Affected a lot, I believe - first positively, then negatively. Nowadays prices grow faster than salaries. We had a quick rise in early to mid nineties and a bit afterward and then it sort of reversed, although we aren’t where we started. Conditions worsened a lot when an international corporation bought the bank where both my mother and step-father worked, so it’s not exactly the normal flow of economy - then again, acquisition is a part of the peroces… Now my step-father is at half his earnings from the best years he had before the foreign purchase - he eventually got laid off along with a wave of local specialists in his field - people from a poorer country, with smaller salaries, replaced them. My mother got moved from unit head to an independent position and from there to team member. No salary reduction, but no raise either, throughout those years, and benefits have been cut (e.g. a full 13-th salary for Christmas). People from the acquiring company are not exactly kind, either - working there exacts a toll and the gone days of local ownership look like a gold age in comparison. Now that I got a well-paying job, things are hopefully going to improve financially, but people in my mother’s job or my step-father’s job aren’t going to become kinder and easier to get along with.
I’m not sure how it affected where I am professionally I think if I had the same qualifications a couple of years ago, I’d be better off, but I’m not sure. For some reason maybe a year or two ago wouldn’t have been as good as now, but maybe five years? Well, can’t really say. Certainly without the rise in the nineties, it would have been much more difficult to get the same education. On the other hand, without the foreign take-over, my parents would be way better off now. Perhaps it’d have affected my education somewhat, as in an expensive course or two on top of the good education that was for free but prevented a normal job.
