The r-word has been dominating headlines, flooding social media, and messing with our peace of mind. As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about. And yet, plenty of people still aren’t sure what a recession actually looks like when it hits.

That’s likely why one Redditor turned to Elder Millennials, the generation who lived through the 2008 crash, and asked them to share their memories. What were the warning signs? How did it affect their daily lives? And what did it take to keep going when everything around them seemed to be falling apart?

Here’s what they had to say.

• Read More: 30 People Who Survived The 2008 Recession Share What It Was Really Like

#1

The 2008 recession was bad, me and my family worked in building houses at the time, the housing market tanked which was brutal, scary, and created a lot of doubt, anger and uncertainty. It was awful, people lost their jobs, houses, but it was for the most part purely economic.

What we are seeing now is WAY worse. I think comparing it to 2008 really undersells what is happening. Right now we do face economic difficulties but we are seeing a hostile takeover of government and the people in charge have no regard for the law.

I actually compare the current events to 9/11 in the sense that the world is a VERY different place than it was even a month ago.

Image credits: RaindropsInMyMind

#2

I was working for about four years professionally at the time and still lived at home with retired parents who owned their own so we made it away most unscathed.

However. My brain is permanent set to it doesn’t matter how stable a job is or how anything “positive” might feel around you: I refuse to spend money unless I absolutely have to. My family has a nice nest egg but it’s hard to look further ahead than six months without going “time to plan for absolute worst: what happened if me both and my wife lose our jobs?”.

Image credits: olinwalnut

#3

Imagine this: people were vying for minimum wage jobs at Walmart. Not just the typical crowd, but professionals needing to supplement their income after it had been cut, too. It was the easiest place to get in, and still turned away 75% of applications.

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#4

Things in the economy haven’t been right since 9/11. You could tell something was going to pop then. Let me just say it feels way worse now, and the feeling is getting worse, day by day almost. Something not good is coming and I don’t know if it’s a depression, a coup, a national war, another plague, or a combination or something worse. You can feel it in the bones of the society. A breaking point is coming.

Image credits: anon

#5

It was unbelievably scary. I lost my job in 2008 and didn’t work again until 2011. I had hundreds of interviews. Literally hundreds. I am a product manager. I was recommended for a position as a product manager, but the hiring manager said that I didn’t have experience with stationary, and that was the product, so they wouldn’t hire me. The job went unfilled for a year.

Image credits: Late_Economist_6686

#6

I remember going in for the first good job opportunity, and the waiting room had 20-30 people and many of them looked mid-career. It’s not a good sign when the recent grads and the grey hairs are applying for the same job. To me, today is nothing like that.

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#7

I couldn’t find a job, but people kept harping on me about it. I was broke and everyone was telling me get a job or go to college. Like they were both just easy to do at the time. “Take out a loan to go to college then!” yeah, that worked out really well for my generation.

I remember younger people were competing with older people for jobs at fast food places, and you were lucky to have found a job like that back then. I think there was a story about a guy who delivered pizza with a master’s degree or a PhD.

Image credits: Single_Extension1810

#8

I graduated high shool in 2007. We had lived an upper-middle class life (beyond our means and with no savings, it turned out) and my parents could no longer afford to send me to college. I remember us going to the college and my mom begging them to let me start school and they would have the money in a few weeks. The whole time i was there I could only afford a meal a day, lost TONS of weight. I would walk everywhere in the city in my old Chanel flats, from when we used to be “rich”, because i couldn’t afford the subway. I shoplifted food and clothes and was arrested.

I ended up having to leave college a month in because we couldn’t pay- which was mortifying in front of my new friends.

We all moved into a studio apartment, my mom my dad and me. My mom is disabled and my dad lost his job in 2007 and couldn’t find one again until maybe three years later. We got food stamps and ate a lot of canned food.

I tried and tried to get an entry level job of any kind but couldn’t.

It was traumatizing. Honestly, i’m still traumatized by it.

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#9

I had just gone out on my own as a hairdresser and I quit because it was so slow and stressful trying to make ends meet when not many people were spending money getting their hair done. I got a normal job where I got paid an hourly rate. I ended up staying in that field and going into management (horrible).

What’s going on now feels nothing like the 2008 recession. This is full blown fascism and insanity. At least in 2008 we didn’t have a raving lunatic and his billionaire master in the White House.

Image credits: WhippiesWhippies

#10

I graduated college in December 2007 and it took a while to find a job in 2008. Plus, the pay was terrible and affected how much I was paid for many years. Even though I eventually did get hired we’d have weeks where they would cut down our hours. I ended up moving in with my grandparents and living with them for a few years because even with a job that was the only way I could afford to live especially since I was then paying back my student loans too.

Right now I’m just seeing where the price of goods is continuing to go up so that is putting a strain on folks, but as of right now it doesn’t feel the same to me.

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#11

My husband and I applied for a mortgage in 2008. The bank laughed at us. Actually laughed. We lost most of our retirement fund, which wasn’t a lot, but it was to us at the time. We felt so buried that he joined the military so we could have some sort of future.

Image credits: Vwelyn

#12

I saw grown men cry. One man said he was always over qualified or under qualified and fast food wouldn’t give him a shot.

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#13

It was horrible. I was somewhat protected in 2008 because I was a grad student, but my program wasn’t working out for me and I left prematurely in early 2010 with my terminal masters. Even though things were slowly getting “better”, I still couldn’t find a job. I still remember sending hundreds of resumes a week applying to anything…and when I would get an interview (which was rare), I was competing with 20-30 people at the same time. The jobs I was applying for weren’t even high paying or higher positions.

I still remember I went to a GROUP INTERVIEW for a freaking receptionist job at a small dental office. All the applicants were confused as to why we were filling out an application for the job at the same time; we weren’t told it would be a group interview. There was at least 20 of us sitting in that dental office. It was so dehumanizing. I literally walked out of there and cried in my car.

While I’m grateful that my parents let me move back in, my mom was completely unsupportive at the time and thought I wasn’t trying hard enough. My sister who was also living there and is a year younger than me (and had a job, btw! She didn’t have to live in my parents’ house but she chose to) was simply annoyed with my existence even though I had no where to go and had no money. The entire experience has made me not close with my sister (even though we used to be) and weakened my already poor relationship with my mom. Thankfully I was able to find a data entry job after 9 months and moved the F out of my parents’ house once I saved enough money to pay for a security deposit and live with 3 other girls who were my age.

To this day I still have some lingering anxiety about saving money and job security, even though I have had stable employment since 2011.

Image credits: lazyhazyeye

#14

I was a department manager in a grocery store. The store got busier. Grocery stores are opposite of what the economy is. When the economy is good, people generally have money. They tend to go out more and cook less. When the economy is down, people generally have less money, so they tend to cook at home.

Image credits: 03Pirate

#15

08 hit incredibly hard. My parents lost EVERYTHING. I was out of college and joined the military. I could not get through to my parents while in basic bc creditors were calling non stop and filling their voicemail.

Image credits: anon

#16

Was poor. Didn’t feel it at all.

It was nothing like what’s happening today. I can’t imagine being poor right now.

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#17

Everyone always uses 2008 as the marker, but it really started in 2007, at least in my experience.

I graduated college in 2007 and spent the whole summer and fall looking for jobs including out of state. Any interviews I got, i ended up getting passed over for a more experienced person. It was like the hunger games for finding work.

I got discouraged and made the decision to just work part-time while getting a teaching certification. Ended up not liking teaching enough to pursue when finished and even then, in 2010, it was very difficult to find teaching jobs here in the northeast unless you were STEM and willing to work in the inner city. I could have gone out of state then, but I was engaged and getting married, and my ex didn’t want to move at that point. I spent another 6 months looking for work until I finally found something full-time in a call center at the start of 2011. Ended up getting laid off in 2017, but finding work was much easier at that point.

Anyways, thank you for coming to my TED talk. In summary, it was frustrating being told the world was your oyster with a college degree, and then suddenly it wasn’t.

Image credits: Geochic03

#18

I turned 18 in early 2009. I distinctly remember applying to be a dishwasher at Denny’s, spending about 30 minutes doing a stupid test and other assessments to determine if I was a good match. 30 seconds after I submitted my application I got a rejection email. That was the highlight, most employers didn’t even respond with a denial. This was very typical in my area for someone just trying to find a job. There were people with masters degrees competing for positions at McDonald’s. At this point almost every entry level position, including dishwasher, became a 5+ year minimum experience job.

To compound the problem, the longer you went without a job, the less likely you’d be hired.

Image credits: Cetun

#19

I was in the Air Force at the time, so I was largely shielded from it.

I’m very worried about an upcoming one, as it will financially ruin my wife and I.

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