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In Louisville, Kentucky things are not good when it comes to employment figures. Times are tough everywhere, but it looks like there are thousands of people who are having a hard time keeping the lights on in their homes.

A General Electric factory has just created 90 jobs in the area, while 90 jobs isn’t exactly a huge number, it is a great deal to those without work. The factory jobs, building washing machines, pay about $27,000 a year and GE is generous with benefits.

For the first three days that the job was listed, GE received a whopping 10,000 applications for the 90 jobs that were open.

Over the recession, this particular plant hasn’t laid off any of its unionized workers even though the union and the company did have to come to a decision to cut wages a bit. The same job paid $19 four years ago.

The unemployment rate for the county the Appliance Park is in is 10.6% and there are nearly 40,000 unemployed.

These kinds of jobs can be hard to come by and that’s why I think that the openings got so much attention and so many people applied. A job with good benefits as well as “ok” pay for someone with little education and experience in the field means that the applicant may be able to pay the mortgage for the month.

Factory jobs are often the hardest to come by in a recession because many factories start slowing down production in a recession because spending has slowed down greatly. When factories slow down or cut way back on production, then the owners and managers have to decide who to let go and when to do it.

In GE’s case, at this Appliance Park, no one had to be let go even if they did take a pay cut. That’s not the case at all appliance facilities. In Oxford, MS, a Whirlpool Plant closed its doors a year or so ago and left thousands jobless. In a small town in Mississippi, that is a huge blow to the local economy as well as the surrounding areas where many of the people who worked at the plant lived. I am not sure what those people had to do to make ends meet after the plant closed, but I know that they had to try to find work somewhere else and in Mississippi, that kind of work isn’t easy to come by.

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Jeremy

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