Are We Really Over It?

摘要

How do you really feel about the economy and the state of the housing market today? With a seven year recessionary fog gradually clearing, owners talk about how the tough times have impacted their businesses and what they're forecasting for the next 12 months.Joe Wilson has operated through three major recessions in his 50-year pest control career, but the one that struck in 2008 with the dual housing and stock market crash has been long in duration and slow in recovery. "This has dragged on for seven years now," says the CEO of PermaTreat (sold to Rollins, Inc. in 2014) in Fredericksburg, Va., adding that it "sneaked up on us."Looking back, Wilson calls the 1974 recession "a killer" because of losing big-name companies like Woolworth's and Railway Express. He recalls the early 1980s recession in a similar way—a deep dive with a fast economic revival. The downturn in the mid-1990s resulted in significant job losses for lots of Americans, he says. "It put an abundance of labor on the market."