Its kicking hell out of everyone as far as I can see. Some friends work for JCB building excavators in the UK and jcb are shedding jobs left right and centre. The last round of cuts the MD of jcb came on the tv and said they have full order books, need all the people theyre letting go but all the people who have placed orders for new excavators who have work waiting for them can't get credit because the banks have stopped doing loans.
So the other day the gov in the uk announced some scheme designed to get the banks to loan again, theyve already bailed them out, but now theyre having to do these measures too. Hope it works.
Same scenario as the car lot guy at the top, people want the cars but cant get the finance.
I work in IT, every day I log onto one of the IT news sites and see 2000 jobs gone here, or 4000 jobs there. The other day google fired all its recruiters after finishing all its contractors a short while back, and shut some of its services (google notes and a few less notable ones) to tighten its belt. If the 400lb mountain gorrila Google is feeling the pinch, everyone is...
The company Im working for at the moment shed 8000 staff just before xmas and its still chaos working out who covers what out of the people who are left, with contract renewals in a few months where it probably will start again.
On the plus side, whilst we are currently converting a barn to a house and need funds for materials, we have no debt or mortgages at all. We have another property locally and although the value has fell through the floor in the past 6 months a tennant just signed a 3 year lease on it which should see us through the worst of this and the money will go part the way to fund the materials, then hopefully if they don't re-lease we can sell it at a reasonable price, although we're hoping they do...
However if my current role does go, ill be back to living out of a bag round europe and seeing my family every few months, Ive got a couple of open doors for me with past clients but building work on new place will grind to a halt, as Im the sole builder on it evenings and weekends and certainly can't afford to pay some "artisan" to renovate it/drink tea/get drunk at dinnertime on my $.
When I first started in IT after working for years in mechanical trades, suddenly I had money and credit card companies loved us. We bought a expensive (to us) house in sussex england on the commuter belt so I could work in london with 2 hours train ride a day, I rented a industrial unit to play with my cars and bikes in at the weekends and life seemed good. Then a year or so later the last down turn hit, work dried up and we still had huge outgoings on mortgage and cards. By lots of working away and selling our house in sussex at a small profit and buying a ruin outright to renovate (see leased out house above), we somehow managed to dig ourselves out the hole we'd made with all that credit within a few years without any help from anyone, but it was *hard* going to work for all that time and not be able to spend on anything. So this time round, we're prepared...
I spoke to someone in the uk the other week, she was a sandwich packer in a factory but had just been given her notice, and her words were "Ive had to cancel the skytv package and Ive switched providers for gas and electric and save £200 a month on the switch". I don't think we've ever paid 200 a month for our energy bills and we've never had sky satellite tv because its so damn expensive (£60/month). But thats what living in the UK is about, having lots of credit, living beyond your means and closing your eyes, which is why they're getting hit harder than the rest of europe.
