Busy as usual with demand increasing while resources are squeezed 😕

Quiet but that's good. 😐

If we are busy then its seen as a failure. It means that our Fire prevention has failed, so the quieter we are the happier the bosses are. 🙄

Then the quieter we are the more likely they are to shut fire stations.

Corporate tax advisor (FS specialist). We had a big dead patch in May/ June/ July last year but have been flat out since then. People seem to be doing a lot of restructuring and streamlining of businesses, and M&A is now on the up with (apparently) plenty of bargains to be had from distressed businesses, but that's only really open to those with their own money to spend. Plenty of recruitment activity in my sector as well.

Good to hear a reasonable number doing well. It seems it's either really good or really bad.

Utter s***e here, no business at all, everyone I know still working is hanging on to their job from week to week. The idea of "recruitment" is a fantasy. (Central London, financial services).

Mark has already commented on the bike shop. My former employer has been sniffing around looking for contractors to fulfil some roles (including the one I got early retirement from) for 3-6 months. So far, I've declined.

Who do you work for Rich?

I used to be in hifi stuff.

He's in Salisbury so I'm thinking Naim. Hope so as I've used their kit for years and it'd be good if they're continuing to do well.

Can we get an STW discount from Naim please? Please?

Pretty busy, not like the past, but enough.

Just finishing a job that gives us enough profit for 2010-11 that we don't actually need to do any more work to get through the year. Not bad given that the financial year in question hasn't even started yet 😀

But then folk don't stop pooing just because the economy is up the swanny… though they do resent paying when their poo shifting devices or poo cleaning devices stop working… they still pay up though 😉

Consultant / contractor accountant. Busy. To the extent I've dumped my general practice clients to focus exclusively on contractor sector. The market isndping well andnthe areas I specialise in – generally IT consultants and oil & gas – are doing ok. Lots of new contracts around but rates are being cut a bit. But maybe that's the markets correcting becuase some of the rates were bonkers.

I am busy enough (too busy)
oil industry

Bairn, I have crap accountants now.

EDIT: Well not crap as such.. just.. standoffish.

Molgrips. There's a lot of that around. Not me though I'm great. 🙂

manic in slabstock polyurethane foam (massive large scale production), the group came very close to folding last March but then picked up. End products are mostly automotive-eastern europe clients, medical, and industrial products-tapes, seals, gaskets etc.

Dreadful in the electrical trade, really bad.
With people not buying, no extensions, conservatories, re wires etc.

What part of the country are you in? Seems to be business as usual around my neck of the woods(Surrey). Was ticking over up to July last year, then it took off and we've been busy ever since(Retail/commercial Electrical installation/Maintenance).

People still seem to want to drink plenty of good quality real ale, so we're doing fine.

Do notice that lunches are quieter due to half empty offices though. They seem to be staying in business with less staff.

we're picking up, but it's difficult to tell whether it's sustainable
HR consultancy

Variable as usual. In the last month I've been working in London Munich Berlin and now I'm in Hong Kong. Hopefully a quiet week coming up and not sure after that but it's either all or nothing. Overall work is probably back to normal but with less notice.

Fairly flat for us (IT consultancy/managed services), some new contracts but also a lot of pressure from existing outsource clients to cut costs meaning using more off-shore resources so a few local redundancies. We're pretty much cut to the bone now though so if/when we do win another big contract it's going to be a lot of long days 🙁

Rubbish fitting floors .
2 weeks work in every 4 weeks
but better than this time last year

redundant on march the 31st!

Work picking up, managed to keep everyone employed with no redundancies over the last 24 months, now looking to recruit.

specialist software developer
getting better – jobs for my skillset up about 30-40% from last year
had to go abroad for some of the time, and had to take 12.5% pay cut to keep a job in UK

Rubbish fitting floors .
2 weeks work in every 4 weeks

Well get back in the garage and make a dynamo light then! 🙂

Automotive Design..(contract)

Picking up in the UK, a slight movement on rates too. But lots of blokes I know had a 9 month holiday (i managed to stay in work though)

Germany, a traditional bolt hole when the UK is flat, is still dead though.

Busier here than last year but like some others, rates have been cut (drastically in some cases).

Those who i did work for free for when they had no cash are making it up to me now (paying) and the ones who are cutting rates, well, I'll get it back when they are screaming later this year.

for me, it's gone mental :)doesn't feel like a business or work!

we've been run off our feet over the last couple of months and are actually (thank goodness) going to be taking on new staff

IT consultancy here. It's gone slow but we've kept busy pitching for more work, a fair chunk of which should pay off. Still profitable though. A good proportion of our long-term customers are local gov, education, NHS so not battening down the hatches quite so much.

Personally, I specialise in Novell to Microsoft migrations and Netware finally going end-of-life this month along with Novell's change in support policy (must have support/maintenance contract to get patches) has focussed a few minds, so that's steady work.

We have had a load of time-wasters recently though. Presumably people out there wanting to make themselves look busy, important and irreplaceable to their bosses so have been coming to us to do pre-sales and proposals for things, only to get to the point where they need to sign and commit and suddenly it's "sorry, I've had my funding for this pulled".

The change in pace has been quite nice for me – went from spending 4-5 days a week on site (which could be anywhere) and lots of driving, to a day or two at most and the rest of the time working at home. Not sure how I'd feel about going back to "busy" really.

IT Consultancy…..its been slow, but ticking over slowly…..

The major downside is that I have more time for riding… 😉

Finished my degree (Town Planning) in october, just in time for a massive reshuffle of Aucklands 7 city councils into 1 creating a dead stop on new recruitung.. have scored 2 days a week with a one man band consultancy and work 4 days a week in the boozer to keep a roof above our heads while my wife is on maternity leave,overdrawn, too skint to do anything but exist and keep the family housed and fed. theres worse off people everywhere but i'm having sleepless nights regardless.

2008 and 2009 were pretty dead, which is actually fortunate as we were having to totally rewrite the software, as we discovered that the original iteration was completely hard coded (after the gibbon responsible for it had left), now it's picking up a bit we've got a contract from china and are currently having a trial with a pharma company which will sort us out for the year if it's sucessful…

We're a process safety software firm.

bloody terrible here, think there are very dark times ahead, got a baby on the way aswell.

we make shiny things for ducting for the offshore, industrial, ncuclear. tunnel markets….

we have quoted like hell but nothing is coming back our way, all the big boys are holding onto their budgets and not releasing funds…

there's only so much longer the pot will last…. horrible feeling but i guess i am still employed!

Theres a bit of movement in the mortgage industry at the moment with some nice low fixed rates available for those looking to borrow below 75% of the property value and some even lower tracker rates (certainly below alot of lenders standard variable rates) and as a result people are looking at remortgages and moving house more than they have been in the last 6 months.

I'm based in Sussex but my client bank is spread across the UK.

If things continue as they are at the moment then I'll be ok but i can't afford to have another winter like last year, it was dire 🙁

Recruitment Industry – I need not say a word.

Dead since october/november – i'm a garden designer (at the moment) so some of that is seasonal, but there's usually a big pickup in late Jan/Feb and what with the cold weather & all i've hardly had a sniff of new work this year, so it's mainly last year's projects rolling on at the mo. Interestingly some of the contractors I use are still quite busy so people are doing bits & bobs, just not the higher value stuff that I tend to get involved in.

A good proportion of our long-term customers are local gov, education, NHS so not battening down the hatches quite so much.

They will be soon however. Our public sector customers are expecting around 15% cuts in their budgets.

Part-time academic, part time consultant. Both okay at the moment, but cuts are on the way so who knows.
Burrowing away my earnings, guess that makes me as much the problem as the solution for the immediate economic outlook.

busiest I've been in years, completely flat out at the moment

Budgets are tighter though, having to work a bit harder for the money but i'm certainly not complaining

Audio Visual Engineer, self employed

Designer

Deader than dead. Last year I was getting through at least 30 design jobs a month – now scraping by on about 10 a month and freelance projects are zilch.

I've been made redundant twice already and we're facing more cuts within the department over the next month or so…

Last year my wife spent 8 months Jan-Sept looking for work- 600+ job applications before she got offered two jobs.
This month, two weeks of casual looking got 3 job offers, all at good rates, two of them as long term (12 month+ expectation) roles. Strangely, there seems to be lots of work at the banks now partly taxpayer owned
Investment banking, contract project manager.

I'm still looking after the kids. 😆