Hopefully, you saw this coming

10 May Hopefully, you saw this coming

It’s cliché but true: what goes up must come down. These insane-o markets do not last forever. I’m old enough to have lived through more than one boom/bust cycle with oil and gas and more than one completely nutso real estate market. People paying $500K for a burned out shotgun shack on a parcel of nasty scrub can’t last. It’s not sustainable.

“But, but, this is not 2008! Mortgage companies are not giving out loans willy-nilly like they did back then.”

Hmm. Perhaps not but there’s still chicanery that can happen behind the scenes. I’ve heard more than a few whispers of people with too high a DTI (debt to income) ratio still being approved for a loan even though one slight hiccup in life could ruin their ability to make the house payment. But yeah, sure, keep preaching this is not 2008 to everyone to give some false confidence. 🙄

Just as the pendulum will swing away from being an extreme sellers’ market with buyers willing to waive inspections, overbid, offer based on photos without even going to the house, etc., this will happen with the job market as well. It’s only a matter of time.

-“When the Pendulum Swings,” published on April 4, 2022.  https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2022/04/04/when-the-pendulum-swings/

I warned you about this more than a year ago and I have been passionately sounding the alarm. Meanwhile, if you relied on the MSM you’d be way behind the curve.

–https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/07/employees-employers-upper-hand-small-business

TOLD YA!

“It seems that it was only yesterday that the media was filled with stories about workers calling the shots. There were the work-from-homers who refused to come back to the office after the pandemic was long over. There were the ‘quiet quitters’ who proudly – and publicly – admitted that, even though they were collecting a paycheck from their employer they weren’t doing much at all during the day except looking for another job. And then there’s the group of workers who were advocating for ‘bare minimum Mondays’ because apparently, a five-day workweek was just too much to bear. During the past few years, we’ve heard employees publicly demand unlimited paid time off, four-day workweeks, wellness sabbaticals, gigantic bonuses to switch jobs and even ‘pawternity leave’ – getting time off when you adopt a puppy. Facing labor shortages, customer demands and supply chain headaches, most employers caved. The Age of the Worker blossomed.” -The Guardian, Ibid.

Yeah, it seems like only yesterday because the MSM as well as the hot air & hopium crowd on LinkedIn kept the narrative going and going and going. We heard labor shortage ca-caw ca-caw 🦜 so many times it made me want to barf. I was on this blog and on my podcast calling bullsh*t on it but they were determined to keep it going, boy howdy.

Corporations exist to make MONEY. They are not in business to make someone’s dreams come true or to give everyone the warm-fuzzies. Regardless of what their marketing department might tell you. On the other side of expansion (aka growth) is contraction. And we’re seeing it already in layoffs, hiring freezes, and rescinded offers. IMHO, The Great Resignation is done. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s toast now. When you go on LinkedIn and the side panel of news is littered with layoff reports and your feed has many posts of people saying, “I got laid-off and thought I’d be hired again soon because: labor shortage, but this has gone on for weeks and I’m still not hired anywhere,” that’s not a sign of labor shortages and robust economic growth. Just sayin.

–https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2022/06/15/cynics-and-the-coffee-drinking-dog/  published on June 15, 2022

“That age is at its sunset. The economy has slowed, costs have risen and capital is drying up. Companies are now being forced to do what they need to do to maintain profits and please their shareholders. And that something is always the same: cut some heads.” -The Guardian, Ibid.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. ⬅️ said as Dave on Storage Wars.

Warned ya about that, too. These companies do not answer to John & Jane Q. Public. They want to keep the board of directors and the shareholders happy, periodt. (The Teldar shareholders meeting crashed by Gordon Gekko in Wall Street offers a great example.)

“In just the past few months Google’s parent Alphabet cut 12,000 jobs, Salesforce cut 10% of its global staff, Amazon eliminated 27,000 workers, Disney got rid of 7,000 people and Accenture terminated 19,000. Accounting firm E&Y reduced workers by 3,000, FedEx announced that 10% of its global workforce are being shipped out, Dow lost 2,000 people and 3M fired 8,500 workers. And these are just the big companies making the news. Lyft fired 1,000 workers and ordered the remaining ones back to the office. There are countless other examples of companies – both big and small – either cutting workers or freezing their hiring plans. According to Google Trends, keyword searches for ‘quiet quitting’ and ‘bare minimum mondays’ have decreased by more than 90%.” -The Guardian, Ibid.

😆 Yeah, I shouldn’t wonder.

“Are YOU having a Bare Minimum Monday? New workplace trend sees staff taking it easy on the first day of the week after suffering the ‘Sunday scaries’
UK career expert Adam Butler has shared tips to hack ‘Bare Minimum Monday’
The Officeology CEO said how you can be productive while taking it easy”
–https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11769057/Are-having-Bare-Minimum-Monday.html

Yeah, this sounds like stellar advice during a recession and mass layoffs. 😒

-“The MSM out here tryin’ to get you fired,” published on February 20, 2023
https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/02/20/the-msm-out-here-tryin-to-get-you-fired/

 

“Ultimately I think the next phase is ‘loud staying,’” said Sara Causey, owner of Causey Consulting, LLC. “I was alive and well during the Great Recession and whatever you needed to do to keep your job, you did it. If that involved staying late or working on projects you loathed, you did it. At that time, I was working for a company where people called and walked in on a daily basis looking for work but there was nothing to offer them. If we see unemployment tick up — which I believe we will — people will not only settle in at work but will become overt about wanting to stay.”

-my comments to Yahoo Finance, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/quiet-quitting-trend-over-140008899.html

“For those that remain, the workplace has become a little less friendly. Gone are the 1,300 ‘micro-kitchens’ at Google which ‘brim with dried seaweed, turkey jerky, kombucha, and other eclectic treats’. In addition to cutting 6.5% of its global staff, Goldman Sachs scaled back on commuting reimbursements and free meals. Meta has done away with free laundry services and shuttles. Salesforce has discontinued the use of ‘specialty-coffee baristas’ and ‘cut ties with Trailblazer Ranch, a 75-acre wellness retreat that mixed skills training with yoga and hiking’. Back are tougher performance reviews at Meta and Salesforce based on … well … actual performance. More employers than ever are now implementing surveillance software to actually document how hard their employees are working from home when they say they’re working from home.” -The Guardian, Ibid.

The need for such incentives is waning. As the cronies crash the economy and thereby the job market, the serfs must do what is necessary to live.

“Throughout the pandemic we watched as employees raged against – and demonized – their employers. And they had success. Employers hunkered down and opened up their wallets because what other choice did we have? But if there’s one thing that an experienced business owner knows is that everything is cyclical. Employees had their day. Now the pendulum has swung back. For workers, I know I sound harsh. So please consider this as tough love advice. The economy has slowed. You’ve lost your leverage. But, like any asset, if you’re providing a good ROI for your employer you should have nothing to worry about. So are you?” -The Guardian, Ibid.  emphasis mine

Well, no offense to this author, but you were warned here long before you were warned on The Guardian about the same damn thing.

As for the rest of it – yes, a lot of job seekers and employees have lost their leverage. And I hope you saw this coming and you prepared for it. I know I say this all the time and here goes again: if you wait to be officially told on some MSM outlet, YOU ARE WAITING WAY TOO LATE, IMO. If you listened to the bullsh*t artists on social media, Heaven help you. Those knuckleheads wanted to convince you that The Great Resignation would last forever, you could hop across the market ad infinitum, you could get a fat pay raise each time you made a change, no recession, no end to remote work, etc.

Did employees have their day? In comparison to the power and control that Corpo America and its Capitol Hill cronies possess – no. Not only no, but hell no. A brief moment in the sun, perhaps, but the need to break their spirits and drive them back to the Cube Farm is just too seductive to a lot of companies.