What was life like after 2008 financial crash compared to now?
Posted by Desperate-Drawer-572@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 191 comments
For those who went through the 2008 crisis, how bad were things then compared to now?
Was the job market better or worse than now? How was standard of life back then vs now?
Whole-Lychee1628@reddit
My life is completely different. In 2008, I was working minimum wage dead end jobs and sharing a house with a friend. Since then I’ve got my arse into gear, and have been in the same career for 14 years, with regular promotions and pay rises. And through inheritance, I was able to buy a house outright last year. So I’m now about as insulated as you can be from financial shocks, other than having stacks and stacks of savings.
My utility bills have gone up, but thanks to no rent or mortgage, it’s not something I have to particularly worry about or keep an eye on.
I do not envy anyone just starting out these days though.
SimplyFootballNet@reddit
Finish the equation, if you can, get some solar panels and a battery whilst you have the funds to invest in it and the positioning of the house works - and then you're pretty much cost free and fully insulated from future shocks. All you'd have to worry about in terms of ongoing bills is water bills and council tax if shit hit the fan. You could heat your home from the solar.
Whole-Lychee1628@reddit
That’s a job for retirement I think. Put that lump sum to proper use. Roof might need doing again then as well, as I had it replaced on surveyor advice when I first moved in. Double glazing is good (only one showing condensation, and that’s only a wee one) but give it the 20 or so years to said retirement? Again a job for the old lump sum. Basically try to divorce myself as much as possible from bills.
Hopefully by then solar will be even more affordable, and even more efficient. A few neighbours have panels up, so I might go ask them how they’re finding it. I know some salesmen make unrealistic claims about their efficiency. But even if it halves my energy bills (and I only use gas for the boiler, so it might be even more), they’ll pay for themselves in the long run. It’s just a question of How Long!
theportyunionjack@reddit
Today feels more like the year leading up to it tbh. The general sense of unease
reader4567890@reddit
I was working as a TEFL teacher in Poland when it hit. I'd just moved into a flat without furniture and was bringing so little in that I slept on an inflatable mattress with a puncture - I trained myself to pump it up in my sleep. It was grim... Really grim.
After a few months I decided it was time to leave work and return back to the UK. My students were dropping like flies because their companies were pulling funding (adult students). The final straw came just after I'd bought a sofa bed from my boss - my pay packet for the month was less than zero; I owed him money for the sofa as my wage didn't cover it. I couldn't live on thin air, so that was that. It's a shame as he was a great boss and his company was struggling too.
Cultural_Tank_6947@reddit
For a while, it was much much worse - people were genuinely losing their homes back then. But once that was over, and the financial regulations were changed, things stabilised.
That's why in general, I think right now is worse where there's never ending "unprecedented" crises.
CyclingBrit@reddit
This is just the sensationalist 24h news cycle that needs a weekly 'unprecedented crisis' to get the eyeballs.
TonyBlairsDildo@reddit
Bexit, COVID and the Ukraine war (with all the sanctions and disruption that brought) are fairly described as Big Deals geopolitically for the UK.
Dapper_Otters@reddit
Find me a decade that didn’t have at least 2 or 3 similar sized events.
TonyBlairsDildo@reddit
Have fifteen. 1993 to 2008
Dapper_Otters@reddit
The dot com crash? Afghanistan and Iraq wars? Foot and mouth crisis? The credit crunch prior to 2008?
TonyBlairsDildo@reddit
Point to me on the inflation graph when Foot & Mouth happened.
Show me on the employment graph when Saddam was toppled.
Please...
Dapper_Otters@reddit
Presumably you’re accepting the dot com crash and credit crunch then.
TonyBlairsDildo@reddit
Dot com crash is imperceptible on employment, inflation or other graphs of economic health. I didn't think it needed mentioning.
As for the "Credit Crunch" - you can have an extra year if you consider a drought of mortgages a material economic harm (it's not clear what you do consider to be that since you brought up Foot & Mouth, but not Dunblane in 1996).
callisstaa@reddit
I feel like the Strait of Hormuz is being downplayed somewhat.
AnaManaPeeuh@reddit
Energy shock after energy shock is a joke to you?
dwair@reddit
I can remember a never ending sensationalist 24h cycle of doom news back in 2008. I think you would have to go back to the mid 90's and before the mass public Internet take-up to find a time when the news wasn't 24/7 crisises being rammed down our throats.
I'm 60 and I can't remember a time when it was as bleak as it is now. Even through Thatchers era we all thought things would improve, and eventually they did for a bit. Now I don't think many people have that hope, because it's difficult to see how things could improve.
jarvi123@reddit
Carerul there pal, not being a catastrophizer on Reddit is very frowned apon.
CyclingBrit@reddit
haha - tbh I was expecting to go into negative numbers when I posted the comment!
jarvi123@reddit
Me too, I thought you would have been in the triple digit downvotes by now lol.
XihuanNi-6784@reddit
Only in part. When it comes to the amount of growth, and the amount we're told we can spend on public services and infrastructure we're really nowhere near as optimistic as people were in the 2000s. It's not just the news. We are being told from all angles, and have been for basically the last 20 years, that things won't really be getting better anymore. We just have to tighten our belts and accept that 'there's no money'. That's not just the news.
AlrightTrig@reddit
This is definitely part of it, but improvements to infrastructure and maintenance of towns, streets and roads seems to be appalling and all we’re ever told is there’s no money. The councils run on nothing all year round. In my town the bins are overflowing, the streets and beaches are filled with litter and many buildings are in a state of disrepair for years.
CyclingBrit@reddit
I'm not saying things are great; and austerity politics from the 2008 time until now have really taken their toll. But, things can be a bit shit without it having to be a crisis everytime
Mean_Actuator130@reddit
Back then I remember someone telling me they wouldn't lose their job despite the meltdown. I think by next week, they had lost their job.
Fwoggie2@reddit
Similar situation. I was working in a supplier industry for pubs and didn't get a pay rise for three years. Eventually I moved to Germany for four years to escape and my career took off.
Targettio@reddit
I was in a similar boat. Early career (but had a career, which was key), no real debt (outside student loan) and no real savings. So interest rates going mad and runs on banks didn't really effect me.
Longer term, I think it impacted us all with wage stagnation, lower growth and government debt propping up the banks.
But inspite of that, my career did ok and bought a house during the low interest era, and was financially stable enough to weather the more recent interest rate changes.
Elmundopalladio@reddit
Going back a bit further - it was much worse for my profession in the early 90’s, 2008 was tough, but nothing like the redundancies that happened before. We also haven’t really seen negative equity trapping folk as we did back then.
What has changed significantly is the cost of living has escalated significantly so it’s much harder to weather the storm. I compared the cost of a room in South London to when I was living there - as a percentage of average salary it’s eye watering. You could skimp and get by, but now I don’t know how folk do it?
ZazieZazen@reddit
The intensity of collapse in 2008 was worse. This is more unremitting, one thing rolled on top of another.
FWIW I think being in the worst hit working class industrial areas (North/Scotland/Wales) in the 80s was both intense and unremitting. But most of the rest of the country now seems to be catching up to that.
maxthebold@reddit
Yes it was bleak enough
Husband lost job and was on dole for a bit then part time
Had to have a car re possessed
Luckily rent was cheap
Houses were cheap but near impossible to get a mortgage
I was lucky with my job but there were plenty of cuts
ImNotHalberstram@reddit
This reads a bit like Charles Bukowskis poetry
ThatsMeOnTop@reddit
Or something by Cormac McCarthy
No_Ring_3348@reddit
Nah McCarthy is far more precise and uses long sentences, like this:
There were lean years and they came on us the way weather comes, without asking. The man lost his work and stood in the queue with the others for what the state would give and after a while he took what part-time labour there was and was glad of it. They came for the car. He watched it go down the road on the flatbed of another man's truck and said nothing because there was nothing to say. The rent was small and that was the one mercy. The houses sat cheap and empty in their rows and no bank would lend against them, so that a man might stand in the street and look at a thing he could not have for any price he could raise. She kept her work. Others did not. The cuts came through the place like a scythe through standing grain and each morning she went in not knowing if her name was on the list and each evening she came out and it was not, and that was enough, and they went on.
marsman@reddit
Houses are only about 7% higher now inflation adjusted, they had just spent about a decade increasing rapidly in cost in real terms, so I'm not sure that you'd see them as 'cheap' at that point, not to mention that mortgage rates were still sat at around 5-6% (I locked into a sweet 5.5% 10 year fix..) up until the insanely low 0% rates kicked in.
Rent was more reasonable however.
maxthebold@reddit
Sorry I thought this was an Irish sub but realised after its ask UK
2B_limitless@reddit
Same, it never stopped.
MrsMigginsOldPieShop@reddit
Austerity kicked in afterwards which reshaped a lot of public services, including the armed forces, emergency services, NHS, local government etc, which I think we are still seeing the effects of now.
confuzzledfather@reddit
Bye bye Sure Start centers, youth clubs, walk in centres, street cleaners, grass mowers, EMA payments for young people and bunch of other austerity victims. Hello mass homelessness and food banks.
Troll_berry_pie@reddit
I was in college at the time and I remember no more EMA being a big thing.
Magneto88@reddit
Nearly everyone I know used it for go out drinking. Parents still get child benefit and other associated benefits for 16-18 year olds. It was always a bit of a ridiculous scheme.
Troll_berry_pie@reddit
I know people who didn't bother coming into college for the rest of the week if they were late to one morning lesson because they knew they were now not going to get EMA.
callisstaa@reddit
Mine was delayed and got backdated and I bought a PS2.
A lot of my friends spent it on weed.
callisstaa@reddit
Mine was delayed and got backdated and I bought a PS2.
UmlautsAndRedPandas@reddit
I was just about to start secondary school in '08 but even I remember a clear "before and after" regarding the rise in homelessness.
XihuanNi-6784@reddit
It's incredibly important to note that austerity was actually the opposite of what they should have done. They bailed out the banks, took the banker's debt onto the public purse, and then cut public services to 'pay for it'. Basically making normal people pay for the banks' mismanagement of the economy. We should have done what they did in Iceland and let the banks fail, then nationalised them. We basically let them get off scot free relative to what should have happened to them.
No_Law_1528@reddit
Letting banks fail will basically be the Great Depression 2.0 or the greatest depression. Iceland’s banking sector is completely dead, they have gone back to fishing and inserted some tourism.
TallmanMike@reddit
First I've heard of it - article I can read that explains it? Is it due to lack of confidence in Iceland's economy etc?
No_Law_1528@reddit
It has been a while as I studied that either during my first degree or A level. But basically the Icelandic banking sector was a bit sketchy, they used high interest rates to lure in foreign cash savings and just loan out at a rate that is just above cost. As most savings were foreign it was ok to let the bank bust, because once you let your banks go bust no one trust them. Their unsustainable model wouldn’t have worked in the long term anyway and it’s just a matter of time it will go bust. They also broke their financial guarantee backing promise which further kills its banking sector. UK cannot lose its banking sector, it’s the only sector apart from law and education that’s bringing in money to the country. The only budget surplus areas are London and the Home Counties which relies on London. And the government actually made a small profit on bailing out banks after they have recovered.
When the Icelandic banks bankrupt people lost all their savings, but Iceland itself is a resource rich country and the money they made from banking were basically spent on luxuries or retirement. The fish was still there they just didn’t bother to catch it. After losing their savings all the fishermen started fishing again and some worked on tourism. Iceland did not advertise on tourism until after the financial crisis. Iceland also invested on its airline and turn it into a trans Atlantic hub which further boosted tourism.
TallmanMike@reddit
Interesting! Must be nice to have the luxury of your entire banking sector going bust and not caring much.
Not_A_Toaster_0000@reddit
Only having a population of about 300,000 people helped a lot
Ok_Shirt983@reddit
I don't have data on what their economy is based on, but despite GDP growth being hit harder in Iceland by the 2008 crisis and Covid, it seems like their recovery tracks or outperforms the UK's in general according to this data from the world bank https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2024&locations=IS-GB&start=2006&view=chart
mountearl@reddit
I disagree. The cutbacks in government spending under Alistair Darling were severe. They had to be to prevent the pound from collapsing and also to stop even more damage to government credibility. The fact that "normal people" were highly indebted seems to be glossed over. If the banks had not been bailed out, they would have had to call in far more mortgages, car loans, personal loans, loans to businesses etc to stay afloat. Which would have been calamitous for everyone, including those who were more prudent with their borrowing. Far from "Normal people" bailing out the banks, it should be viewed as the government giving money to the banks to bail out "normal people". And in the case of banks such as RBS, they were effectively nationalised, just as you would wish.
Banks don't mamage economies. Nor, it seems after 2008, does anyone else.
CarpeCyprinidae@reddit
Its also important to note that the scale of state sector spending in 2007-2008 was beyond bat-poop insane. Austerity only hurt so much because so much spending that never should have been happening was yanked at the same time and those who had depended upon it fell.
unsustainable public sector finances, riding a long boom and not spending on things that made the country richer, were a big part of the problem
thehappyhobo@reddit
The UK budget deficit was way bigger than the bailout though. It would have made a difference, but you would still have been looking at cuts or bigger borrowings. And you only need to look at Liz Truss to see there are limits on borrowing.
Bobbins71@reddit
While this is Broadly true, the bail outs were not giving the banks money. The government provided loans and guarantees or bought shares in failing banks.
Over time the Government got most of the money back. The exception is the shares it bought in RBS which have never recovered to the share price the Government paid.
You can see the evidence to this in the National Audit Office report on this subject.
I do agree that ‘letting the banks fail’ is the morally right thing to do but practically not really the best solution.
OzneBjj@reddit
I know you said 'I think' but its 100% still seeing thw effects. Im in one of the above services and it will never be the same again after that.
karmacarmelon@reddit
Yep. The police had big cuts and despite increases since, we're still not back up to the number of police officers that we had in 2010.
mountearl@reddit
You can't measure public sector productivity by counting manpower alone.
AllAvailableLayers@reddit
Which is crazy, considering that there's 7 million more people, a 15% increase.
D-Angle@reddit
We still are, vast swathes of the public sector are still told every year that there isn't as much money as last year but it we just tighten our belts one more time it will all be fine. What they think there is left to pare off after 18 years is beyond me. Government both local and national has been doing it for so long that they have forgotten how to do anything else but stop doing things and claim it's good because it 'cuts waste'.
Perfect_Nectarine_37@reddit
I was 24, just getting a promotion from admin/grunt into a junior account executive. A career in PR I am still in. Honestly... nothing changed. Granted, didn't care about the job then and was ignorant but 2009-15 were happiest years of my life. Most of my friends say the same. I guess it is age/responsibilities /perspective
blackbirdonatautwire@reddit
It depends what country you were in and what stage of your life or career. The big issue is that it was very much not expected so lots and lots of people who had debts or bought houses with mortgages lost their homes. Then loads of people lost their jobs and had their lives derailed. I was just starting my career at the time and was renting and had no debt. So I didn’t lose a house, but I did lose my job and had to emigrate and as a result lost my career and ended up doing random jobs and now I’m in my forties I’m still renting and will never be able to buy. The big difference is the quality of life you could have before the crash compared to after the crash. And it has never returned to be pre 2008 levels.
Bossman_Mike@reddit
It was very bleak. Everyone I knew just felt exhausted and empty, people were losing their jobs left and right, living standards were shrinking and it all began to feel hopeless.
SuperJim64@reddit
I only graduated Uni and started working in 2007 - don't think it affected me much at the time - but I'm sure it's to blame with my wage being shite in the 18 years since.
pooey_canoe@reddit
Yeah I was 25 and I don't recall it effecting anybody I knew? No-ones families seemed in trouble, I don't remember prices changing much? There was no enshittification of products. It may have been our parents being old enough to be unaffected and us too young.
I worked in hospitality and if anything that industry started booming, or at least following the Pizza Express 'a restaurant in every town' expansion.
Main difference was no longer seeing that Bradford and Bingly advert anymore.
Post Covid has been dramatically different!
mothsugar@reddit
i was 24 and actually got my first 'career' job in sept 2008 when it was all going on. like you i didn't feel anything at the time.
a couple of years later i was made redundant and i think that was an aftershock of 2008 though (most of our clients were public sector so the delayed impact of austerity came through)
tbh i had another job within a month. gen z has it harder right now.
XihuanNi-6784@reddit
I had a similar experience, but I was 18 or so. Hadn't started working yet, but no one I knew personally seemed directly affected.
Shimozah@reddit
Anecdotal, but I graduated uni a few years later and the job market in the tail end of it was much worse. A lot of STEM graduates I knew ended up in retail or waiting tables for a few years before they could land jobs more appropriate to their fields. Felt like it was after 2014 things started picking up again.
rupertbarnes@reddit
Not as bad as the recessions in the 80’s.
MrP67@reddit
It started off really bad. I was moving money around between bank accounts because you isn't know if they would go bankrupt or what would get covered. I worked at BT and they planned to let 10,000 people go but upped that to 20,000. I spoke to a recruitment agent who made it sou d like the apocalypse, told me to apply for everything, take anything. In the end I went self employed and covered bills and looked in to working abroad. I couldn't really say how long it lasted, i think people got used to it more than it really improving til about 2016.. In terms of job markets I'd say now is 10x better than 2009-2012
steak_bake_surprise@reddit
I wasn't a home owner then, but I was leaving to go abroad for a job for a year because the job market was appalling and I was getting zero interviews, even though I had a degree+masters and plenty of experience in my field. Came back around 2010 and the job market was the same, still no interviews. Thought fuck it, went freelance and had more luck getting work that way.
People say it's hard for the young to get jobs, but it's hard for anyone to even get an interview these days regardless of age and experience.
Sharloid@reddit
I managed to save up a deposit and buy my first house in 2009, working part time as student.
I cannot afford to save anything in 2026.
Sea_Pomegranate8229@reddit
What do you mean - it was only last week! Let's talk about 1989 or 1979 or 1973.
Adventurous-Show-149@reddit
I don't think we ever fully recovered from the 2008 crash. It's been one crisis after another since.
laurasoup52@reddit
I was a student on the day the economy crashed. I remember it felt like a huge disconnect between the real life I was living, and this invisible crashing thing that apparently was a really big deal.
When I graduated about a year later, expecting an entry level job of about 24K in the charity sector, there was nothing. Everybody I applied to told me some form of, "we're not taking anyone new on because we can't afford to." The impression I got was that some places were only able to keep people on by offering them the entry level roles they once would have offered outward. A rung disappeared from the ladder that day and I don't think it's ever returned.
Low-Yak-6706@reddit
I was trying to get my first job as a person who left school at 16 with bad GCSEs because despite being fairly good at school I just gave up in my GCSE year because I found it all so stiffling and bullshit. It was rough. Applied to so many jobs before I got a job at McDonald's which paid awfully. I see alot of young and some older people now really struggling with the job hunt in a way that seems familiar (and maybe even worse). I worry the foundations of the country have crumbled due to the neglect of our political class and the rich and the idiots currently in charge have decided to try and build anew on a swamp.
Fit-Bedroom-7645@reddit
Pre 2008 you could turn up to a job interview and they'd say "you can start today if you want?". And you'd straight up just start working. After 2008 it became much more of a slog, temp work, factory jobs to fill in the gaps, agency's that take a cut. But after a while it picked up a bit. But I would 100% hate to be going through unemployment right now with all the stories I'm hearing about 200+ applications without a hearing back. Ironically I even got auto-rejected by an AI filter for a job in my own team that I applied for. Hiring manager was actually pissed off that they filtered out someone with experience in literally the same department.
Afraid_Percentage554@reddit
I graduated in 2009 and it took two years to get a proper job and even then it was grossly underpaid. I did cash in hand work for two years and had to move back in with my parents. I was lucky as I could do that, many can’t/couldn’t.
This was the start of the boomerang generation imho, there’s a huge difference between millennial friends who got a job and moved out just before the crash verses after, who struggled for a long time for adult stability. I finally got this age 25, but I appreciate this is pretty normal for kids today because it has basically just stayed shit in many ways…
durreetoes@reddit
I remember wondering why I couldn’t get a job after graduating, and feeling like the degree was pointless. Took me til 26 to get a ‘graduate level’ job.
Afraid_Percentage554@reddit
Exactly. We lost a good 3-5 years in stagnation waiting for all that hard work to pay off. It’s been worse now though by the sounds of it.
m1nkeh@reddit
This is not really adding anything to the thread, but quite honestly I didn’t even notice
patchyj@reddit
Sucked for my family. Parents started divorce in 07 just before it kicked off. Dad's formerly successful business was hit fucking hard. We went from having a big house with a pool and land to a tiny flat. Led to mums depression and eventual suicide, though its more complicated than that. But yeah, it was rough for a long time
Sea_Branch5923@reddit
I was 10 but I remember that time being so ROUGH! Our phone got disconnected, we couldn’t afford internet, mum was always so angry and complaining about bills. It was awful
SimplyFootballNet@reddit
Some personal insight into this...
Before 2008, graduates would regularly graduate with a job in hand, whilst in their final months of university. You'd just look on the jobs board apply, interview and done.
Grads also often get something called a "golden hello". Which is basically a month or two salary advance to buy some good work clothes, relocate to the area - get set up so you can hit the ground running.
I got lucky and found a graduate job in Sept 2008, but without the golden hello.
Graduates used to rarely come home after university, and would often straight away buy a property on a 100% mortgage backed by the job. Or, they'd rent a 1-bedroom flat to themselves.
That all changed.
After 2008 graduates often started sharing a rental flat with a friend.
That then evolved into the HMO flat-share with randoms. And that was the birthing of the modern day awful HMO market.
Millions of people from around the UK and around Europe, and also the continent of Africa - all started coming to London in 2008 onwards, as it remained one of the worlds best employment places, despite it's challenges.
In 2008 I could comfortably arrive to the tube station at say 08:00 am and get a seat. By 2012 I could barely get a standing place on my tube train no matter what time of day I arrived. By 2014-2015 I had to leave very early to get inside my tube and off to work. Just so many people had come to London.
Now a bedroom in a HMO costs more relatively than what pre-2007/8 graduates would pay for their private 1-bedroom flat. That market has not recovered at all. Heck in my local area you could buy a studio flat in need of renovating for like £40,000 - £50,000 in 2008 during the crash.
Depressed-Londoner@reddit
I am not sure your experience is typical. I know a lot of people who graduated and moved to London around 2000 and none who ever considered living in their own flat rather than a flat share. HMOs didn’t exist, so this was mostly groups of friends renting a flat together (or a shared house if they lived far enough out).
Some people had jobs lined up from before they left university from “milk round” applications, but this was after various testing, interview days etc. and many people didn’t manage this, but it was fairly easy to find short term work doing things like data entry to survive while they went through more applications.
Training_Swimming_76@reddit
Agree - moving to London and sharing a flat with 3 friends was part of the experience. No-one was ready or willing to buy their own place as a graduate, it was kind of a couple of transition years out of university to continue having fun whilst working a job.
I was a 2007 grad, so was lucky in the sense that I had a job, but bonuses and pay rises were cancelled in 2008, and it was clear that work was drying up (i worked for a consultancy). I think the 2008/9 intake were worst affected by this. But day-to-day, I can't say I noticed a massive difference in my life as a new grad, except the constant headlines of banks and institutions failing or under pressure
SimplyFootballNet@reddit
I know people who graduated my year in 2007 and bought property immediately on 100% mortgages. Also had some family friends who did this too from earlier years. But I do believe your version of events too. Not everyone was doing that. My point is that it was doable and possible, whereas now there is no chance of that happening.
TeamOfPups@reddit
I graduated in 2002.
I know a few people who ended up buying property around 2006/7 after a couple of years in work. Turns out they bought at the top of the market and quickly found themselves in negative equity, it was shitty timing for them.
SimplyFootballNet@reddit
Yeh, I can only speak to my own circumstances and what I witnessed friends and people doing just before and after the crash.
BourbonSn4ke@reddit
The tories got in hence why we are in this utter shower of shit now
Bad_Combination@reddit
I graduated in 2008 about the time Bear Stearns went under, which was a bad time to graduate. I did manage to line up a job to go to straight after I'd finished my final exams, but several friends were just never able to get a graduate job as they'd all dried up or the funding had.
During that job, I spent probably 6 months with my team joking about the credit crunch and how it didn't exist. Then we started shedding staff for any reason and none – despite being the newest recruit, I was also the cheapest so I wasn't affected but it was shit. Several people were bullied into leaving, effectively – on reflection because the company wouldn't have been able to pay redundancy.
About six months after that, maybe less, I discovered the MD hadn't been paying the bills when the angry phone calls started being diverted to my phone. I opened the petty cash box and it was full of IOUs from fairly senior management. The bottom had fallen out of our client base and we weren't acquiring new ones.
Then the bullying came for me, so I left. During my 1 month notice, I wasn't allowed to be alone with my replacement nor was I allowed to give her any handover docs – presumably in case I told her she'd just joined a sinking ship.
About 6 months to a year after that, the company went under. Financial mismanagement compounded by loss of clients and also lack of access to eg loans to tide it over.
Martipar@reddit
In 2009 you'd have been hard pressed to find anything wrong with the country, less homelessness, the NHS was doing better, councils were doing better, people were generally financially better off, rents were a smaller percentage of salaries and food banks were unheard of.
The Tories spent years making out the country was still in recession even though it had recovered before they took power. They used it as an excuse for all sorts of financial decisions to pass money from the poor to the rich. All it did was increase many of the problems the recession had caused, things are getting better now but seeing the economic figures and watching the Tories make poor decisions was more painful than the recession itself.
By 2019 though it really felt like the country was in the pits, the money existed it was just buying large yachts and luxury goods rather than going to those who needed it. Potholes were more common, so were the homeless, people were struggling with rents and people in work were claiming benefits just to survive.
Puzzled-Job9556@reddit
I think it's a difficult question for anyone to answer - it's an 18 year period of which your priorities change dramatically over the time. Your career changes; if you're 40 now you were early 20s then, the job market may not have been something you took much notice on. Conversely, if you were 40 then, you're likely well into your career so may have noticed a difference in job market, but now you are retired.
culturerush@reddit
I'm from the UK so my experiences may not be common
I finished uni in 2008 and graduated into the job market just after it all happened
I got a job very easily that paid allright. I was looking at moving to London and buying a flat with my girlfriend. It was going to be pricey but affordable.
Now I'm earning a good chunk over the UK average wage and I've got a super cheap house in a super cheap area of the UK but things keep getting more expensive all the time.
In 2008 it felt like there was an issue that could be fixed. There was light at the end of the tunnel.
Now it feels like the future is fucked. New graduates aren't getting jobs, things keep getting more expensive and never go down, government is stripping back more and more while increasing taxes. All the while I have to watch twats like Musk make obscene amounts of money.
TeHNeutral@reddit
I remember being in a lesson and the teacher saying we were fucked and he's sorry.
Level-Courage6773@reddit
Same vibe as now really, in that were not a lot of job openings and recruiters made you fight for your life with multiple rounds.
But it was better in a way, because at least there wasn't any sodding AI pushing our heads underwater while we were struggling.
Greedy-Area9109@reddit
After 2008, if you kept your job, things were ok. The mortgage interest rates dropped to 0% so borrowing money was artifically cheap.
If you lost your job it was grim.
Square-Platypus-8144@reddit
It was awful. I was flying back from the far east after a contract on a container ship. Had just qualified and thought I was set for life. By the time I was in T5 at Heathrow I had been made redundant. Couldn't get a job in my sector at all and ended up eventually begging my brother for a part time job at the hotel he worked for washing dishes. Took two years to get back on my feet and get a job that paid more than minimum wage.
No-Problem-1354@reddit
For me personally it was great financial side aside 🤣. I was leaving school and was not far off turning 18, so it was all clubbing, drinking and enjoying myself.
rayoflight110@reddit
It feels as if we never really left it.
Confident-Squash-110@reddit
Wasn't working at the time, didn't own a home, so didn't affect me as much as everyone, fuel was a tad pricey but still managed to commute back to university everyday.
Rent was paid, council tax was paid.
Actually looking back at it, wasn't too bad at all :D
kingofthepumps@reddit
Cucumbers went up to £1.60 each at one point.
Diademinsomniac@reddit
Honestly back in 2008 it wasn’t that bad. Most people who lost jobs worked in finance sectors. I think it’s actually much worse now as the job market situation seems to be affecting almost all sectors including retail hospitality which during 2008 were not really affected. Also the 2008 financial crash was actually fairly short lived and most markets recovered (except maybe the UK which has had almost no growth since) but now growth is actually declining and we are basically in negative territory. I think the next 5 years are going to be awful.
missdaisydrives@reddit
No pay reviews for 3 years at my place and if anyone left they weren’t replaced so my team went from 6 down to 2 and we were still covering the same six day week so no time for training, any time off was constantly interrupted and a stressed and overloaded workforce took years to recover to ‘normal’ levels. Had managed to get a low tracker just before so was very lucky with the mortgage for a few years. Job market was difficult and nobody wanted to move somewhere to be last in and first out. The scale of it seemed to evolve slowly, and it took a lot longer to recover than people thought it would.
Impetuous_doormouse@reddit
For me, it was tougher then. I suppose that as we've more gradually slid into the current situation, certain mitigations and rationalisations could be done to try and lessen the effects, but back then? OOF!!
I was living in a shitty rented house at the time with my then-partner. We had income from our jobs and initially, I didn't notice the issues, but slowly, as the damage spread, we ended up really struggling. Not least, because she was made redundant from her bookstore job when the chain closed down on Xmas eve of all fucking dates! But stuff like my job being constantly under threat as local govt had to keep making redundancy rounds, price of some foods going up and no new clothes, or shoes - I can't remember how many times I glued the same sole back on my trainers.
My partner had to actually move to a different city and live in a friends spare room, just to find work and we'd see eachother on weekends. Other friends did similar and those who couldn't really struggled. We'd also had a big shopping centre in the middle of town that had been an ongoing joke for some time at how long it was taking to finish, but so many retailers pulled out due to the uncertainty, that they sort of turfed over the area and made a kind of temporary park.
But there were millions of other little things, like death by a thousand cuts, that appeared in every aspect of life that seemed to juts make the world darker and less enjoyable almost overnight.
And we never really recovered from it at all. So I guess that my QOL is only better now than it was because I've been able to adjust as things started sinking and been able to anticipate issues.
GeekyGamer2022@reddit
It's pretty much the same.
The UK never really recovered from the big crash.
The Bank of England fired up the printing presses and gave untold billions to the banks to stop them collapsing then everything in the financial sector carried on just as before.
No lessons were learned. Nothing was put in place to safeguard against another giant debt bubble.
All that happened is that what little still remains of the Welfare State got shredded and the population has been suffering ever since.
The UK economy is a giant confidence trick.
DotComprehensive4902@reddit
Politicians took the unemployment situation more seriously then
No_Ring_3348@reddit
I knew it was bad when David Harvey was on BBC Newsnight talking about how Marxism was a good way out of things, and he was being taken very seriously. That would be unthinkable now.
SpongeFixation@reddit
It was bad, but we've had worse since. The drop when Cheesepuff was elected in for the 2nd time was worse than the 2008 drop.
Dialted@reddit
I came out of university in 2008. Job market for the young felt as bad as now
PixiePooper@reddit
Not to belittle other's experiences, but 2008 didn't feel as bad as it does now to me. 2008 felt more like a short, sharp shock, by 2010 or so things recovered to a new 'normal' and it felt like there was more optimism. Now things feel more like a gradual decline with one thing after another since COVID, with no obvious end in sight.
jack5624@reddit
I think it depends who you are. If you and your parents kept your job during that time it wasn’t too bad.
jack5624@reddit
I would say it was worse, the job market was a lot worse and business struggled more. Overall now is affecting more people but slowly, whereas in 2008 it affected less people but for those people it was a lot worse. Much harder to find a job, businesses going bankrupt and even if you had a job, good luck getting a mortgage and buying a house. All of this happened pretty much overnight.
On a personal note, while I was only 10 at the time. It was probably the biggest turning point in my life. My family went from having an abundance of money to having zero income, with that relationships where strained. I remember family friends having things repossessed. All of this basically happened overnight as well.
SlightlyIncandescent@reddit
Job and housing market were worse but we didn't have the same cost of living issues piled on top.
Crazystaffylady@reddit
In some ways it didn’t feel much different. I remember coming home from university and loads of the shops in my local arcade were all empty and it feels like that again now.
I really struggled to get a full time job when I graduated in 2011 and I can see the same thing happening now to recent graduates.
Prestigious_Wash_620@reddit
It was easier to get a low paying job than now. But the minimum wage was far lower so you wouldn’t be earning a lot if you did. The income tax threshold was low as well so you’d be paying a lot of tax on that income. If you got a job on a zero hours contract you didn’t get any holiday pay at all. On the plus side, rents weren’t nearly as high as they are now.
XihuanNi-6784@reddit
I don't think this accounts for inflation, and as you've noted, rent was much lower. It's been almost 20 years. There's a solid chance the minimum wage was equally good or better once you take into account inflation plus housing costs (which aren't usually included in inflation figures).
WildTomato9@reddit
Don't forget the use of cash which meant many people who worked NMW in bars and restaurants were able to more or less live on tips. Only rent and bills came out of my payslip - I used cash for nearly everything else.
ElectronicCarry9931@reddit
rent was crazy cheap. You could get a room in a house near the centre of a major uk city for like 250 a month.
Prestigious_Wash_620@reddit
Yes I have taken account of inflation. The minimum wage was £5.73 per hour in 2008. It is now £12.71 per hour.
paisleydarling@reddit
I’d just had my first child. It was a piece of piss compared to this. My mortgage was £350 a month. Now I’m renting due to circumstances changing, I’ve been renting here since 2017 when my rent was 695, it’s gone up to 800 which is still a pittance, now it’s too big for me and the kids now they’re teenagers but to move somewhere smaller would be an extra £500 a month for a non-shithole and I cannot afford to leave. We had it great in 2008.
Deruji@reddit
Yeah wage inflation hasn’t kept up with inflation. Squeezed ever since then it just gets worse and worse. 2000 just 8 years earlier was a different time…
paisleydarling@reddit
Yes totally. I mean yes obviously minimum wage was less and so on but on a pretty modest income with a baby and a toddler, being a SAHM while my partner worked we were still able to have “some nice things” whereas now we are always tutting over supermarket essentials going up by 5-10p very very often and choosing between this or that all the time.
GrownDandilion@reddit
I was at the point in my career where advancement should have been happening but everything became stagnant. Middle managers seemed to take the brunt of redundancy but the workes ended up working more for the same wage a tend that hasn't reversed if anything has gotten worse. Outside of the work place though things still felt joyfully new millennium new hope. (Ignorance of youth i guess considering where we are now). This since the pandemic things have got noticeably worse and I can help wondering if we would be better of having another crash and recovery rather than propping up the zombie economic situation we have now. In short what we need to know things have gotten as bad as they will get so we can have hope again. Anyone able to offer hope for the future ?
EcoNorfolk@reddit
I walked out my job and started a business as I saw an opportunity. Companies don’t stop spending money in a recession - just change the way they spend it and cut back.
I capitalised on that. It was really really tough - one day the ATM wouldn’t even give me a fiver. Then I realised where I was going wrong in my pitch and things started improving. By 2011 it was like taking sweets off babies.
Sea-Wolf-5785@reddit
On the whole everything got worse, noticeably and without much warning. Remember my college lecturer talking a year or so before about the exact thing so I think it was on the academic radar in papers before it hit... That thing now would be in people's feeds now but buried alongside everything else, so just all the pre-warning mixed with the combined collective conscience anxiety. Better or worse?..
However definitely thing thinks we're better on the whole to begin with, I remember working a part time job at Starbucks with a roofer that basically lost all his book of work, over night, I also however had another part time job so was doing pretty ok financially at home as a student. There were also jobs still, but in some areas massive cuts with people a lot less prepared and able to quickly retrain or move across into the fields that survived.
A neighbour lost his manager job after 20 years and was dead two years later from alcohol related issues, probably there were so many more that went similar ways, the true cost has not and probably could never be calculated..
Things were great prior, but remember vividly they went flat overnight, everyone was waiting for things to go back to how they were but in reality it's been a long, slow and drawn out decline since.
The people that dug in and bought houses before all of it and treaded water are the ones now that are still doing ok, quite a few people fell off the cart and never really got back on however. Compared to today, think generally people have more data feeds at their finger tips and can therefore plan a bit better. You could argue a similar crisis is happening now, just everyone is more aware.
Fraggle_ninja@reddit
I was in my 20’s and wasn’t hard hit. But I recall so many chains just giving away vouchers that were main meal for £5, 2 eat for a £5. There was a good year or so where eating out was dirt cheap to get people spending. Total opposite to now.
Engels33@reddit
I was in a graduate job in an engineering and planning related profession just finding my feet and all the plans for our team were hit as the property market imploded and a lot of development work paused or fell through. Work dried up quickly, much of the team was made redundant, I stayed employed by the skin of my teeth by being nimble and making a play to join one of the engineering teams. I had to learn a new professional discipine and was still on a pretty poor starting salary lower than the average graduate role which dragged on with inflarion only increases. It wasn't until about 4 years in and ~2 years under my belt in the new role that I had a meaningful increase in earnings and my carear trajectory recovered. But i was still stuck in the wrong profession and it tool me to year 7 of my carear to side step back into my own discipline - but with far less experience than I should have had.
Upside was that as I was employed i managed to buy my first flat right in middle of the chaos as banks were selling reppsession off cheap. That was of course my luck at someone else's finacial misfortune. I had little disposable income spare for a few years there but came out of it ok and the property play worked out very well when eventually sold to provide a great deposit on the forever home.
360Saturn@reddit
I think today would feel worse if time didn't feel in flux since covid.
Covid was 6 years ago and we're still in 'cost of living crisis'. By comparison that would be like if things in 2014 still felt just a little better than 2008.
However thanks to covid time perception, 2020 still feels like 2 or 3 years ago to most of us.
NibblyPig@reddit
This is gonna be a hard question to get a good response from.
In 2009 it took me 9 months on the dole to get a job, and I had to relocate 4 hours away to the other side of the country.
Since then I've been gainfully employed and am semi-retired so I can't really comment on the job market as I'm no longer a graduate.
Standard of life is of course also wildly different, since now I have tons of money and back then I was living on a pittance as 9 months on the dole + my first job was close to minimum wage.
AdRealistic4984@reddit
I can remember hearing the words “credit crunch” everyday for at least 3 or 4 years. It was pretty hysterical in the news too
ElectronicCarry9931@reddit
weird how some terms are ubiquitous and then just get forgotten, a bit like how corona got replaced by covid
undoneyet@reddit
I was in my mid 40s working in the arts and my income halved. It still has not caught up.
Rendogog@reddit
For me it is far worse now than 2008, things were a bit tight then, but the years of austerity and economic mismanagement since have been a slow worsening of everything. My spend to income ratio is the worst it has ever been thanks to wage stagnation.
ElectronicCarry9931@reddit
it really affected a lot of people disproportionately . if you entered the graduate market in 2008/2009 then you're probably not going as well in 2026 as you would have done had you entered 5 years either side.
It affected southern Europe and the Republic of Ireland a lot more, there was terrible unemployment there for years afterwards (arguably still).
But things picked up, there was a gradual rise soon afterwards.
Unlike today where it's hard to pinpoint the 'crash' or the 'recovery' things just seem to be getting more expensive and turbulent economy wise.
GavRex@reddit
I was 17 and doing my AS-level.
I distinctly remember my politics teacher putting a live stock tracker on the board, and just watching the entire economy implode.
He was absolutely right that it would define our careers going forward. Although luckily both my parents escaped being laid off.
steelsoldier00@reddit
I had so little understanding of what was happening, until August 2008, landed a job in a call center for RBS stockbroking, and saw how many RBS staff members had their pensions wiped out overnight. iirc, the price went from something like £2.80 a share to literally pennies... 0.10p. Having to explain that to someone whos entire retirement fund was now gone, and with no time to recover it / start again.
I've never gotten over some of those stories. The only positive, is that I preach to diversify your pension fund as much as you are able.
your_swindon_lot@reddit
Is that because their pension was solely/primarily invested in RBS? Can you ELI5 to me please!
steelsoldier00@reddit
Basically, loads of RBS employees ended up with too many eggs in one basket without really realising it.
Their wages came from RBS, bonuses were often in RBS shares, share save schemes bought RBS shares, and pensions sometimes held loads of RBS stock too.
Back then RBS was seen as rock solid. Big UK bank, good dividends, “safe long term hold” type of thing. So people just kept accumulating shares over years.
Then 2008 happened.
RBS had massively overextended itself, especially after buying ABN AMRO right before the financial crash. When the banking system started melting down, the share price basically fell off a cliff.
So overnight people weren’t just worrying about their jobs their savings and pensions got hammered at the same time because so much of it was tied to the same company.
That’s why so many people just got wiped out by it.
your_swindon_lot@reddit
Ah I understand. Heartbreaking.
When you’re long tenure with a company you do end up with lots of shares (I’m in that position). You tend to hold on (which I’ve done). Thanks for sharing as it’s made me think substantially.
Fit-Marionberry7126@reddit
In the main street of my city, it had been mainly estate agents. They disappeared and were replaced by temporary job agencies. This happened quite quickly. My employer lost a third of its income when a US contract got cancelled. I lost my job and temped for about 3 years.
Bilya63@reddit
The crisis never truly ended.
The decision to make private gambling, public losses and take the austerity route across Europe failed and continuous to fail.
Eyeous@reddit
I was a junior analyst back in 2008 in financial services. I outperformed my manager and manager’s manager so they were both made redundant and I was given a double promotion on (probably) much lower pay. One of the rating agencies head hunted me a year later and gave me a 100% pay rise. One year after that, one of the biggest banks in the world head hunted me and gave me a 50% pay rise.
Its been fairly action packed since then but nothing like the turbulence and destabilising effects that were happening between 2007 - 2009/10.
bartread@reddit
Immediately underwater on my mortgage so moving wasn't really on option, and I did feel pretty trapped and stressed out by it all.
OTOH, as rates had decreased massively and I'd chosen a variable rate* my monthly payments dropped by about 40% over several months, which was welcome because it turned out I hadn't done my calculations brilliantly well when I bought the place and my outgoings were always slightly more than my incomings, and jobs - particularly better paying jobs - were hard to come by without relocating (which I couldn't do) so I ended up sticking with the company I was with for way longer than I otherwise might have liked.
I didn't drive a car that I'd paid more than a few hundred quid for for years, and I remember being really pissed off with Gordon Brown over the scrappage scheme because I needed to replace the my car and - almost overnight - it became incredibly difficult to find a decent but very cheap motor to get around in.
Lived with the second hand furniture I'd been gifted or had bought cheap from various places for years and years after moving in.
*Fixed rate would have been more expensive than I could afford so I banked on the variable rate not increasing enough to breach the fixed rate monthly payment threshold over the two years for which I'd had the mortgage... which actually worked.
yadasellsavonmate@reddit
Tbh I was like 21, still working and didnt notice anything different back in 08.
Budget-Peak2073@reddit
Local businesses in towns shut down and were repossessed by government run institutions. I saw some people have to downsize their lifestyle get cheaper cars and go on less holidays.
People bought houses that were incredibly expensive and over valued at the peak of the market. When the property market bubble popped people were stuck paying for properties that were now worth half of the value they had originally sold for. I think this affected millennial attitudes towards housing quite a bit, a lot of people my age hope for a similar property crash.
I was younger then and it was impossible to find a summer job, I think I submitted about 150 applications for work one summer and got nothing back, it was also equally difficult to find weekend work. If a friend got a weekend job at a bar or at a shop it was likely because they knew someone.
On a personal level my dad is a tradesman. It was painful to see his work dry up overnight. At the height of the boom he would have work lined up for 3 years out. He is a proud man and didnt cope well with it.
winjer@reddit
I was running a business and loads of our customers cancelled. We missed going bankrupt by a whisker. Really messed me up.
Remarkable_Pepper281@reddit
Job market and the standard of living was worse initially. But real wages in the UK have stagnated since. Britain in my opinion hasn't recovered from this shock
XihuanNi-6784@reddit
It really didn't. After the initial shock they had a decent plan to stabilise things, but Brown lost in 2010 and all of Europe went on an austerity tear, which actually compounded the losses in 2008. Worse, it was based on a single research paper which has since been debunked. Austerity doesn't work when seeking to help a national economy recover. We've been suffering the consequences ever since.
your_swindon_lot@reddit
Is that Reinhart and Rogoff’s paper you’re referring to?
If so - yes it’s substantially flawed but it wasn’t anywhere near the sole/single reason countries implemented austerity.
SimplyFootballNet@reddit
Wages have stagnated, tax bands have frozen and absolutely everything had exploded in price. It was mainly property leading that charge, but then rent caught up, and now prices of just everything has gone crazy up. But wages have barely changed.
PatserGrey@reddit
Now is not a blip on 2008. Mass mortgage defaults. Maybe it was worse in Ireland but I can remember it clearly. The "ghost estate" became a common phrase i.e. new build estates with unsold houses, now derelict shells. Skilled jobs were not too bad to bad to get, the world had to keep turning. I do remember a lot of unemployed estate agents however - probably karma for their hand in the previous 8-10 years of madness.
Mutarlay@reddit
I was a kid at the time but I vividly remember my parents watching an American news channel and seeing red stock market tickers going along the bottom of the screen and shots of people walking out of offices with cardboard boxes of their personal belongings.
I didn’t fully understand how bad it was but I could feel that it was not a good thing because I’ve never seen my parents watch the news with such intensity.
Business-Artist3136@reddit
It felt much worse, which led me to Google the other day actually why there's so much concern about NEET now when unemployment was much higher 2008-2012 (tldr it's a valid concern). But it was impossible to get even an entry-level job. I managed to get part time hours, but I was on zero hours for months.
charlytune@reddit
I remember that there seemed to be more suicides in London where people jumped in front of a train. There was one day I was travelling when the whole of the network to the south of London seized up, with two people jumping, on two separate lines.
OkPea5819@reddit
Graduated into it and I feel like the climate for current graduates is much worse.
cheandbis@reddit
I'd just bought my first home, a 1 bed flat and I got made redundant as I worked for one of the banks that went under. Fortunately, I landed on my feet and got another job straight away but many were not as lucky. It was a crap time for many and lasted for years.
I've not had to look for a new job for a whole so unsure what the market is like but back then it was a very bleak time. I can't believe it's worse now.
XihuanNi-6784@reddit
It's definitely worse now. The amount of automated rejections, complete shut down in ability to get entry level jobs via in person connections, and the shut down of informal unskilled retail jobs in small towns is destroying the employment prospects of the youth. Maybe your specific sector is fine, but at the lower end (where most people are), things are getting worse not better.
DiscoDoberman@reddit
You're experiencing the "after", things haven't picked back up much.
In the immediate aftermath the thing I remember most was the uptick in suicides, there were so many stories of men killing themselves because they lost their job/all their investments.
And the horse abandonments, there were stories of horses just being dumped in random fields and up on mountains.
One particular story was 2009, when 2 donkeys and a pony that walked into someone's garden and the donkey had been shot through the head...but was still walking. Presumably the owner tried to euthanise them and they escaped.
33backagain@reddit
If you lost your job it was bad. If you didn’t, it wasn’t a problem.
dixii_rekt@reddit
Worked for a company that had multi year contracts so really didn't notice anything personally. Stuff was cheaper so I could buy more but my job was secure. One of the lucky ones I guess
SimplyFootballNet@reddit
I think it's a shame in hindsight that some large public infrastructure projects were not kicked off by borrowing against the extremely low interest rates. Securing a long-term debt package against very low interest rates.
We could have lumped onto building some new power plants, hospitals, reservoirs (etc - take your pick) against long-term low rate debt. Secure like a 40-year term. Build it with the debt. Sell the assets off to UK pension funds to exit if you absolutely must repay the debt in the future.
fat_penguin_04@reddit
I graduated few years later and main thing I think of is the impact of austerity on public sector pay. I was too young to really factor it in but some years was 0-1% even when it seemed other sectors were back on their feet (I was in London tbf). There was a real public vs private sector narrative pushed which even some of my more left wing mates got on board with.
Substantial_Bus5687@reddit
I don't think it's a fair comparison as we haven't actually crashed (yet).
Expensive-Refuse855@reddit
Its hard to say because theres so many factors that effect your quality of life and earnings. Even minimum wage for an 18 yo is significantly
It was pretty bad. I left school and struggled to find a job. In my town, loads of businesses were boarded up and it was incredibly depressing, especially in winter. I shared a house with three other people and even then going to the pub or getting a take away was a luxury.
A lot of friends went to university and got dead end jobs when they left.
InsaneInTheRAMdrain@reddit
Well after, those in power started pushing class divisive stuff, so rather then the young people caring about the economy, they cry about pronouns and lazy racism.
XihuanNi-6784@reddit
Here we go...
BitterFootball4874@reddit
It definitely made applying for jobs in the subsequent period way harder
TheToolman04@reddit
I was out of work between 2008 and 2010 because I guess my skillset wasn't what people were looking for or they had just downsized to survive the global financial crisis. I must have applied for thousands of jobs. It took ages, depression set in, I became single, lost a few family members in a short time. Life was shit.
I'm in a much better place now, thankfully. A young manager in a retail store took a chance on me in 2010 and he allowed me to get back on my feet.
Obvious-Water569@reddit
It's like the frog in boiling water thing...
Back in 2008/2009 it was like we were plunged into it quickly and everything went to shit overnight.
Now, things are moving much more slowly in smaller increments, so people either aren't noticing or they have time to make small adjustments. The end result might be worse but it'll happen over a much longer time period.
Lopsided_Snower@reddit
"It's like the frog in boiling water thing...
Back in 2008/2009 it was like we were plunged into it quickly and everything went to shit overnight.!"
So its not like a frog in boiling water then?
And you've not answered the question, you've answered another one entirely?
Unfair-Owl-5204@reddit
I am english but lived in spain. i was renting a house that went for 10,000 a week i the summer for 1500 a month.
the roads were so quiet i was walking down the middle with the dog knowing no cars would come.
entire shopping centers were deserted
the center of marbella went from packed to only a few people in the streets.
everyone left.
thats all i remember
SofaChillReview@reddit
Remember the only job I found straight out of uni was 100% commission. Thankfully lived with my parents (who were struggling business and mortgage repayments), and I could work 60 hours a week to get paid £60
cbrownmufc@reddit
I worked in debt recovery around that time. (Not a nasty company, just genuinely trying to talk to people who had struggles).
Some debt was on mortgage shortfall from sub prime lenders. It was horrific to speak to people who had been through house repossessions, but still had a shortfall on the mortgage. People would say, “if I had money, don’t you think I would have paid my mortgage”.
I know life is tough now, but I’ve always felt the few years after the crash were some of the toughest times in recent history
Theunluckyone7@reddit
I was young but don't think you can even slightly compare it to now. Unemployment climbed from 5-% to 8.5% in 2011. I know people who lost houses, tradesman who had to get delivery jobs and my whole year at school practically couldn't find work. House values dropped massively, builders had to abandon building sites etc.
It was bad. Unemployment now is around normal levels, we're just comparing it to when it was pretty low.
Thingisby@reddit
My experience was that there were entry level jobs, at least in the public sector. I came out of uni in the midst of it to work in a DWP callcentre.
I think the real killer was for homeowners who were well into their proper careers and lost a hell of a lot off the back of it.
The difference now is I struggle to see where the entry level stuff is.
EnvironmentalCrow266@reddit
It was a bleak, depressing period. Couldn't get a job as a student, even at Sainsbury's, Starbucks. Plus a period of time after to recover from the scarring of multiple rejections.
GruffScottishGuy@reddit
I worked for a large retailer back then and the difference in customer footfall from before the recession was massive and it never recovered.
The difference in overall attitude towards the staff from the company was huge too. Bonuses, overtime conditions,etc all went out the window and it was all about squeezing more work from less staff.
ohnobobbins@reddit
It was pretty bad, I think a lot of people have forgotten.
My previously well-off parents lost everything.
I was dealing with a nightmare divorce so I was pretty distracted and had no money to lose anyway!
My parents moved in with me in my tiny one bed cottage. It worked for all of us as we were all broke. Bit uncomfortable but we were alright.
tevs__@reddit
The job market collapsed completely. People in jobs were asked to reduce hours, buy back holiday, anything to reduce the bottom line and avoid redundancies/business failure if they couldn't access finance or customers didn't pay/went bankrupt. Companies pushed their credit, deferring payments until the last opportunity.
If you needed a remortgage, you were stuffed. If you had just retired, you were stuffed. The ZIRP meant a lot of corporate pension funds were underfunded - a drop in company value, and an increase of the cost of annuities meant that a number of big companies were in bad positions for a while.
I don't believe the UK was affected so much by sub prime lending directly in the UK, but mortgage repossessions still increased 8-fold over 2004.
berryhagman@reddit
I remember "credit crunch lunch" offers in pubs and restaurants and "nano holidays" in travel agents being the thing around the town. It felt like people were just trying to survive. I'd just finished university and ended up working in a shop for years because there wasn't any graduate jobs going.
UniquePotato@reddit
Personally, I’d just gone through a separation, after owning a house for a year. I was in £35k of negative equity, owed a loan for a renovated kitchen, and had a house I didn’t want or could afford to live in on my own.
timeforknowledge@reddit
No jobs...
Actual_Banana_1083@reddit
I had started learning to fly with intentions of going commercial, got my private pilots license, built a bunch of hours and sat the commercial writtens. The 2008 financial crisis hit, and boom, airlines going bust and pilots being laid off destroyed those career aspirations. Sadly, never went back to it.
rumade@reddit
I'd just finished A levels and got a job doing data entry for a clinical trial data handling company. It was a temporary maternity contract but they'd expressed a desire to keep me on. Unfortunately there was a drop in research funding and also some shit went down with Astrazeneca, so I lost my job :(
fernofry@reddit
I left education to try and enter the job market in 2008. It was brutal. Took a couple of years to get something stable. I remember there was like a 100 person homeless camp in the centre of Manchester at one point and the job centre was crowded every time I went for my jobseekers check-ins.
I dont think we're at that level yet but we still havent fully recovered from it economically either.
bishibashi@reddit
My wife and I both remained in work so it was fine. Mortgage rates started plummeting pretty soon after so if you already had a mortgage and also had work it was actually a pretty decent period. Shit for some, obv, but it always is.
nikkijxd@reddit
It looks like unemployment was worse in 2008. I do know that regulations changed over this time to ban zero hour contracts, but there's still a lot of people on part time contracts, not sure how this would be affected. Source ONS.
PsychologicalWish800@reddit
Here in the UK I got a job as an autism support worker and there was plenty of funding at that time so actually I was doing OK for the first time ever. I was broke before so the only way was up. But people I knew had negative equity in their mortgages - their homes were worth tens of thousands of pounds less. It was pretty awful for most people.
Bksudbjdua@reddit
Literally couldn't feed the whole family. Kids came first. No brand names, no new clothes, no entertainment, no days out, no cinema, no school trips, no holidays. Nothing. Just surviving to cover the mortgage.
dinkidoo7693@reddit
It was crap but there were plenty of minimum wage hospitality and warehouse jobs so i didn’t struggle to get more hours if I wanted them.
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