The 2008 Recession was a period of severe economic failure that took place from the end of 2007 to June 2009. Over this year and a half, homes lost their value, millions of small businesses were forced to close, and families were struggling to stay afloat. It was caused by things like low interest rates, weak standards for giving out loans, and the price of housing dropping over a short period of time by over 40%. Unemployment rates doubled and 8.7 million jobs were lost, and the stock market declined by nearly 40%.
When discussing the impact of the Recession on his life, my father, Ian, recalls what it was like to try to run a small local law firm and start a family during as the world’s worst economic decline since the Great Depression. His first daughter was born the month that the Recession started.
“It was really scary,” he says. “Your sister was a few months old when the recession really kind of ramped up. That made things really, really scary because there was an uncertainty how much money we were going to have from day to day.”
During this trying time, people were desperate to make enough money to survive and would take whatever job they could get. This directly affects a person that makes a living on people willing to challenge their employers for being treated unlawfully.
“The biggest effect that I saw on the firm from the 2008 Recession was that we saw a significant drop off and people making appointments to see legal advice about a hostile work environment,” he states when asked about how his work was affected. “I think it was because people were really scared about complaining about a job that they had and potentially losing that job, so we went for about a year without having a whole lotta people making appointments to complain about hostile work environments, which is a very common thing that we see a lot of in our field.”
During a recession, people working in retail, tourism and construction or real estate are typically hit the hardest. Similarly to real estate agents, lawyers make money based off the cases they receive, which is controlled by how many people feel the need to take legal action. When talking about how difficult the Recession was for someone in his profession, my father is thankful for his job.
“I don’t think it hit us harder than others. I think we were pretty lucky,” he recalls. “You know the kind of work that I do at the firm is… well, I don’t wanna say recession proof, but people always have employment issues and so that made you know we were we were still somewhat busy and successful, so it didn’t have as bad impact on us as other people.”
While across the world, people were losing jobs and unable to make ends meet, thankfully, my father said that he couldn’t think of anyone he knew personally that struggled an immense amount during the recession.
“I can’t say that I can think of somebody off the top of my head that I had that I know personally that had a negative impact on, but I think about all the people who lost you know all this value in their homes or people lost their homes. People lost their jobs and their homes,” he states.
My father is very glad that when looking back on the 2008 Recession, he doesn’t feel any sense of dread over what happened. It was a trying time for everyone, especially a small business owner. “It was very scary, but I think we were very lucky.”
