Are you going to do that in this economy?
Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
On today's episode, I want to talk about some particular words and phrases that you will hear when people are talking about a recession.
A recession is when the economy shrinks, when things are not going very well financially.
The economic circumstances of the country are not going very well, people are might not be able to find jobs, people aren't making a lot of money or spending a lot of money.
And that's what I want to talk about today, because there has been a lot of talk in the news about the chances of a recession here in the United States.
And in the world this year or next year.
There are certain terms that you will hear when people are talking about a recession.
And so I want to go over those today so you'll understand what they mean when you hear them.
So if you're interested in learning about these particular terms and improving your English vocabulary, then follow along, because we're about to begin it.
Before we begin, I just want to remind you to look at the description of this podcast episode.
There you will find helpful links like how to take a lesson with me and, of course, the vocabulary list.
The vocabulary list is a list of the words and phrases that I used in the episode, so you can take them and build your English vocabulary.
Now, let's get into these particular words and phrases.
These are going to be words that you will hear a lot.
If you listen to the news or if you read news articles, you're going to see these words and phrases a lot.
They're very common expressions.
There are things you hear all the time when people are talking about the economic crisis situation, about the economy and, of course, about a recession.
The one that I'm going to start with is the one that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, and that is in this economy.
I am really not sure why this is, but when people use this phrase in this economy it they almost always are talking about a bad economic situation.
They are saying that the economy is bad.
If you watch social media, you'll hear people say that they are unsure about what's going to happen in this economy.
You'll hear people say that they can't afford to buy things in this economy.
Another word that you will hear a lot is especially in the news, is downturn.
Downturn means a decline in economic activity, and it is one of those words that the news loves to use.
Another one that you will hear on social media or if you have a casual conversation with someone, is vibe session.
This is something that comes from two different terms kind of being put together into one word.
A portmanteau is the official name for that idea, taking two words and putting them together.
And that's what this is.
It's a relatively new term.
I don't think I heard it even a decade ago.
I think it's a pretty new term, but it's something that people say when they're talking about how they feel about the economy.
So the first part of the word is vibe.
What a vibe is, is a feeling that you get or the energy that you're feeling from something.
So a vibe is another word for mood, maybe, or feeling.
If you go to a party and it has fun vibes, that means it's a fun atmosphere.
It's a fun party.
If you go to a party and it has bad vibes, that means that something's wrong.
You feel uncomfortable.
You don't feel like you want to stay there.
If you go to a party and it has cozy vibes, that means that it feels really warm and inviting and you really just want to stay there.
Maybe you're not having a crazy party where everyone's getting loud and drinking a lot, but maybe you're having a party where everyone's sitting and you have a really nice lighting and a fireplace and it's just a really enjoyable atmosphere.
So vibe really can be used with any other word that you can use to modify it.
You will see a lot on social media, things about good vibes, things about bad vibes.
That's just really become a whole thing.
Sometimes people will ask you, what are the vibes like?
Or they'll do a vibe check, which means that they're checking to see what the mood is or the vibe of something is.
Like I said, that's a pretty new term.
I don't think I heard it even a decade ago, but it's definitely something very common on social media.
And as someone who teaches high school, who interacts with teenagers on a daily basis, I can say that's definitely a term that a lot of younger people use, but people of any generation can use it.
It's just a much newer slang term.
Now, the second part of vibe session has to do with a recession.
So they're taking the re part out and putting in vibe and then keeping the session part.
So it becomes vibe session.
The vibe session isn't a real recession.
It is when people are feeling like we're in a recession.
But a recession actually has a definition.
It is two quarters of decreasing economic growth.
A quarter is three months.
So that means you have to have this condition for six months in a row.
Now, people might not be in an actual recession, but they might feel like they're in a recession.
This has been the case in the United States and, I'm going to assume, in a lot of parts around the world.
Even just last year, the United States had the strongest economy in the world.
It had record low unemployment rates.
And so that was a really good thing.
People had jobs.
People were able to make money.
It seemed like a really good economy on paper.
So on paper means when you're looking at something like in a textbook or reading something.
So if you see all of these statistics, you would say wow, the US has the strongest economy in the world.
That's really great.
But there were a lot of articles about vibe sessions.
When the news would survey people, when they would ask people how they felt about the economy, a lot of people would say that they thought the United States was in a recession, even though we were in the opposite of a recession, even though we had really great economic growth.
People didn't feel that way.
And so you saw this in the news.
People would talk about a vibe session, meaning that people felt like we were in a recession, even though we weren't.
And that term is really being used a lot now.
We are not officially in a recession.
Like I said, that would take six months and we're not at that point yet, but.
You will see news articles.
You'll see it on social media that people are feeling like they are in a vibe session.
We talked about unemployment.
That is a way to describe the amount of people who are not currently working, who currently don't have a job.
Another word that's tied to that is layoffs.
Layoffs occur when a company is trying to decrease the amount of employees that they have.
That usually occurs when the company is not doing well or the company is trying to save money.
You will hear that companies are going through rounds of layoffs.
It's usually private companies, but in recent times, There have been cuts to the federal government.
Usually, federal employees don't get laid off, but that definitely has been occurring recently because of how this current administration is being run.
Now, layoff is different from getting fired.
Getting fired and being laid off sometimes are used interchangeably, which means that people use one term or the other and mean the same thing, but they are slightly different.
A layoff is because your company is not doing well and they are just getting rid of employees.
That doesn't mean you did anything wrong or that you are a bad employee.
It just means that they have to cut employees.
They have to save money.
Firing usually has to do with an individual what they did at the workplace or maybe what they're not doing.
I think everyone has had an experience where you've worked with someone who may be Doesn't work that hard, doesn't really do everything that they're supposed to do.
Maybe they're a little bit lazy.
That is another case for firing someone.
Now, of course, it doesn't always have to be that you were a good employee or a bad employee.
It doesn't have to be a judgment thing.
It usually is, but sometimes people are just gotten rid of.
Sometimes your company just fires people or lays people off.
So another term that comes along with this is that you were let go.
Let go is another word for firing or another word for laying people off.
So you might hear that a company is letting go of 50 employees.
That really means that they're laying off 50 employees.
And in that case, it's being used as another way of saying layoff.
Or you might hear that a particular coworker was let go.
And if it's just one coworker, that means that they were fired, that something happened and that employee no longer works at your company.
So in that case, it's being used as a way of saying fired.
A very nice way of saying fired is to say that a particular person was let go.
Sometimes when people are let go, they do get some amount of money.
Not always.
Sometimes, if you are fired for doing something wrong at your job, you might just get your last paycheck, which is the amount of hours that you worked.
You would get paid for them.
But sometimes, if you are laid off from work, you will get paid some type of money that is supposed to help you while you are looking for a new job.
And that is called a severance package.
So to sever means to cut or to separate something, And when you leave your work, you are breaking away from the company.
You're being separated from the company.
And that's where that name comes from.
It's a severance package, which means it's a certain amount of money that is given to you after you leave your work.
A lot of the times when you are talking about a CEO or someone who is very, very powerful in the company, very high up in the company, usually they have different severance packages than us normal people, us normal employees.
Usually the people who run companies have contracts, special contracts that talk about how much money they would get if they were fired from the company, if they were to leave the company for some reason.
And a lot of times people get mad about that.
There are times when people... do a very bad job at a company.
A company will lose money.
They have to lay off a lot of employees.
They are not doing well.
And then the CEO also leaves the company, but that CEO might get paid millions.
And people get very mad when they get fired and they lose their job and they see that somebody who did a bad job running the company got paid all of this money.
And in that case, you will hear the term golden parachute.
A parachute is a canopy, I guess you could say a piece of fabric that people use when they jump out of an airplane.
Something that opens up and prevents you from falling directly to the ground and injuring yourself.
And that's where this term comes from.
So, even though the CEO might have done a really bad job with the company and maybe they get fired because of how bad they did, they don't just fall and hit the ground and get injured.
Right, they have a parachute that's going to slow their fall and keep them safe.
And that golden part refers to how much money they're making.
Gold, of course, is very valuable.
So you get this term golden parachute.
There have been a number of golden parachutes during the 2008 financial crisis.
This term got used a lot.
And I'm sure if we do end up having a recession, you will see that term or you will hear that term again.
When people are struggling to survive in a difficult economic time, when they are struggling to pay their bills.
You will hear the term living paycheck to paycheck.
What this means is that people are barely surviving.
They only have enough money to last them until their next paycheck comes in and they're not able to save any money and they don't have any extra money lying around.
They just have enough to pay their bills and keep living.
In the United States.
I would say that it's most common for people to get paid every two weeks, and If you work in the government, you might only get paid once a month.
Or if you work at some jobs that they really try to get people to stay at that particular job, some companies will pay every single week.
But those two instances aren't very common.
I would say the most common is getting paid every two weeks.
So if you have someone who is living paycheck to paycheck, that means that They only have enough money for two weeks at a time.
Every two weeks, they're running out of money.
Or maybe right before their next paycheck comes in.
They don't have any money at all and they're just waiting for their paycheck.
And that's where you get that term living paycheck to paycheck from.
A very similar term is struggling to make ends meet.
To make ends meet.
Think of like an end of a rope, for example, the two ends of a rope and trying to get them to touch together.
And think of that when you're thinking about months.
So the end of one month to the beginning of the next month, that is like a meeting of two months, for example.
So if you're struggling to make ends meet, that means that you're struggling to pay your bills, you're struggling to get by on your current salary and you really just don't have enough money.
Now people struggle to get by when they don't have high paying jobs, when they are only able to work jobs that are very low paying, or maybe, if they're not able to work as much as they would like to, Maybe they can't find a job or they can only find a part-time job.
In those cases, that is called underemployment.
So you might have a job, but maybe you only work 20 hours a week.
Or maybe you work a lot more hours, but you don't get paid very much money.
Let's say you have a degree and you are a lawyer, but you can't find a job as a lawyer, so instead you have to go work at the mall.
You can't find as many hours as you would like.
Maybe you can only find part-time employment compared to full-time employment.
That would be an example of being underemployed.
This happens when the job market is drying up.
I know this term is a little bit weird because the job market isn't a liquid.
It's not like water, right?
It can't actually dry up.
So this is more of a metaphorical thing.
When you see that the job market is drying up, that means there's less positions available.
There are aren't as many jobs as there were in the past and people are finding a hard time finding work.
If investments in the stock market are drying up, that means that there are less investments in the stock market.
The amount of money in the stock market has decreased, So that drying up really just think of it as decreasing something, getting decreasing or getting worse.
And substitute that in when you hear or read that sentence and you'll get a better idea of what they mean.
It really just means that something is not doing as well, that it's getting worse and there's less of it.
And if the job market is drying up, if you are struggling and having to live paycheck to paycheck, then you have to tighten your belt.
Now, a belt is something that goes around your waist that helps keep your pants from falling down.
And when we say this, we don't actually mean a real belt.
What we mean is that the amount of money that you're spending.
So if someone says that they have to tighten their belt, what they're saying is that they have to spend less money.
They have to cut costs somehow and spend less money, maybe on eating out or going to the movies or doing fun things.
Those fun things that you don't have to do but you want to do, that is called disposable income.
To dispose of something is to throw it away and And that's kind of what we're talking about here.
This is money that you don't need to pay other bills.
It's money that you could just throw away on fun things, right?
Taking a trip, going to a concert, going out to eat with your friends.
Those are all things that aren't necessary for survival, but they're definitely fun things and things that cost money.
If you have to tighten your belt, if you have to cut costs costs and save money somewhere, you're going to cut out those disposable things.
You will probably hear or see these terms if you watch or listen to the news.
And I really think that watching the news or reading news articles is a great way to get more input in English.
We've talked about input here before on the podcast.
It means reading or listening to the foreign language that you are trying to learn.
And I think the news is a really great resource.
Usually they use pretty simple English.
Usually it's at a level where most people can understand if they have an intermediate level of English.
And the newscasters usually have very good pronunciation.
They have training to be able to talk in front of a camera.
And usually you have people who speak very well and that are easy to understand.
So if you are looking for input, if you are looking to improve your English abilities, I would recommend watching or reading or listening to the news if you are at an intermediate level of English or above.
In the meantime, if you enjoyed this podcast episode, let me know if you liked learning about these terms.
If you would like to have more episodes in the future where we talk about different terms that are associated with different topics, please let me know.
Leave a comment, tell me what you want to hear more about, and I can plan some episodes around that.
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