The news is scaring the sleep outta me. Unemployment numbers are soaring (here from the Wall Street Journal) :
…while the unemployment rate is at a five-year high at 6.1%, a broader measure of weakness that includes people who have stopped looking for work or whose hours have been cut to part-time is 11% — the highest in 15 years.
In other words, not only are people becoming unemployed, they’re staying unemployed. In fact, as WSJ reports, “the number of people who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more reached two million in September.”
I’m not the only one losing sleep. According to a poll released today by ComPsych, a provider of employee assistance programs,
92% of employees say financial worries are keeping them up at night.
The correlation, of course, is simple. We work for money. We work for a lot of reasons, but mainly we work for money. The ComPsych poll lists the top financial concerns we mull over instead of counting sheep: 30% say the cost of living; 29% say credit card debt; 14% say mortgage payments; 13% say retirement accounts; 3% say kids’ tuition.
What keeps you up at night?