Bleak

The ever diminishing company that I work at cut six employees in September. With few customers, little work until next year and reduced investor funding we are under pressure to reduce costs. The company went after about $500,000 worth of savings for senior employee salaries.

Unless we find some customers one of our sites will run out of road come April. That work will all migrate overseas resulting in a huge loss for taxpayers and a small but significant loss to US GDP. It will mean one more product that won't ever be Made in America again. If the US economy was robust, an investor with deep pockets and time could be found to keep the company going until the market comes around. But none are out there. And as resources diminish the chances of this thing succeeding are growing ever more remote.

About 40 jobs are in peril and about half of us are nearing retirement so will most likely never work again. Nobody is going to hire 60+ year old engineers from a failed company. Most of us will take early retirement with it's reduced income and struggle with how to get affordable medical insurance. It's the "new normal" economy.

It becomes more difficult every morning to get up at 4:30 in the morning, hop in the car to drive 50 miles and find something to do all day in a failing company that has no budgets for much of anything. Most maintenance is routinely foregone and no improvement projects are possible. Basically I just try to keep things going without spending any money. Nine hours later I drive another hour to get home without any major accomplishments. But I'm still making money, at least for another day, week or a few months.