To think that financially, Covid hasn't changed much for many people.

[blueblueblue101]

I keep hearing that we are in a recession that will be the longest and deepest in history. Yet when I look around, no one seems to be financially hit. Plenty of people going out for their meal out to help out. People still able to afford holidays. No one around me has been made redundant and no one I know seems to be remotely concerned about what the future holds in regards to finances Meanwhile, I am eaten up with worry that we'll lose our jobs our home etc.

People may need to consider how to transfer skills to industries that are likely to weather the storm. Identify those industries, look at the types of roles they need, and try to match your skills to what those companies are looking for. Contact employment agencies and talk to them about where their gaps are, what roles they could offer.

DSis is in recruitment, she had a terrible time, all her work dried up when recruitment ground to a halt in March thru June, but this last couple of weeks, things have been picking up and the key theme for candidates is "how can I repurpose my existing skills to other contexts?"

@Miseryl

Out of interest, which branches are they?

it has, in my experience, devastated the finances of many in the middle income bracket. There will be evictions and repossessions aplenty.

People have lost money on holidays, weddings, businesses, everything.

Personal recovery is going to be a rough ride, economic recovery longer.

I don't get your reason for posting, if you have read a single thread on MN you know this.

So i will say it, you are lucky, well done.

I’m 54 and have lived through several recessions.

This for me is the worst.

I lost my job with the lockdown.

My self employed husband has had all work cancelled.

He’s just beginning to pick up again but we are certainly not eating out or going on holidays.

The cooker has more or less packed up and we can‘t afford to replace it. My saving grace is that my parents had a multi cooker counter top gadget and gave it to us which has been a massive help.

We are now on Universal Credit but the one good thing is that I had over paid rent so we were two months ahead in case of emergency situations. That helped us over the five week delay before the first payment.

It’s been horrendous for us financially.

Thankfully we are in social housing so our rent is mostly covered by UC.

DH and I aren't negativeiy affected ourselves (both key workers. I'm in Pharma and we are very busy) but have friends and family who have been affected. But I guess it's a bit like how people find when they have cancer lots of people don't know what to say. It's crap for people who have been affected. And more people than you think might be affected OP but not talking about it, e.g. I have a friend on furlough who works in a sector I didn't think would be affected.

Many places are only just planning their cost saving part of which is restructures and redundancies. These won’t have been put in place yet. At my husbands work they have already cut 10 per cent of the workforce with further plans for more job losses. It’s too early to see the knock on effects.

It is scare mongering to say a company is going to make huge huge cuts, but then no mention of the company (obviously) and then making people feel even more worried and anxious!!!!!

No. People need a bloody good reality check and to plan for this, or they will be in an even worse situation.

@fairisledog

Actually, later this year my family unit won't be able to be so generous with the biscuits so I take them back and here,

WAKE UP - THERE'S GOING TO BE MASS REDUNDANCIES ONCE THE FURLOUGH SCHEME ENDS. Some people don't stop spending until the money stops coming in and it'll be like a second spike to the recessionary data.

I like the look of your jammy dodger biscuits, so bumping them for others to appreciate

On a different point upthread:
It’s one thing spending £30 on a couple of eat out to help out meals and another to commit to a big mortgage.

The reality is that we don't know each and every person's financial circumstances so what may on the surface appear like a rash, extravagant decision to make, to buy a house in the current climate, but they could have already set aside the money, they could have inherited, they could. ... there are far too many possibilities to speculate on what people do. Also there is a Stamp Duty holiday at the moment, so if a family was set to start transacting a house move, it could work out well for them to have a lower tax bill.

We survived the last recession unscathed, but my very highly paid DH is being made redundant - private sector, reducing to ‘core business’ to survive the recession

@daisychain01

Yes I’m aware that we don’t know every individual’s financial situation but a boom indicates that more than one individual is acting.

Outside of London, first time buyers are mostly exempt from stamp duty anyway, due to the lower property prices. Also, outside of London, stamp duty on a family home is going to be c3-6k, not much of a saving if prices drop by the predicted 10% over the next year - some people will be holding off due to this.

I was made redundant in June. Not eligible for UC. Getting JSA - which I had to fight for. I'm a single parent, I can't eat, I can't sleep. My stomach has been churning and head pounding for weeks as I apply for job after job no get rejection after rejection.

You post is naïve at best and grossly insulting at worst.

Maybe I can come an camp on your floor when I lose my home?

@tazmac English Prison Service- public sector. Any redundancies for the past 20 years have been voluntary with significant pay outs based on length of service. No compulsory redundancies. It has been known for prison to close but staff are redeployed to other prisons in the region.

@Angel2702

Many places are only just planning their cost saving part of which is restructures and redundancies. These won’t have been put in place yet. At my husbands work they have already cut 10 per cent of the workforce with further plans for more job losses. It’s too early to see the knock on effects.

This.

A lot of habits have been changed, and this is affecting businesses.

The obvious example is the shift in retail to home delivery. Its screwing up business's sales models and how they are set up entirely.

The less obvious is stuff like what supermarkets are selling and what isn't selling. For example if you are a homeware buyer for a supermarket, then you might be in trouble even though supermarkets are doing well, simply because a) people haven't got as much money for homeware and b) people are not browsing whilst shopping in the same way and going down the homeware aisles - they are going in with a list and getting out as quickly as possible.

There's other examples: Brewers are an odd one. The larger brewers are really struggling as bars haven't been open. But the craft brew industry has been doing much better than expected as people who can afford to drink are shifting their purchases to buying cans and bottles and drinking at home. I know of one craft brewer which has had real issues in getting hold of the right size of can, because there is so much increased demand! You've also got the home brew section of the market, where demand has gone off the scale combined with a shortage of yeast (which is normally produced by some of the larger brewers which are currently not working to the same scale).

So its acting in really weird ways to restructure the entire way the economy is working and where the jobs are even in the same sectors. People who you might think have at risk jobs might not be, whilst others who you might think have safe jobs might be more vulnerable than you think, because of this restructuring.

Brexit only will add more fuel to this whole restructuring. If you lose your job, being flexible is going to have to be the priority for a lot of people, because its not just economic instability thats occuring which is normal during a recession, but a wholesale restructuring of the economy which is in progress and will be ongoing for at least the next 12 months, before things start to settle into a pattern - and this restructuring in itself will cause job loses.

Both DH& I work in the private sector (IT & telco) in thriving businesses generally. Dwindling healthy cash reserves have led to mangagement pay cuts of 20% (nominally voluntary but we all know that it’s to reduce the number or forthcoming redundancies overall). Current orders are being supplied and shipped - it’s the future orders beyond Nov that aren’t looking pretty and I think that will be true across all sectors. Likewise, current IT projects are proceeding on the whole but new work projects are drying up as more & more companies retrenched and cut their budgets. It’s a vicious circle. Autumn going forward will be grim for everyone. Public sector/key workers are the more fortunate ones in any recession and we’re at the beginning of the biggest one of our lifetime.

not just economic instability thats occuring which is normal during a recession, but a wholesale restructuring of the economy which is in progress and will be ongoing for at least the next 12 months, before things start to settle into a pattern - and this restructuring in itself will cause job loses.

Absolutely. Supply chains, projects, decision making are in disarray at a lot of places.

I'm very fortunate in that neither me or my husbands jobs have taken a hit, nor has anyone we know been made financially worse off as a result of Covid; if anything we've saved a small fortune from no commuting, going out etc and I know we are lucky to be in this position.

HOWEVER, just because me and my immediate circle aren't experiencing financial hardship I am more than aware that this is not the case for so many, and that there will be thousands of people in dire straights genuinely wondering how to keep a roof over their head and how to feed their families, and I can't imagine how stressful that must be.

As it stands, I think we'll only start seeing the true affects of the recession after Christmas when the furlough scheme is well and truly over and the temporary Christmas boost to the economy has subsided. Then, I think, we'll see how the land really lies for a vast majority of the country in terms of employment and disposable incomes.

t is scare mongering to say a company is going to make huge huge cuts, but then no mention of the company (obviously) and then making people feel even more worried and anxious!!!!!

Unless you are working for Tesco or Asda, it's pretty obvious many companies, big or small, ARE making huge cuts

(supermarkets might be planning cuts too, I haven't got a clue because it's not my sector, but they have been doing well so far)

Britain’s mysteriously robust housing market, in the FT today.

Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility, the country’s fiscal watchdog, forecasts that during this downturn prices will fall 5 per cent this year and 11 per cent in 2021 in its central scenario. Estate agents are likewise forecasting that a bust will follow the boom. The government’s furlough scheme, which replaced 80 per cent of eligible workers’ incomes, comes to an end in October, but as companies have already had to pay some of the costs of employing them since August, unemployment is forecast to rise for the rest of the year.

I think YABU. The economy is tanking and prices, esp food prices, are rising. That's going to hit a lot of people

On the contrary for myself. I had 2 jobs, made redundant from one, and the other works as a therapist for the disabled and vulnerable - so that's tanked as they are shielding and who knows when I'll be able to do that again.
The job market is absolutely dire for those of us looking. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of people all applying per job. Employers setting lower wages because hey, beggars can't be choosers.
I am fooked. Ignorance is bliss.

It is scare mongering to say a company is going to make huge huge cuts, but then no mention of the company (obviously)

OK since you want names I'll fill in the gaps of my much earlier post..BA gave 250 pilots one months notice of compulsory redundancy yesterday, the remainder have taken significant cuts in T&Cs to try and save some jobs..Jet2 laid off 100 ish earlier this week, there are more..

In other departments untold numbers of cabin crew are being eased out by various means, same going on with Ground Staff, including Engineers..by various means..That's been much more widely publicised and I'm sure a UNITE member will be along in a while with numbers, they are fairly eye watering..

Cut and paste to other airlines/other parts of the industry, think about the knock on to the support industries and you are looking at a major storm for the "travel industry".
.
We're barely seen the start of the economic effects of this epidemic.

Job loss and financial insecurity is a an awful thing to be facing and I really feel for everyone facing difficulties and uncertainties at the moment.

But what has really struck me from this thread is how much the fallout from this is going to increase inequality, and the possibility of big rises in homelessness.

Everything hinges on how much the government is prepared to borrow to help those facing difficulties imo.

@LakieLady

Job loss and financial insecurity is a an awful thing to be facing and I really feel for everyone facing difficulties and uncertainties at the moment.

But what has really struck me from this thread is how much the fallout from this is going to increase inequality, and the possibility of big rises in homelessness.

Everything hinges on how much the government is prepared to borrow to help those facing difficulties imo.

Everything hinges on how much the government is prepared to borrow to help those facing difficulties imo.

Does it cost more to build houses or to house them in emergency accomodation? Who makes money from emergency accomodation? Key questions.

The problem is we are still in the lockdown bubble - people are getting paid via furlough, companies are getting grants and special loans. So it appears like everything is the same and doing ok but very very soon the bubble is going to burst and everything will come crashing down. We are already seeing redundancies and businesses closing down by the end of furlough it’s going to get much much worse. House prices and purchases are being propped up with the stamp duty holiday and people trying to move before they lose thier jobs etc. In 6 months I think we will see a price drop and a reduction in the amount of people able to buy a house.

@Drivingdownthe101

*People who think their comfortable lives are safe should think again

Why does it sound like the thought pleases you?

Because that's the way your mind works? It's certainly not what was in mine .