This is the queue last week on Stephens Green when the convenience store Londis advertised some jobs for some new stores opening this year, and had an open interview day. Applicants were forces to queue on the street outside which snaked all the way around to Grafton Street. It really is a throwback to the 1980′s – just check out the video below!

There were 100 jobs advertised but they had over 100 applicants. People from all walks of life – much like when a few months ago, McDonald’s advertised a new store opening in Ennis and got 500 CV’s – many from Bankers and Accountants!

Have a look at this video to see exactly how big this queue really is…

There are many benefits of a service like this, especially in the current economic climate. With unemployment rising, many skilled people are finding themselves time rich but cash poor. With our service your time and skills are your payment so cash doesn’t need to change hands at all. Businesses can even get in on the action by providing their goods as payment for services, helping them lower costs and promote themselves. How about a new restaurant offering a few free meals to an accountant who helped them file tax returns? The possibilities are endless.

As well as these opportunities to swop goods and services, the site also has an Ideas Exchange which hopes to connect entrepreneurs with mentors and experienced individuals who are looking to get involved in new start-ups.

The name I’m sure is a pun on the popular Book “Freakonomics” – which is a favourite of mine. I think this site has great potential as really exchanging people’s skills and trades is somewhat of a lost art. I’ve always believed that web 2.0 technologies is bringing back some of the almost lost human interaction via the medium of technology.

I’ll have to put a few of my own posts up and see how it goes!

About 9 months ago I watched a fascinating documentary on RTE1 called “Future Shock Property Crash” – a frank and honest report by an Irish Journalist called Richard Curran, about what he saw as being an impending properly crash – far worse than the “Soft Landing” that the banks were preaching. the cracks in the market were already starting to show, but he predicted that house prices would falling by up to 40% from their height in latest 2006 – and that it would happen very quickly. He also went into detail about the ramifications of this event.

At the time I was contemplating the thought of buying another property – and I think this cemented my initial gut feeling that the risks were just too high and that I’d be better off staying put for the moment. Boy am I glad I didn’t.

On the radio this morning they were talking about how in Dublin, the average price of houses has fallen by 30% since it’s peak (15% overall across Ireland). This is predicted to fall another 10% this year – and some economists say even greater losses are very probable. Yesterdays an Irish Times article warned that UCD economist Morgan Kelly sent out a warning that “Irish House prices could fall by 80%“. I don’t think a lot of people really believe the latter statistic, but it seems that Mr Curran was bang on the money at least.

I am so so glad I am not one of the very many people in this county now stuck with a massive mortgage that stretches themselves every month, most of it going in interest to the banks who seem to be throwing it away, not to mention being stripped of their freedom in the form of a house they cannot afford to sell. My mother always says she hates to see me paying rent and ‘pouring money down the drain’ but hey, it sure beats 100k of Negative Equity!

I recently into a brand new apartment. Just finished, first let, very high quality build. The builder had awful timing as out of 45 units built he could only sell a handful. He then had to enter an agreement with the bank and rent the rest for 5 years and hopefully get the money he wanted for them then. The rental market took a bit of a dip at the time, and I got a pretty hefty discount on the original asking price for the apartment. If I work out what the first few units sold for, and how much the mortgage would be on this property, I’m renting it for over 30% less than it would cost to buy!

Looks like the recession isn’t always so bad!

But really if you think about it, for most people, its not that bad at all… Actually, for many it’s bloody brilliant!

Ok so yes, unemployment in this country has now topped 300,000. But that is still less than 8% of the population which leaves 92% of us who are relatively safe in our jobs. Forgetting about the fact that there may be a slight chance you may loose your job, for the majority of people, things are not really that different.

Actually, there are a lot of good things about an economic slowdown. Prices are falling through the floor so (tac increases aside)  in reality you are getting considerably more for your money each month. For Example:

• Oil Prices:  It usually costs me very close to €60 to fill my car – yesterday I filled it for just a tad over €40. From a peak of nearly €146, it is now under €50. This not only means cheaper petrol for your car, but it means lots of other things get cheaper too – flights being the obvious one.
• Interest Rates: If you are on a tracker mortgage it’s happy days – you just got a 0.75% reduction in your mortgage. The lucky people in the UK have a base rate of 1.5%, the lowest it has been in the history of the central bank.
• Shopping: The retail sector is being hit harder than most overall (yet some of the big chains are actually reporting very healthy profits) but most are lowering prices to try to increase turnover. Many of the Sales actually started Before Christmas this year, actually enabling you to cut down on the cost of Christmas
• Foreign Exchange: The Dollar has been sliding for quite some time, but now Sterling is following suit – it is at record low’s right now, so if you are traveling to the UK, or if you are shopping online and buying goods in Sterling, there are some bloody fantastic deals to be had!
• The Service Industry: It was not too long ago that if you needed a handyman of some sort, electrician, bricky, plumber – they were next to impossible to get hold of, and ferociously expensive. Now that things have slowed down, not only is it easier to get them, but you can actually play themselves off each other to get the best price for your job. Very often their Eastern European counterparts are willing to work for considerably less money, and lets face it they do much better work.

Personally, I don’t ft exactly into this category, as I work in sales so my earlings are partly commission based. We have noticed a slowdown in business, projects being put on hold and budgets being reviewed, so deals are not coming in as we would have expected this time last year, so my earlings have taken a hit.

Still, all in all, lets be positive about it – because of many of the points above, there are some aspects of the recession that a pretty dam good!

A fantastically simple yet effective piece, not exactly what you’d call politically correct though! I love it though – kinda South Park Esque…

I’m very happy and thankful to say that 2009 is looking good for me, and (afaik) my job is pretty safe. but its really scary too see what is happening to the people around me. I’ve been out of college and in the real world for about 6 years now – I completed a three year degree and was beginning my career in as short a time as possible. However I know quite a few people who stayed around the college scene, getting a string of further qualifications which promised to make them infinitely more desirable to the market, meaning they could climb the ladder to the big bucks at a far more rapid rate. unfortunately with the times that are in it, this probably did not pan out to be the wisest decision to have made. Often in times like this, real practical previous experience is valued more highly than raw qualifications. People are even saying that MBA’s are just not worth it any more -And that was before we entered a recession!

Unfortunately many people now find themselves in a real predicament. Obviously, know one could have foreseen the global economic downturn coming so soon and to such a great extent. Some of the traditional professions which would previously have been though of as safe – like solicitors for example – are now really feeling it. I know several people who have spent 6 or more years getting qualified, have now been released onto the job market, only to find there are pretty much no jobs for newly qualified people. Due to the amount of redundancies at higher levels, these experienced workers are now being forced to take entry level jobs just to have some sort of money coming in. A solicitor with several years experience now glad to have a job making €25k – wow, not many people thought the beginning of 2009 would look like this.