Now its real.

Signs of economic deterioration have been with us for a while. First housing prices started to drop. Then we had a "subprime" crisis for banks, followed by the collapse of the investment banks and the emergency TARP bill. For Thanksgiving the topic du jour was the retail sector and then we started to marvel at the amazingly high unemployment numbers.

By January 2009, the daily paper was a list of articles on companies with shrinking revenue, rising losses and layoffs. The news has been impossible to ignore but as things often are here in Seattle, they seemed far off.

Until yesterday.

On Thursday January 22, 2009, Microsoft did its first every "mass" layoffs. The rumors had been going strong since December but now it is official.

For people living elsewhere, you probably think, "what's the big deal? Companies do layoffs all the time." But not here.

As a transplant, whenever I complained about the unsustainably high price of housing in this area, I was told time and again that prices were high because Microsoft jobs pay so well and they never do layoffs.

So much for that twisted logic. Yesterday Seattle rejoined the nation. Following the bankruptcy of WAMU, the Microsoft announcement makes the sinking economy undeniable even here in the forest.

Even though I was expecting the announcement (since last week), yesterday was a hard day. I did not lose my job but it was very emotional for me nonetheless. I've been laid off before and I guess I still have a lot of strong feelings about the experience, which was probably the lowest point in my life.

Its one thing to read about layoffs, another thing to work at a company doing layoffs and another level altogether to get laid off yourself.

Although I did not lose my job, people I know and like did. Their absence will have a very real affect on my job moving forward. They will be missed and the rest of us will be changed.

I hear that Microsoft was originally going to cut much more than the 5% it actually did but 5% is bad enough. The emotional impact is going to be much larger than the actual numbers.

The word "never" is gone for good and Balmer clearly said that layoffs would continue for 18 months so now even the survivors know they arent safe. The company also froze raises for the year so the topic is sure to linger for months. Ugh.

It is pretty clear that the global economy is going to struggle for the foreseeable future too. Job problems and money fears are going to grow and linger for everyone. 2009 is going to be a hard year. For a lot of people, it may be their first hard year ever.

This may be the the first people of job losses for some people, but job losses arent the only story. While the news will continue to focus on the losses (and the occasional plane crash), companies will continue to hire some people. That will give some people hope even as it will strange for others.

On the day we got email about the job losses we also got an email from a college grad showing up for his first week of work. Wha? Microsoft is firing people out one door and hiring new ones through another. There is a logical argument for this but the emotional experience is a difficult one.

But difficult or not, that is just the way it is going to be. We are adults and we have to face realities. Businesses exist to make money. They are influenced by politics and circumstance. Our task is to make our way as best we can in that system.

My heart goes out to all those people facing hard times, especially those that did not bring it on themselves with poor decisions. Let's all pray for better days.