Why is it that every time I start a new job, budgets are soon slashed?

I asked that question recently on my Facebook page and received the following reply from a college classmate who is in the public relations field. His name is Kevin McCarthy, originally form Milwaukee where he and I went to Marquette University together when it still had a journalism school (now it’s a college of communications). I’ve removed the company name he used on Facebook.

With his permission, I’m reprinting his comments here. The lesson for others: getting a job is a battle. As a manager, functioning in a new job also is a battle.

College classmate Kevin McCarthy…and so it goes…

Kevin writes in response to my question:
“Reminds me when I went to [unnamed oil company]. Three weeks after I started, the company began offering voluntary severance packages. My new co-workers assumed I knew someone at the company, because they figured that was the only way someone could be hired in that environment. Within three months, I had reactivated my job search.

It took me a year and eight months to extricate myself from that. Returned to Milwaukee for a job…that was eliminated three years later. Moved to Charlotte for a job…that was eliminated five years later. And so it goes.”