To be fair, Denise Coates is the country's highest tax payer for the third year in a row.
Water Utilities are spending BORROWED money.
FTFTFY - look at how Thames Water has paid its dividend through borrowing and financial engineering. Canadian pensioners might be poorer in the future (1/3 is owned by a Canadian pension fund)
Bike components sales are flat for us which considering whats happened of the past 18 months is as good as growth. Within that D2C is up but B2B to stockists is way down.
Industrial 3d printing for others has more than doubled in the past year, mainly non bike industry but that has grown too as companies don't want to tie up cash with years worth of far east produced stock that could be out of date when the next fad comes along.
However, costs are way up and we compete against companies who bought their machinery with cheap covid money so nothing is left at the end of the month. One day Rodney...
Tourism numbers to Pembs were good last year but spending on extras like adventurous activities was way down.
People had paid for their accommodation and still came away but had less spending money. The summer weather was an extra kick in the teeth for the outdoor sector last year.
Timely thread....
Sister told me today he fella is out of a job at the end of this month.
He's in sales. Selling waste services or whatever the crap that means. His previous one was selling waste management to building sites. He got out of that a year or so back as things were slowing down.
Any jobs going east of London (Essex/Suffolk way)?
They say that this recession hasn’t been accompanied by a rise in unemployment.
But what there is is a change in the nature of employment. Skilled, decently paid jobs are being lost and are desperately hard to come by, while there’s a glut of minimum wage/gig economy bullshit jobs that don’t pay enough to live on
Self employed here, fingers in a few pies, try and stay flexible* Bulk of my work is as an electrician specialising in temporary power, mostly big sporting events, some broadcast and music events. My year is looking similar to last year, plenty of work booked in already, BUT, I can see the way the wind is blowing and am making a push to get more work abroad. Purely anecdotal on my part, but feels like there is a lot more opportunities and investment elsewhere
* really I just get bored easily! I also work as a lighting technician on big artistic installations. Last couple of years I’ve worked all over Europe, possibly as much to do with culture as budget, but again there does feel like more opportunities abroad
Structures examination, primarily railway based but also some highways.
There's pretty much a UK wide shortage of examiners commenting on condition. Apparently we're recession proof ..
But what there is is a change in the nature of employment. Skilled, decently paid jobs are being lost and are desperately hard to come by, while there’s a glut of minimum wage/gig economy bullshit jobs that don’t pay enough to live on
Absolutely. So many working class jobs have been converted into minimum wage work ruled over by contracting organisations and agencies. The precarity of modern employment (is no accident) is dismal to say the least. Working somewhere for say 30-40 years like previous generations seems like a fairy tale from the land of milk and honey!
Pharma CRO spending is way down on previous years, especially LM.
I'm trying to re-enter the HGV driver market and there's very little work out there, especially of any quality. Even spoke to an agency earlier in the week and they're not taking on due to them struggling to find placements for the drivers they already have! Could be a local issue though as two local large distribution hubs have shed hundreds of drivers onto the market recently. Not the best situation when you're looking for work after a few months out.
apparently 80% of TV production freelance staff in the north west are presently out of work
Same story in South Wales, in TV and theatre.
International Nuclear Decommissioning: we cannot recruit fast enough. Far more work than people available. If you’ve got the chops, DM me, especially if you have a second language.
Doing badly here.
Lost all our EU clients over the past few years, and many UK ones have moved main ops into the EU.
Nobody wants staff on site anymore (I hardly did that anyway), nor do they care much about seeing us in person even once a year - all remote. Pandemic showed we can all manage remotely, and most of client staff are WFH anyway. Playing field levelled quite considerably to the benefit of any country within two hours time zone difference - eastern Europe is winning, we're losing.
Same across the sector, competitors shedding staff. Everyone getting their snout in the public sector trough if they can manage it.
Seems some bike retailers are doing ok...
I work for an IT Services company, the pipeline seems pretty healthy, although seems to be shifting more to UK government contracts (but that might be just where we're targeting sales & marketing effort)
JE James and Giant together. What could go wrong with the customer service...
Higher Education is starting to struggle. Lots of redundancies are being announced, yet we are struggling to recruit staff at all levels. At least if the money isn't there, we can pause recruitment and not make redundancies.
Government visa changes have had a huge effect on International student applications.
Payday loans sector?
Debt collection sector?
Aerospace and Defence is doing well.
Lots of sectors down 10% 20% but the economy only shrunk 0.3% so where is the money being spent? Or are all those sectors that are down actually an insignificant portion of the economy? I know people at the coal face so to speak are the ones adversely affected in a recession but somebody's doing ok...
International Nuclear Decommissioning: we cannot recruit fast enough.
Interestingly I've just had a massive repeat order come through from a customer in that exact realm.
fooman
Full MemberLots of sectors down 10% 20% but the economy only shrunk 0.3% so where is the money being spent?
This is the big thing, recession or not isn't really all that important, especially when you're talking fractions of a percent. What matters really is what the economy's doing, who it's serving, where the money's going. How many people does it employ on minimum wage vs how many million and billionaires does it give more yacht money.
I have absolutely no idea what the actual number is, but the way of modern day corporatism, the economy would need to grow massively in order for the average punter to not get poorer.
International Nuclear Decommissioning: we cannot recruit fast enough. Far more work than people available. If you’ve got the chops, DM me, especially if you have a second language.
I did some decommissioning work on Windscale, I didn't tuck my overalls into my socks to stop dust getting up there like the locals and now have glow in the dark gonads.
True story
I'm in the oil/gas/energy sector making capital equipment for processing purposes.
Over the years, equipment heading to the North Sea has dwindled, now just repair and maintenance - no projects.
However, middle east and far east....companies that I work with are stacked out with work at the moment.
Saudi National Oil (You know, big sponsorship of F1) are spending shed loads of money right now.
Problem, and its huge, just not enough skilled designers, not enugh manufacturing engineers or technicians - all are always desperately looking for staff.
Money is not always the issue, its the skills, and the motivation.
Spoke to my old mate today.
He's a boat builder and works on bespoke hand-built yachts. He was trying to convince me I should return to the UK if I wanted work*.
A small 20ft day thingy starts at 250,000. A big one costs around 3 million.
He says they've never been busier.
Told him he should be asking for a raise.
* I don't and if I did I wouldn't be returning to the UK, let alone Ipswich.
Geotech/ Geoenv consultant here. I'm absolutely flat out and we have been struggling to recruit for ages but order book is looking a bit weak plus postponement of project's. Biggest worry for us is rumours about various big client PM/Engineering Firms being in financial trouble al la Carillion.
For the chap a page up who does rail and road structures exams.. I did that for awhile, absolutely loved that job especially the rail stuff.
He says they’ve never been busier.
Same with lots of top ticket industries and high end cars.
It's almost as if money from the state went distributionally via interest payment income to high net wealth folk...
(Not to mention asset books in equities and crypto.)
The rest of us though...
Data centers doing well - AI - drones - terminators ...driverless cars - all coming our way - Yay.................
Emergency medicine- never been busier, thanks to decades of slowly killing the NHS, the crisis in primary care etc. Unfortunately this is not a good thing, and I’m looking to go part time aged 50 just to cling on to my ability to cope.
Might be relevant....
Saudi National Oil (You know, big sponsorship of F1) are spending shed loads of money right now.
They went too far on their plan to build while the rest of the world/industry was quiet and prices were down, and actually pushed prices up!
Not sure I can be bothered with another industry downturn TBH, I've run out of goodwill for this career.
apparently 80% of TV production freelance staff in the north west are presently out of work
Yea, that's my "side-hustle" when my day-job disappears. I avoided the worst of the writers strike fallout*, but seems to be lurching from that straight into recession.
*because even if you're on daytime TV, the surplus of talent at the big budget end of the market rolls downhill. And then when recession hits we all stop because ultimately it's advertising spend that funds TV. Another good reason to keep the license fee, without it there'd be far less production during recessions, and the industry wouldn't bounce back each time.
