Labor Day: 38,000 mortgage jobs lost

Good morning, Joe Hill, and happy Labor Day. You won't read much today about the 38,000 mortgage industry workers who have lost their jobs already -- there's no union to speak for them, nobody will march for them today.  Some of you believe the work they did was tainted -- they worked in an industry that made some bad choices and sold some bad products.  True. But most of them worked hard and honestly, and their lives have been turned upside down. Here's an e-mail we received recently:

"I worked at my company 10 yrs. I knew my job inside & out & could do it better than anybody.

"All of us were so confident that we would survive because our branch in always met or exceeded our monthly goals.  But this last 3 to 4 months or so has been a real trial.  We watched a lot of our coworkers be layed off. We were a family in a sense because we all spent so much time together.  It wasn't unusual to see people greet each other in the morning with a hug and a kiss on the cheek.  Not one of those fake Hollywood hug-hug-kiss-kiss things, a real hug & a little kiss on the cheek.

"We had baby  showers, birthday parties, bridal showers, etc...right there in the conference room.  We all helped each other. We listened to each others baby/kid/teenager problems, relationship drama, gave advice or sometimes you just had to take them to the bar for a couple of tequila shots.

"This close down came as a surprise. We actually thought that we would be ok and that they would close other lower producing branches. Oh....little did we know.  A lot of our mortgage brokers heard about it on CNN and the financial websites before we even knew in the branch.  Our acct execs were getting phone calls from brokers & then our inside people were and 20 min's later we got an email telling us to go to the conference room for a meeting.  We all knew by then.  The president of our company got on the phone & told us himself.  And I can honestly say that he was genuine.  He was struggling to talk and you  could tell he had a lump in his throat & he was close to crying.  It wasn't an act.  That company was his baby & he'd been there from the very beginning.  It was hard.

"I think we all knew that it wouldn't last with some of the crazy loan programs that were out there.  Creative finance was the PC term for it.  What goes up, must come down sometime.

"We will be there until 9/30.  Then we are done.  The next 4 weeks should be interesting."

Thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to LALandblog@yahoo.com

Comments

[Arnett]

When will we finally learn? Companies and corporations exist solely to produce PROFITS for their investors. As a labor pool we must mature and learn that the illusion of family and true caring doesn't really exist in any publicly traded corporation in America. If your CEO was really that caring why wouldn't he forgoe his salary for the year and dedicate it to helping displaced workers sustain their families until they found other employment? I have worked in the Real Estate industry in California for 10 years. I have seen good people let go and stupid people promoted. I have seen people with integrity bypassed while theives ascended. Our company recently closed also and our CEO tried to shed some crocodile tears. FOR WHAT? Our American financial system is build on greed, cheap labor and profits...not people.

[Name (required)]

Sorry, no sympathy for the mortgage brokers. Not a true industry, little to no education required. Synonymous with the “car salesman” industry.

[investorguy]

Thanks for putting a personal face on this story, Peter. We need similar stories of those who got in too deep with loans. Maybe the knee-jerk "don't help the damned scamming and lying fools 'cause I'm still renting" faction would understand that these are families, not just loan numbers. That sill doesn't mean a bailout is the answer -- I don't believe it is -- but when you realize that you're dealing with real people who made mistakes, the search for a way to ease the fall becomes a more human one.

[Sorry to hear that]

Since you knew that your industry was making highly questionable loans, you (whether you acknowledge it or not) also knew that you were standing on shaky ground. You made money while the sun shined, although the people above you made, much, much more. You were part of a short term greed train that has come grinding to a halt, largely at the expense of investors and the US taxpayer.
As a recently layed off member of a highly skilled and experienced Accenture IT workforce, whose job went to an inexperienced (but cheaper) worker in Bangalore, I have no sympathy for you. Accenture has been laying off experienced US workers by the truckload for 3 years now, and replacing them with brand-new, inexperienced workers in Bangalore, India, and there has not been a single story about it. The failed systems, the unhappy clients, and the destroyed US families are not worth the time of the US media, or US politicians.
America is no longer America...it is now completely for sale to the small group of greedy, short term profiteers that run the lobbyists, and decision makers in our "Democracy".

[jemarqu]

I really do feel for these people. My dad was an Aerospace engineer that lost his job at the end of the cold war. It was a major lifestyle change for our family. At one time he took a $10 dollar an hour job as a machinist.

It is really a shame that the greed during the boom is going to cost honest people their jobs.

[are they crazy]

Arnett: Don't you know that the only way to move up is brown nosing and/or allowing yourself to be abused. Compare a day in the life of a CEO and a REAL worker - who is really doing the work and who is really getting paid? If you have an innovative idea or some idea of how a job actually needs to be done, you're seen as a threat. Speaking truth to power doesn't exist at all. All you folks that didn't succumb to the market and we're looked down on, just keep it to yourself - your boss who said he didn't have to listen to you because you're not a real estate professional and despite your advice paid nearly 1 million for a house in Riverside in early 06 and put more money into renovations - probably already doesn't like you much now.

[Pete Viles]

"Sorry to hear that" wrote, "Accenture has been laying off experienced US workers by the truckload for 3 years now, and replacing them with brand-new, inexperienced workers in Bangalore, India, and there has not been a single story about it."

I agree that economic globalization -- and its effect on American workers -- is not only the biggest economic story of our time, but that major American news outlets have pretty much ignored it. There have been at least two major media mentions of Accenture's outsourcing, though -- I know because I made them, when I worked for Lou Dobbs at CNN. Lou, as you probably know, is alone among network or cable news anchors in displaying interest in the impacts of globalization on American workers.

--SBC's outsourcing of a DSL service contract to Accenture -- which did the work overseas -- was a crucial issue in a strike by SBC workers in Connecticut.
Link: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0405/20/ldt.00.html

Accenture is in the "global outsourcing business"; half a million IT workers in America are unemployed:
Link: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0309/22/ldt.00.html

[rant]

“38,000 mortgage jobs lost”, awe, too bad. Time to go back and see if the old cell phone salesman/telemarketing job is still available. Most mortgage jobs can not be confused with a professional career.

The reality over the past few years is mortgage brokers, etc have made a living skimming a percentage off loans made to educated people with true careers (and incomes), and real estate gamblers (flippers).

The mortgage people that have lost recently lost their jobs should easily more back into the jobs they had before. The turn over with sales people is always high and barriers to entry low. Nothing noteworthy of the current broker implosion except so many effected people concentrating in the LA area.

[Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?]

1) I own both my house in California and my ranch in West Texas; I only have to worry about property taxes, anymore. So, their story doesn't bother me.
2) As for American jobs going to India, Pakistan and Mongolia, there was the news story a few months ago, that a Pasadena newspaper had hired a company in India (or Pakistan) to provide it will local Pasadena news.
3) as Jemar qu's father had to do when the aerospace business went quiet,
maybe, these "mortgage pencil bushing ex-Enron types" can get a hammer and a mouth full of nails and help with the fence somewhere east of El Centro.
A job is a job.

[Keith]

I've been around the RE and mortgage industry for over twenty years through various friendships and business relationships, one thing I do know about the true "professionals" in the industry, they've all been through the boom and bust cycle and they know that when it's hot, money falls from the sky, when it's slow, if you are the real deal you will have been able to save to weather the storm. I know real families are involved, but if you aren't smart enough to realize the underlying currents of the business you choose to feed your family with, you shouldn't be there. The truth is many of these people who got sucked into this made great money over the last 3 or 4 years with virtually no real investment of their own time in it. It's easy come, easy go, I'm afraid. The real people in the industry will now watch the weaker players shake out and will be getting prepared for the next big run. Talk to an agent who's got 20 years in the business, they'll tell you if you live commission check to commission check in the good times, you won't make it through to the next cycle.

[investorguy]

A broker that I know at American Home moved the next day to Countrywide. Nice guy, knows his stuff, likes to write good loans, and actually is a professional.

[Steve Reynolds]

Agreed, government needs to clean up this industry, to many unqualified people allowed to enter the field with little education. Education requirements: Four year degree should be required along with eight additional broker classes of real estate education, must include "ETHICS". Strong testing and background checks by the federal government in order to practice. Too many people are going to pay the price for the government hands off approach, many will be financially destroyed for years if not their lifetime.

[Sam]

This is life in America and I have been canned 3 times in High Tech. It can be the best thing that ever happened to you or the worse, it is up to you. The last tech company that laid me off paid a retention package of 6 months salary; my current wife and I went to NZ and Australia for 6 weeks. Unfortunately, now the rule is you are always looking because professional jobs do not last more than 5 years which can be good if managed right. That is why you chumps that stay in LA for the "entertainment job" are kidding yourselves, those will be Ballywood within 2 years. It is a new world, the job secondary and where you live is primary. The house you can own and control forecver, the job/career is temporary.

[TrojanDLA]

The economy changes with the times - train travel replaced by cars and planes, dial-up replaced by DSL, stamped envelopes with email, etc. These major paradigm shifts require people to be constantly educated and adaptable. At any given moment, your company could declare bankruptcy because of a major products liability lawsuit, your founder could die and his company broken up due to incompetent leadership.

Sympathy for lost jobs is one thing, but this situation has been replayed over and over in every industry in every market in every era for the last 3000 years.

[Todd in WeHo]

To the mortgage industry worker quoted in the original story, to jemarqu whose dad was laid off in the aerospace industry, and to anyone else who has been affected by fluctuations in whatever industries they've worked in I say "welcome to the real world."

Just like Sam, I lost jobs in high tech (i.e. Internet companies) back in the boom-to-bust days of 2000-2001 and, like TrojanDLA, I agree that what's happening now in the mortgage/real estate industry is simply a repeat of what has happened in myriad industries for millennia. My approach now is to enjoy good times while they last but be prepared for bad times as well. If you're smart and talented and just a bit ambitious, there's always a new opportunity waiting 'round the corner. It's what makes life interesting.

[Robert in Seattle]

Hello chickens, welcome to the roost. For years way too much money has flowed into a market that has seen little increase in underlying fundamental value. Why or why would anybody want to preserve hyper inflation in the housing market? Ah, watch out similar comments apply to the stock market. Such "value" created by the financial industry is not worth the bits it takes to store it. Meanwhile the rest of us have seen our standard of living decline during this period "expansion" aka inflation. The scary part is that the true function of recessions and depressions is to clean out financial higgery jiggery. That's the way markets operate and now we see the downside of the long wave. Capitalism works, it just not always so pleasant in its adjustments.

[Jane]

I feel for anyone losing their jobs, regardless of the skillset. Just because someone doesn't have a degree doesn't mean they don't deserve to eat. Anything the corporate machine can do to one group of people they can do to you. The real estate game is crooked, but the people paying aren't the rich ceo types that cooked this up, but the street level people. It's like cleaning up drugs by getting rid of the corner drug dealer.

That's pretty pointless.

Hey what about writing jobs? Remember when papers had staff writing jobs. Now everyone is freelance or a contributor or you can work for a blog where they don't pay you at all.

You have to pretty much make your own way now. Possibly opening up a "massage" parlor might be a smart move. People always like massages and you can't really off source that kind of work. After the depression lots of fun kinds of illegal activities were invented. Lets see what kind of fun new wrongness this generation of suvivors of the 2007, 2008, 2009 (?) depression can create.

Jane