From "do you want granite countertops with that" to "would you like fries with that" - oh, what a difference a housing crash makes

Mortgage brokers

Appraisers

realtors

Homebuilders

Illegal immigrant roofers

Title agents

Pottery Barn employees

Decorators

Bankers

Lenders

Home Depot workers

HGTV employees

Architects

Landscapers

Real estate school teachers

Construction workers

Plumbers

Fencers

Pavers

Newspaper advertising sales staffs

Investment bankers

Millions will now lose their jobs.

Millions.

Thank you Alan Greenspan, Bush, Congress, NAR, realtors and the rest. You really f*cked us. Hope it was worth it.

What he does see is a difficult road ahead for rest of this year as the subprime mortgage meltdown takes its toll. It claimed another direct victim this week with the failure of American Home Mortgage Investment, a company that until yesterday employed 7,000 people. Today, about 90 per cent of them are looking for other work.

The indirect impact of such job losses on the economy is just beginning. And it promises to be painful, as all bursting bubbles tend to be.

“We know that the unwinding of the subprime situation is still ahead of us, rather than behind us,” Mr. Chan said.

Sifting through the latest labour market numbers released yesterday, he noted the slower job growth, but warned “that the other shoe” has yet to drop. Translation: Expect big housing-related job losses to weigh down the economy

For the PC crowd who ripped HP for connecting illegal immigration to the housing bubble, I give you this...

This article addresses the supply side, where illegal labor fueled the corrupt homebuilders profits these past few years as millions of poorly built homes went up and an American homebuilding workforce was displaced, all with a nudge nudge wink wink from the corrupted Congress and President.

But don't forget though that the illegals also played a role in the demand side too (check out that article - $15,000 a year illegals get $720,000 loan) which is also unraveling faster than a soggy burrito.

For Illegal Immigrants, Housing Slump Takes Toll

Some of the casualties of America’s housing bust are easy to spot up and down California’s Central Valley.

From Fresno to Sacramento, big tangles of wire and PVC pipes clutter vacant lots in silent subdivisions, waiting for houses to be built — some day. Dozens of “For Sale” signs already dot the lawns across new residential communities. And right next to the ubiquitous billboards from builders are fresh signs offering homeowners help to avoid foreclosure.

But another set of losers is less visible: the immigrant workers, mostly illegal, who rode the construction boom while it lasted and now find jobs on building sites few and far between.

Offering more than $10 an hour as well as new skills and a shot at upward mobility, construction provided many illegal immigrants the best job they ever had, a step up from the backbreaking work reserved for those toiling without legal authorization, which in the Central Valley mostly meant pruning and picking in fruit and vegetable fields.

The growing presence of illegal immigrants in home building, mostly working for small labor contractors, might help explain why government statistics have recorded only a small decline in construction employment, despite the collapse in residential investment.

“Technically they don’t fire them,” said Myrna Martínez, coordinator for the Fresno office of the American Friends Service Committee, a nonprofit organization working on social assistance projects for immigrant workers. “They just tell them that there is no more work.”

While there are no equivalent statistics at the state or local level, a glance at a construction crew anywhere in the valley confirms the overwhelming immigrant share. “There are only Mexicans,” said Adrián L., an illegal immigrant from Oaxaca who does interior work on homes here. “Now not even the supervisors are American.”