On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 12:16 PM, Ethan McKinney <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

BTW, the amusement park industry is apparently booming and the parks and their vendors can't hire enough technical people (creative is a problem, although operating staff is still available). Florida is said to be crazy. In any case, amusement parks are very optional expenditures, so a boom indicates that people in the broader economy have discretionary income.

Amusement parks must continually offer the newest and most awesome rides or they'll lose attendance to the parks that do so. This means that their technical hiring must precede their actual season, in order to get those new rides up and running. In other words, along about midsummer of next year we'll know if the park administrators guessed right about the predicted amount of attendence . . . when they begin laying off those new technical people as excess to actual requirements.

I live in a tourism economy and there are plenty of "Now Hiring" signs out right now. But the jobs on offer are part-time and pay $8/hour . . . and will probably vanish after New Years, when this area turns into a virtual ghost town, until spring brings back the tourists.

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need the advice." - Bill Cosby

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester