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Seems as if a lot of Pubs/hotels and smaller companies are going to go bust due to large overheads and replacing spoilt stock,offices and shops closing down along with bus and train companies as more people work from home or dont work anymore for a while.
Theatres may not open due to lack of rehearsals,and staffing issues,some major stores are threatening to hand back leases and a few have said if you want your stock back come and collect it we are not paying , and theyre also with holding rentals as well.
Air lines and Cruise lines seem to badly hit as well as distribution, property agents,estate agents,void properties,or non payments of rentals/service charges,people not moving/unable to, because thyeve lost their job or had a mortgage offer/loan taken away.
Going to be a very difficult 2020 2021 for a lot of us.
In all honesty it depends how long it goes on for, we own an independant opticians and can survive for maybe 3-4 months,but we are not allowed to test eyes atm so our only income is emergency NHS triage stuff, our contact lens sales (go out at virtually the same cost as we buy them so no real plus there) and any sales due to people breaking glasses, not alot of them either....after that if we are not back up and running there will bwe no business to pay 'furlough' wages.....which apparently may not be in place by the end of this month so we will have to stump up that money too and then see how long it takes to get back.....
Very very lucky with who I work for.
Our business should do well.
I've no idea but everyone in our industry has been hit equally, as in none of them are doing anything right now. 90%+ of our work though is on pharmaceutical clinical trials meetings and I'm hoping that medical research won't be an area too badly hit so we'll be able to survive. Ironically the more people work from home the more they do need to actually have face to face meetings. I've been doing this for 24 years and when I started video conferencing was going to take over, well we are still waiting on that. It certainly has its place but if this situation has shown one thing it's that humans are social and they need to meet and interact. No technology can substitute for that.
We’ll muddle through, although turnover is down significantly - for now.
Can't imagine wanting to eat soft fruits if they have been picked while the virus is still maybe hanging about or whether there will be any pickers, strawbs can't be too far away
Pretty unclear at the moment. We tend to feel a downturn later than most. So we’ll burn down the order book and the economy will decide if there are new orders to get on the books. Reckon my 20/21 will be a 21/22 on the job front
Probably, new projects have gone quiet so the impact of that depends if its a short blip and they're delayed and kick off in the summer and actually we're busy. Or they're cancelled and the excrement hits the fan
But in the medium term oil tends to follow the rest of the global economy unless something else is messing with the price. So 2-3 years it really depends how well the rest of the worlds doing.
Probably busier once the longer term effect of coronavirus becomes clear on people's lungs.
personally with what we do I would rather be scaling down work
my employer is automotive and medical materials. Medical has gone through the roof but is only a small percentage of what we do, automotive has stopped completely but ironically our China operation has restarted and is screaming for product. Even so can see us on 3 day weeks as per 2008.
Difficult to say.
In wider terms - will probably result in some re-shaping of economy in part from realising that 'low cost country sourcing' results in fragile supply chains.
Move away from off-shoring.
A realisation that a robust economy is not the product of selling coffee, beer and clothes to each other; it needs a solid manufacturing base.
Resulting job losses will hammer home that realisation.
Hospitality sector will shrink significantly.
That, I think, will only be the start.
Gov will undertake disaster planning with a serious intent to develop contingency plans.
I hope one of the permanent outcomes will be the recognition that 'low skilled, low paid' workers are not low skilled and their pay will be adjusted accordingly.
There will a huge price to pay if/when any form of normality returns.
As always, a few winners who will be massively out-numbered by losers.
No idea, it's just me, myself and I.
Hopefully, who knows. Nae help apart from bru money, since only recently self employed, 17 months.
Tis a race, my money runs out or the economy gets back to some sort of functional level. Not that confident.
Manufacturer of equipment for the oil and gas industry. Already had cashflow issues pre-Covid-19. Closed doors for now and all staff furloughed.
Survival depends on how generous the bank/government loans are once the lockdown eases up - I'm not counting on the doors ever opening again.
It will survive but the volume of work will dramatically reduce no matter whether the recovery is near-instant or takes a long time. We're working through it all anyway but with nearly 2/3rds of the staff furloughed, I don't expect them all to be brought back permanently so I'm preparing for redundancies to happen soon. Thankfully we have very good leaving packages so I can easily volunteer if needed as I was planning on leaving end of this year anyway, the issue will be whether there is any alternative work to be found to go to!
A strange one. Current place is doing really, really well because of their business model and the way that applies to the very volatile stock market. However, I start a new job next week which _should_ be safe, but I guess we will see.
Short term we will be ok, but expect a large round of redundancies in the next 1-3 years. Universities are going to be hit hard by lack of international students, home students delaying starting, having to extend funding for current PhD students, low grant income this year as people WFH/funding get delayed, and our national assessment exercise (which is a massive ball ache but does bring in money) being pushed back. We were already struggling for geology students as it’s not seen environmentally friendly so already knew if things didn’t change staffing would have to alter. Big Russel Group won’t be allowed to just collapse (and I don’t think it will) but the job and the number of people is going to change. Who knows if I will be in the firing line or not - I’m probably young enough with a large enough academic portfolio to dodge it; but the workload pressure with less support staff etc is only going to increase, again! Staff who have spent the past 3 years striking on and off are going to find none of those requests are met - there will not be any spare money.
My brother works in oil.
I work in local newspapers amongst other things. Neither of us are too happy.
I also had started doing food and interior photography for local businesses that have all shut and I know several of them have decided to permanently call it a day.
Scaffolder, short term we'll be ok as existing contracts will have to be finished. However all the developers/main contractors we work for are built on a mountain of debt and are already sitting on billions worth of property they cant sell
Theres also a countrywide shortage of bricks which isn't going to help
Another in construction here, gonna be okay for a few months once we start again but longer term will be tricky judging which clients are on the verge of collapse or not.
We're a new start up funded by a bank, so for now it's business as usual as we're just spending the banks cash. At some point we're expected to sell stuff, so as long as our customers are still in business when we get there; I guess we'll be OK. But honestly, who knows - we're looking at a 1930s style depression.....
Is this thread really necessary? There are enough things to worry about without playing a lottery to see how many of us still have jobs in six months.
Don't forget we're still due to leave the EU for good on 31/12.
We could be on for a no-deal exit with industry and government that's even less prepared for it than last time.
Is this thread really necessary? There are enough things to worry about without playing a lottery to see how many of us still have jobs in six months.
Posted 1 hour ago
Like tv channels only watch the ones youre interested in.
This whole episode in history is going to affect every one of us, ignoring the facts and truth will not make it go away, threads like this help people plan and discuss openly prospects and fears for the future.
Yep. Local Authority building surveyor here, lots of work on that's been halted, it's all got to be finished should get a pay rise too from aftereffects
I work for a company that supplies containment and aseptic isolators to the pharma industry. It also supplies ultra clean ventilation systems to hospitals along with operating theatre refurb's, medical gas pendants, lighting and AV kit.
Our medical arm is floundering.
The pharma side still has orders to complete but our specialised supply chain is slowly failing.
Also, we cannot deliver and commission which is usually a large stage payment milestone.
We're getting enquiries and are tendering for projects but have seen no orders for weeks now.
Our board is streaming a live address this afternoon. Hope it's not the golden padlock speech.
Don’t forget we’re still due to leave the EU for good on 31/12.
We could be on for a no-deal exit with industry and government that’s even less prepared for it than last time.
Well at least we'll be well practiced in queuing to enter supermarkets full of empty shelves!
Like tv channels only watch the ones youre interested in.
I don’t have to watch a TV channel I’m not interested in. I do however have to read this ****ing thread title every time I visit the STW forum to remind me that I’ll probably be unemployed this time next year.
As does anyone else in a similar situation.
Get it now?
Hit and miss as to whether I'll still have a job as I work in the hospitality industry. Most of the work around here is hospitality based so I imagine there'll be a lot of is looking for new work. There'll always be tourism here but it depends how long it takes for things to get back to "normal" before the industry starts moving again and work starts coming back in.
I've been debating retraining and moving into a different field for the last couple of years, I guess now could be the time to stop sitting on the fence and make that jump.
My Company was bought by a Private Equity fund 6 months ago.
They announced that they will be ceasing operations globally over the next few weeks. They have sold 1 of our overseas entities to our main rival already. They are currently trying to strip every last penny they can from the business.
At first I was a little disappointed on how crap statutory redundancy payments are, now my main worry is if I will even get paid wages and notice period before they bankrupt the UK part of the Company.
Absolute scumbags.
I work in offshore and marine stuff, so not a lot of work at the moment.
Oil & Gas industry here and between Covid-19 and the oil price crash, it's a perfect storm. I can see my employer surviving, but with a hugely reduced headcount.
I'm furloughed, whilst others doing the same job are WFH. I think that's a good indication of what my position will be when the redundancies start.
It's really hard to say.
Positives:
The shut-down and the floods that we had locally before it were a huge boom for us as we sold piles of hardware and worked flat out to make it all work. We actually had a lot more money in the bank than usual, enough to get us though 3 months of low sales.
Most of our clients need us now more than ever and even though a few have gone down the furlough route, they're still paying us.
Also, we had a member of staff leave us a few days before lock-down which is saving us 20% of our salary costs.
30% of our income comes from the 3rd Industry which is usually recession proof.
The Pandemic situation is likely to result in a paradigm shift in terms of attitudes towards the 'traditional workplace' - we've been very slowly migrating from the traditional office IT platform of Server / workstations protected from the web by a firewall and the real world by a locked door towards more remote work for years, but the last few weeks was a huge leap forward. I can't see it all going back to 'normal' again.
Negatives:
Ultimately We're business services and getting new clients is really hard and really slow. We're lucky to bring on 10 new clients a year.
So, in most ways we're in a better position than most, which is great, but we'll suffer from a wider economic fall.
Economists seem pretty 50%-50% between longer recession a-la credit crunch and short, harder V-shaped recession. Q1 showed a slight reduction in GDP because of Brexit and Covid fears, so a recession is inevitable, but its completely unique, we didn't drop GDP due to some economic emergency or massive drop in confidence, we actively turned off the economy, in theory, if everyone holds their nerve we should bounce right back. I think timing will be everything, most of the West has decided on a 3-month economic cease-fire if we're trading again by the end of it, it will be a lot better than if we're not.
Lord only know what the US's plans are, Trump is so dangerous, he gambled on trading through it to give them an advantage against the rest of the world, it didn't work and rather than admit defeat and change course he's doubling down (as they say) again and again because he thinks it's the best way to be re-elected. My Sis in law is in NYC, they're losing people faster than most countries but millions of them are ignoring the lock-down rules because it's 'work or starve' or perhaps more worrying 'work, or lose your Heath Insurance'.
On the basis that my employer is one of the largest suppliers of agricultural inputs in the region. I am fairly certain the company is safe, people still need bread, veg oil, and beer afterall. Still plenty of other issues in the industry, the company was hammered by the wet/dry winter across the region.
My company is me and however many agency staff I need at any one time.
I had 4 lads working for me before this, had to lay them off when work stopped in London - government aren't going to give me much of anything. Had a week and a half off myself before another job needed me. Currently got one lad working with me and back to work tonight, through to Sunday night. There may be bits after that, but I'm anticipating a few weeks with zero income.
Should be ok to survive that and previously had work guaranteed up until December, which should drop back in when this is over.
Had word today that a huge solar farm is still going ahead, which I'll be in the frame for - no guarantees I'll win it though, but that could take up to 40 operatives of different flavours, so fingers crossed
Post 16 education here, it's all a bit worrying.
On the one hand there will be apprentices to teach but before all this money was tight in the FE sector anyway. Drasticly under funded and not supported by goverment, its either schools or universities that get attention not colleges.
Distance teaching will be seen as the great cost cutter but from my perspective only the HNC/D students have taken it on board.
It depends on wider economy, if manufacturing stalls there will be redundencies and as mentioned by someone earlier workload will go up with less suport.
Will there be a mini baby boom in 9 months though?
Will there be a mini baby boom in 9 months though?
TBH - feeling fruity is pretty much impossible for me in this oppressive and very anxious time.
Interesting about the baby boom. Talking to the wife we think there'll be massive spike in births and divorces from people being forced to spend more time together. They'll either find they like each other a lot and have a bit more sexy time or the stress will cause a breakdown in relationships.
Not a clue.
A lot depends on how the other printing companies do.
Really could go either way, but we have had a massive drop off in work.
We're an odd mix of 60% medical machine part manufacture & 40% architectural aluminium (window frames, solar shading & aircon ducting/louvres) 81 staff, 6 self isolating, 12 furloughed.
Med Manu has gone mad - up 200% on some lines & struggling to keep up, Aluminium side closed last week after work dried up, moving half the staff to Med manu & the rest furloughed.
We'll survive but the aluminium side may lose a few staff & take longer to recover.
Oil major staffer here. We've been told all staff jobs safe till end of May but all contractors are currently being reviewed. Huge activity chops (~75%) already announced initially focussing on CAPEX but OPEX will be next. As above the perfect storm of COVID, oil price crash and our quest for cleaner non hydrocarbon energy is unique. Been in the industry for 27 years and seen lots of turbulence but this toxic combination is unheard of.
Much the same as mrmo a few posts back.
I work for one of the world’s largest Agri processors, we don't make anything flash that most would know. We make the basic ingredients that go in most foods so as a result we are busier than ever and even recruiting not for short term but long term.
I might moan about my job sometimes but thankful I’m not facing redundancy as I will now need to work for a fair few more years as my investments have tanked.
@juanking - I'm 20odd years in too and have managed to ride out every downturn to date, but as you say, this has a very different feel.
Many ex colleagues who didn't manage to ride out the 2014 crash have chosen not to return to O&G. I think I'll be the same after this.
You only need to look at some of the proposed reactivations which are now looking like decom jobs.
NHS histology lab here, very quiet as all the non urgent surgery has been cancelled. Staff been reassigned to virology.
When they start doing routine ops again I think it'll be all hands to the pumps.
Oil major staffer here. We’ve been told all staff jobs safe till end of May but all contractors are currently being reviewed. Huge activity chops (~75%) already announced initially focussing on CAPEX but OPEX will be next. As above the perfect storm of COVID, oil price crash and our quest for cleaner non hydrocarbon energy is unique. Been in the industry for 27 years and seen lots of turbulence but this toxic combination is unheard of.
I've only been in it 12 years since graduating, this is my 3rd "I've not seen a downturn like this since (insert historical event from before I was born)" !
Should have gone contractor as soon as my graduate scheme was finished, at least then I'd be sitting on a nest egg or have a Ferrari on the drive to show for it 🤣
My fixed term contract's up in August, I'm not overly hopeful it'll convert to staff or even be renewed. Graduate starters have been deferred till January which at least implies someone thinks it'll bounce back.
they covered the potential "baby boom" on R4's More or Less recently. Expert opinion says no! Pubs/clubs shut so less unplanned pregnancies, for anyone not in a relationship dating's a bit tricky, sensible people putting it off until things are more stable, no IVF happening right now. Didn't mention divorces!Interesting about the baby boom. Talking to the wife we think there’ll be massive spike in births and divorces from people being forced to spend more time together.
Difficult to say how things will work out overall, we’re in the car repair and storage business, and all of what comes in is from leasing - Motability, who we do repair and refurbishment for, and Enterprise, who we just store. Everything that comes through goes direct to dealers via online auction, or goes to auction sites if not cost-viable.
There’s huge amounts of stock that’s just frozen in place at the moment, but Motability clients will still need cars repaired or replaced, and that’s what we do.
We are bidding for another contract for high-end insurance repairs, and those will still need doing, and we have skilled staff who will be needed.
We’re waiting to see what happens on May 3, when another review of the situation will be taken, so it’s just sit and wait.
People will always need insurance and our class is compulsory for certain trades so we'll tick along. Our overheads are low so we don't need a huge amount coming in to break even. For sure some of our clients will go under but then so will some of our competitors so we have a chance of replacing some of what we lose.
It'll be interesting to see what th fiscal response to all of this is; both nationally and internationally.
Warehouse and Oasis clothes shops have just gone into administration.
It’ll be interesting to see what th fiscal response to all of this is; both nationally and internationally.
I did wonder that the other day, you can't just print money to inflate your way out of nations debt because it devalues the currency.
But what happens if the G20 just does for money what OPEC does for oil and says ***k it, everyone print 20% of their GDP to pay the central bank back and we're all even.
Cladding Fabrication and installation business here, very slow before the virus with one big project coming to an end and no new work to return to.
Who wants a 59 year old with loads of skills but no qualifications?!!!
Today I've been hit with an 8% pay cut as a Manufacturing tech with Engineering firm dealing with aerospace & military applications. 45 staff already furloughed due to the bankruptcy of the Oneweb satellite project, unlikely we'll see them again.
Further cuts today included downsizing operations in Poland, not looking good all round.
Freelance software engineer / tester, been working in O&G sector for last 12/13 years. Had weathered storms before (or rather the outfit I generally work for has), but cap on hours, other measures now in place - as above, COVID-19 means no-one's really around to make purchase or renewal decisions, and the oil price plummet due to over-supply and reduced demand has hit pretty hard. Will - hopefully - limp along but may be time to call it a day in next year or so if not sooner.
Four day week invoked today at our company. Fortunately I'm senior author and have critical revenue realising projects to complete so unaffected for now.
The wife work in a private nursing home, long term its not a problem, short term however may be with no new admissions bringing residents in.The normal death rate and admissions normally keep the home full, add the covid deaths and they may be empty within a month.
I think the company (Airbus) will survive for sure, but whether I’ll still be working for them is another matter. They’ll have to drastically reduce costs to stay afloat when customers (airlines) don’t want the new planes they’ve ordered for at least 2 years...
Today I’ve been hit with an 8% pay cut as a Manufacturing tech with Engineering firm dealing with aerospace & military applications. 45 staff already furloughed due to the bankruptcy of the Oneweb satellite project, unlikely we’ll see them again.
Further cuts today included downsizing operations in Poland, not looking good all round.
tbh im thinking about rejecting the paycut & asking to be furloughed instead....given the cost involved in getting to work etc im hardly going to be any worse off.
Thankfully, the super clean air since the lockdown has provided excellent evidence that woodburners have no real impact on air quality 😀
I'm hoping that means I'll have plenty business to go back to come Autumn.
Really though, who knows?? I just hope that people spend money once this has passed.
Self-employed software developer here - current contract requested a 20% temporary rate reduction which I've happily agreed to - we all need to do our bit. Fingers crossed the cost-saving measures work and I'll still have some work coming in over the next few months.
Wasn't vat cut a while back for a while to boost spending? I vaguely recall that. 10percent off would do it for sure.
All good in the world of telecoms for now, but it's always been an unstable job, so no difference really.