Even "safe" industries are hurting

Companies and industries that are typically insulated from recessions are laying people off. It's scary out there and I don't see it getting better in the near term. Please do not wait for a crisis to prepare yourself.

Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/ 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos! 

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com, and now here's your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I wanted to hop on and take a few quick minutes to go over what I'm seeing in real time, day to day, living in my part of the Midwest, in the job market, more specifically, I hate to sound pessimistic, but I think the hall between now and November could be long, dangerous, crazy and arduous. From a prepping perspective, I don't give you advice and I don't tell you what to do. I sit here in opine for your entertainment only, but speaking for myself and my family, I think it would be wise to expect the unexpected and to just be nimble. I'm thinking of like a cat landing on its feet no matter what happens. Be agile. Be prepared for come what may. Because we just don't know. We don't know what's going to happen in the lead up to the election, what will happen between the election and the inauguration? Who's going to get in? What are they going to do? What's the Fed going to do with QE versus Qt, the interest rates? Are they going to fire up the printing press and make more easy money? Are we going to get some relief from inflation? Don't forget that there was a fat cat who very clearly said on national television that some of the inflation that's gone through the economy is permanent. It's never coming out. We're never going back to 2018 or 2019 prices again, and you need to be prepared for that. Reality, prices may go down. Yes, that's possible. God, I hope. But will they be the way that they were, 1819, I don't think so. I'm afraid the mess that we're in is going to be the mess that we're in for a good little while. And I know that nobody wants to hear that. People want to cling to this idea of, if we just get other people in Congress, if we just get somebody else in the White House, it'll just be like a finger snap, very quick, very easily. Everything will turn around. And here's hoping. I would love to be wrong on this. I want to be wrong on this. I think from a emergency preparedness point of view, you have to be realistic about the power of these politicians or the lack thereof in reality, and I'm nervous. I am really, really nervous. I'm not going to get into what happened a few days ago. This is not a place where I get political, so I just don't want to go there, but we're in some dangerous, uncertain times anything could happen. We don't know what further attempts might be made. We don't know who else could be targeted. It's it's a nerve wracking time in terms of what I'm seeing in my neck of the woods, we had the tornado not long ago. So there's been some buildings that have not yet been restored. There's some decay and atrophy because of the tornado, which hasn't helped anything. But in terms of the neighborhoods and areas that weren't impacted by that storm, you're still seeing signs of recession, signs of people who have just given up letting cars and toys and things rot in the yard, letting fences fall down, not getting a roof repaired, not getting a window repaired. This is happening all over, including neighborhoods that used to really be inhabited by the swells, the small town somebodies, the people that had plenty of money and prided themselves on wanting to be part of the yard of the Month Club and things like that. And then you drive through the neighborhoods now, and it's just a shadow of what it used to be. You just you see a lot more poverty and lack and a sense of who cares all over in businesses too. It's a sad, sad state of affairs in the job market. And this is really one of the reasons why I wanted to get on and record today. I am super busy right now because I'm in the process of writing a book. You know, try to pull the curtain back and be as transparent with you as I possibly can. It's a labor of love. However, it's a time consuming labor of love. So a lot of my leisure time is spent buried in other books and doing. Research and doing my own writing and trying to put this together. I'll have more details about that as I get further into the process. I have written and published before. I have a couple of HR related guides, and then my book about job market crashes, all of which are available very cheap on Amazon. But this is different. It's not HR related. It's something that really represents a sort of tender area in my soul and something that I just desperately want to get out to the world. And I think a lot of authors feel that way. A topic, a person, something comes up, and you just think, I need to do this. I can't not do this. It's like how Wayne Dyer says, don't die with your music still in you. And I didn't want to leave this undone, so I've been busy, but it meant something to me to get on for a few minutes and say the job market is shambolic. If you're on the job market, you already know that. It's not news to you. But what I would tack on as an addendum something that legitimately scares me. I have seen companies and industries that typically would be fairly well insulated from a recession, that would not be as subject to ebbs and flows in the market, so called stable companies and so called stable industries that are laying off, that are saying we can't afford freelance or contract labor. We're about to let go of people on our full time permanent staff, so all of our contractors and freelancers have to go first. It's getting spooky out there. It really is. I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating. What I'm seeing in 2024 is worse than what I saw in 2020 and that's terrifying, because you had the mom and pop shops that were closed down. We were told essential versus non essential, the huge conglomerates can still operate, but a small business cannot. So you think about all the people that were displaced in 2020 but I'm seeing a lot of scary, terrible things happening in the job market. Somebody gets laid off, or they quit without really contemplating what they're doing in a heated moment, they walk off the job, and then it takes months or even years to find something else that is not the sign of a robust, resilient economy with a robust, resilient labor market. It just simply is not. If you go to Google and just look at the news for layoffs, you see a plethora of things. If you go to layoffs dot FYI, you see tech companies day after day that are continuing to have layoffs. Over on Google, you see Microsoft, Warner Brothers, discovery, Salesforce, John Deere, City of Spokane, considering layoffs to help combat a $50 million budget deficit string of layoffs in the Fresno area in 2024 keep adding up. Spotify is trimming. Solar edge is trimming, on and on it goes. But even in things that are what I would say related to healthcare and healthcare adjacent government work and government adjacent work. I'm seeing layoffs there too. So to me, it's like, if this is happening in the so called Safe, recession proof industries, you know it's 10 times worse across other parts of the private sector. It has to be, please be judicious. Do not wait to understand what's going on in the job market until you're on the job market. Do not wait for some rumor of a layoff before you think about what you would do in a layoff. Don't wait for a four lease or for sale sign to pop up in the company's window and then realize, Oh my God, I've done nothing to prepare for this, and then you're out on the job market with everybody else, and you're screwed. Think about these things ahead of time. I understand nobody wants to do that. It's not a fun topic, but please war game your strategy out ahead of time, and know what you would do in a crisis situation. I really feel that things will get worse before they get any better. Stay safe, stay sane, and I will see you in the next episode.

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