, but the worst is the dismantling of what support is available from the state. In the UK, we still have much more state support that you do in the US, but it is being challenged and reduced as the decades pass. Finally, one has to ask, how many opportunities are there abroad currently for those enterprising individuals who are willing to travel? My suspicion is that particular pool is reducing, especially when you see the reduction in foreign aid – and not just by the US.
Lovely atmospheric family photo though 🙂
A fascinating link – fine family photo
Wonderful to know
Eugene loved his work with Asian Development Bank. It suited him even better than an ordinary engineering job.
This administration is scary. I’m not impressed with anyone’s credentials including the top guy and I haven’t seen anything remotely good happening. Whenever there is a statement of progress made, we find out a few days later that it didn’t happen. I sure hope we are not going back.
When a country’s in trouble, it hits some people more than others, although I expect the tariffs to hit all of us to some degree or another. I’m worried about my 17-year-old grandson who wants to major in medical research. Unfortunately, DOGE seems to have shut down the funds for most medical research. I hope things will change by the time my grandson’s in graduate school.
It seems it will be Deja Vu all over again!
Back the the 1970s with a new twist.
I remember the 70s. My dad had trouble finding work. I wishe we would learn from history instead of trying to repeat it.
This may end up being a hard period for young people trying to find a job and start their lives.
My dad left high school at fifteen just before the Great Depression. A challenging time.
I dislike that word, stagflation. It is a harbinger of nothing good, yet it doesn’t surprise me to see it talked about considering The Donald’s ill-advised tariffs. What is to come will be what was?
What is to come hearkens back to other hard times. And yet, each hard time is hard in its own way.
The consulting and liquidating of companies is never good for the average citizen. This time around, Americans are also going to learn how important federal workers actually are, especially when it comes to food safety and the National Weather Service.
I didn’t realize until recently that the 1970s were called a period of stagflation. I’d only heard the term used about Japan. They also called Japan’s stagflation period “The lost decades.”