For the last five years or so the western economies have been in recession. It doesn't matter whether you call it a credit crunch, an economic downturn, or whatever other fancy title you give it the fact remains that the economies of the countries in Europe and North America have not been growing - they have been declining.
Politicians like to hide how bad things really are by saying it is not a recession unless the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) has fallen for three consecutive months. But, those of us in the real world know that when the public as a whole get scared they stop spending, and when they stop spending the supply of money going round gets less and less. And when that happens for five years or more, then it is more like a depression than a recession which makes people even more scared so they hold back further on spending their money. And so it continues.
The outcome of this is obvious, as more and more people begin to spend less then the shops begin to order less, and the manufacturers begin to make less and so order less new supplies and the cycle continues.
It doesn't take a genius to work out that as more and more manufacturers are ordering less, then the amount of people they employs needs to be reduced to match their output. And this is what has happened in countries all over the western world – unemployment is going up at an alarming rate. In Spain the unemployment figure for the under twenty-fives is in the region of 50%.
But as if in some grotesque self-fulfilling prophecy as more people become unemployed they have less money to spend which mean by its very nature that more people will be laid off. And with so many people unemployed it makes it doubly hard to find a new job as there are so many other people out their all looking for work.
In all it looks a very gloomy picture – but it doesn't always have to!
Those who find themselves being laid off will often be given a redundancy payout, especially if they have worked for their company for any length of time. Although these payouts are no longer as big as they sometimes were in the 1980's they can still amount to a tidy sum of money.
Ideally, if you can find a new job reasonably quickly, you could end up with an amount of money left over to put into your savings, but these days that scenario is not really unlikely.
So what do you do, do you live off the money while you hope to find work? How long is that likely to take, what happens when the money runs out?
All difficult questions, but this may be the time to stop and look at your situation through different eyes. How much did you really enjoy your work? Was it a something that you were passionate about or did you do it week after week simply to pay the bills and maintain some sort of lifestyle? What are the chances of getting the same or similar work in the future?
For some people being made redundant is in some ways a godsend. They have either been stuck doing a job they neither liked or was interested in, or worked in a profession they loved but always felt confined and restricted by the company they worked for. For them being made redundant was a way of being pushed when they couldn't find the nerve to jump themselves.
Now they can look at doing something they love and doing it for themselves. Or to look at it another way, if you can´t find someone to employ you - then look to employ yourself.
If you were lucky enough to finish work with a lump sum of money, either big or small, then a simple search on the internet for Franchise Opportunities will bring up hundreds of ideas for you to consider. It really is a question of finding a business that you would like to do and taking it from there.
Some of the franchise companies like McDonald's or Subway can cost a great deal of money to buy into but there are other companies out there offering different opportunities for far less money. Or, you may want to set up on your own without having to buy into a franchise.
Either way what you want is to find out as much about your chosen business as you can from someone who has already done it and made a success of it and is willing to pass on all that vital information to you.
Then after a couple of years you may well look back and think to yourself that being made redundant wasn't such a bad thing after all.
Nigel Thomas is the owner and founder of Samoht Publishing who publish Earn Extra Money with a Sandwich Delivery Business. You can view and purchase this e-book in all the popular formats at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/292697 or at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BNAQCMQ
