I know many on this site are predicting raising unemployment to accelerate the fall the house prices. But I think things could get bad before this happens. Many people are now paid based on performance, my own salary is 30% commission. I think a standard performance pay is 25-30% of total package. At the moment I'm basically taking almost a 30% hit to my salary, as sales are slow. Although I only ever used this 30% for saving, so it is not a huge problem. But it may be for some? Once performance based pay was only in selected professions, but now it seems wide spread, more than previous recessions at least. These reward schemes will ease the pain for businesses but not cure the problem. What are others thoughts on this? How will these rewards schemes effect the problem? How will this contribute to the unemployment numbers?