State of the Market

[TheGreenBastard]

1) working 2 x £300pd outside contracts is stupid, they might be both £500pd and agent pocketing the rest. Or usually cheap clients are more demanding than clients that can afford a healthy budget. 2 contracts and the risk is that YOU WILL BURN OUT in less than 6 months. Guaranteed.

The second part of this is nonsense, do you speak from experience? It's not guaranteed (coming from years of experience).

it’s slave mentality.

Oh finally we agree. But I can't make sense of your conflicting opinions. Have you been burnt by an employer in the past, so that you deride the system, but feel enough guilt to get burnt out if taking on multiple gigs?

[MarillionFan]

It's time for me to have the awkward conversation with the mortgage company.
I've never missed a mortgage payment before. I am absolutely grief stricken and racked with worry.

One question I hope they don't ask is "how long do you think it will be before you are back in work?"

I have been out since January. I thought things would pick up after the budget...
I thought things would pick up after Easter...
I thought things would pick up in May...
I think things aren't going to pick up this year...

Anyone got any idea when this tulipshow will level out?

What are you doing with your benched time? I no longer contract at all have used time when I was contracting to implement a plan b and c. C is now A and contracting way behind me. Do you have plans you spend more time on?

[dsc]

[...]
There is now talk of interest rates going to 5.75% this year: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...ouseholds.html

I don't even want to think about how bad things will get if that happens.
[...]

It might happen and not much else will happen, some business will fail, I doubt a lot though as every time I go and visit a city centre, be it locally in Surrey and / or London, I'm amazed how packed it is. Yes prices are sky high on pretty much everything, no idea how people in London afford going out, but the fact is that they still are. Tried booking a holiday recently? flights are expensive, hotels are absolutely packed and also expensive, so I can't see how interest rates going up by 1% for say 6 months will suddenly destroy this.

Will there be less contracts around in the UK? yeah most likely, but there's a world outside of the UK and contracting.

[eek]

It might happen and not much else will happen, some business will fail, I doubt a lot though as every time I go and visit a city centre, be it locally in Surrey and / or London, I'm amazed how packed it is. Yes prices are sky high on pretty much everything, no idea how people in London afford going out, but the fact is that they still are. Tried booking a holiday recently? flights are expensive, hotels are absolutely packed and also expensive, so I can't see how interest rates going up by 1% for say 6 months will suddenly destroy this.

Will there be less contracts around in the UK? yeah most likely, but there's a world outside of the UK and contracting.

If you have paid your mortgage off interest rates aren't going to impact you to any extent - and its older people who are out and about spending money at the moment.

[JustKeepSwimming]

The second part of this is nonsense, do you speak from experience? It's not guaranteed (coming from years of experience).

Some people are really precious over the notion that they work their full contracted hours at 100% effort. IME the only people who do that are permies who are unable to set boundaries and grossly underestimate their worth. Literally working twice as hard and long for an extra 1 or 2 %point on their bonus.

If you're doing what is reasonably asked of you in 10-20 hours a week then you're not going to get burnt out doing another 10-20 hours at another gig. I can see burnout happening if you have awkward schedules and constantly having to juggle everything, especially if you have the 'honest mentality' of not wanting to be seen as a rogue.

[TheGreenBastard]

If you have paid your mortgage off interest rates aren't going to impact you to any extent - and its older people who are out and about spending money at the moment.

Do you live in London? I live quite central, it's every cross section of society that is out and about spending.

[Guy Incognito]

Some people are really precious over the notion that they work their full contracted hours at 100% effort.

People with integrity?

In finance it was fairly standard to work 120% of contracted hours.

[dsc]

If you have paid your mortgage off interest rates aren't going to impact you to any extent - and its older people who are out and about spending money at the moment.

Nah, maybe in your neck of the woods, here it's loads of your people spending heavily, loads of big brand new cars with 23 reg plates as well, families out and about, London is on another level though, Leicester Square was so packed on Saturday it was a crawl to get through it, pubs packed, restaurants packed. Sure some are tourists, but loads of locals / Brits from outside London as well.

[Fraidycat]

It might happen and not much else will happen, some business will fail, I doubt a lot though as every time I go and visit a city centre, be it locally in Surrey and / or London, I'm amazed how packed it is. Yes prices are sky high on pretty much everything, no idea how people in London afford going out, but the fact is that they still are. Tried booking a holiday recently? flights are expensive, hotels are absolutely packed and also expensive, so I can't see how interest rates going up by 1% for say 6 months will suddenly destroy this.
Will there be less contracts around in the UK? yeah most likely, but there's a world outside of the UK and contracting.

They say it takes 12 months for interest rates increases to hit the economy. 12 months ago, May 2022, Interest rates were still at 1%. So that is what we are seeing at the moment.

Also they are importing net 600,000 people a year. So i expect everywhere to remain packed and expensive, crowded out bars and hotels will get even worse, even as other parts of the economy tank..

[dsc]

They say it takes 12 months for interest rates increases to hit the economy. 12 months ago, May 2022, Interest rates were still at 1%. So that is what we are seeing at the moment.

Also they are importing net 600,000 people a year. So i expect everywhere to remain packed and expensive, crowded out bars and hotels will get even worse, even as other parts of the economy tank..

Well interest rates are increased to tame spending, so if we see less spending then it means it's working. At the moment, I can't really see much taming happening.

And how much of those 600k people are going to spend heavily if a lot are in low paid jobs?

In the UK you have loads of people with excess cash it seems. Yes there's 2-3mil relying on food banks but in wealthy areas you have heaps of people with cash to spend and the cost of living crisis isn't really affecting them much.

Regardless of the above, the main question is what will big companies do in this climate, there's not much investment in the UK atm anyway, so if interest rates slow things down more, then I'm sure everyone will be looking to save money and cut excess spending ie. contractors. Maybe we are already in this stage.