A job crisis survival guide

By Ma. Salve Duplito
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 20:49:00 02/01/2009
http://business.inquirer.net/money/personalfinance/view/20090201-186850/A-job-crisis-survival-guide

YOU COULD SAY PREPARING for extreme uncertainty now that corporate shutdowns and downsizing are escalating is already a bit late.

In a perfect world, we should have already drawn up clever financial escape hatches and different levels of fallback strategies to survive possible unemployment.

But it’s also human nature to party while Noah-like characters build arks when the sun is shining. Unfortunately, the sun is gone and rain is falling. Just last week, Intel has announced it was closing its more than two-decades-old plant in the Philippines, turning 1,800 employees jobless—and that was just the beginning.

Panasonic, Mitsumi Phils., Texas Instruments and many others announced they were either totally shutting down plants or downsizing. Official figures from the Department of Labor and Employment show that 19,000 Filipinos have already been retrenched and 34,000 have suffered from wage cuts as of Jan. 29. Hundreds more are losing their jobs every day, said Labor Secretary Marianito Roque.

Globally, the figures look even more alarming. The International Labor Organization expects the economic crunch to add 50 million people to the ranks of the unemployed this year.

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