Sometimes hearing the big numbers repeated so many times can make you deaf when it comes to what’s happening at your neighbor’s house.

The recent Bloomberg Survey discussing 2008 U.S. unemployment numbers and predicting an even uglier 2009 is a perfect example.  The Survey was sobering and even a little scary.  The summaries of the report were frightening, too.  Don’t believe me?  Try this on for size:

Many large industries may only be at the beginning of their layoff cycles. That is certainly true of retail. Some estimates are that another 70,000 stores will close in the U.S. this year. The auto industry will cut more jobs either to please Congress or due to outright bankruptcies. Small business has almost no access to capital, so that part of the economy is likely to eat through jobs as well.

Unemployment almost certainly went above 7% in December. Retail layoffs could push that toward 8% all by themselves. The idea that the entire economy could drop another three million jobs this year is entirely possible.

But that kind of scary news is “out there”, not right in my face.  The fact that unemployment continues to stagger to higher and higher levels is obviously bad news, but it’s hard to understand what the numbers really mean until you have a chance to deal with one of the people who comprise the nasty part of those numbers.

That happened to me today.  I had a personal encounter with someone who’s recently been on the receiving end of an unwanted pink slip at work.  I don’t know exactly what the guy was making in his old job, but based on our discussions and his home, he was doing okay.  He met ends.  He set a little cash aside for fun.  He fed his investments.

After the hammer dropped on him and he realized he was really part of “the unemployed”, he started looking for work.  It took a few months for him to find a job in retail–for less than ten bucks an hour.  Oh, and they won’t let him get to that magical 32-hour/week “full time” level.

This guy has a friend.  He’s been in the automobile service industry for decades.  He’s managed large facilities and some very successful dealership repair units.  He got up close and personal with the unemployment axe, too.  Afer knocking on doors, calling all of the names in his Rolodex, and doing just about anything else he could think of, he found a job.  He’s making eight dollars per hour.  Eight dollars.

These two folks aren’t alone, either.  CNN/Money ran an article about how people are willingly accepting jobs that pay less than what the takers were previously making.  The article cites a survey that found:

In fact, 63% of unemployed workers said they would be willing to accept a job offer that pays less than their previous job, according to a recent survey conducted by the National Employment Law Project.

That’s right.  Nearly two-thirds of us would be willing to accept a huge drop in icome in order to find a job after a dismissal.   The article outlined one of that large group, a person who’d been pulling in six figures a year for some time now finds himself making $66K a year.  Meanwhile, the people I know and have heard about who were making $50K to $75K per year are now competing for hours with high school kids who are just trying to raise gas money.

Knowing these stories is a good reality check.  It’s so easy to get caught up in macroeconomic trends and big picture assessments.  When that happens, it’s easy to lose track of what we’re really talking about.  Those percentage points represent real people and some of them are learning just how tough it is to get a good job these days.