Economy

Being in the construction industry, I can tell you that nothings slowing down here. We still have more work coming at us from owners than ever before. People are expanding, small jobs, but jobs, throughout all phases in construction from finishing up to owners reaching out to us with new ideas. Don’t listen to the news. Go out in the real world and see for yourself. At the beginning of covid there was a slight slow down but people quickly realized that covid isn’t anything to fear and are continuing on with their lives.

Everywhere that I worked before retiring used events like this as a great excuse to clean house of the less than ideal performers.

It’s a total split personality economy and I doubt anyone has ever seen anything like this in living memory.

If you happen to be one of the lucky ones in a sector that wasn’t impacted, then it’s go, go, go.

But if you’re in a sector like hospitality, convention and travel, airlines, some segments of healthcare, and some segments of the service industry, then it’s very, very bad. And on top of this is the fact that these sectors aren’t coming back anytime soon.

For example. Mrs. Grouse works for a big software company out in the valley. A normal year sees her fly basically every other week and since she’s in PD she normally has to do all the big trade shows both US and the pan-Asia and Europe.

All of that travel and all those trade shows are shut down and sadly for the people who make their livings from that type of business travel, they ain’t coming back anytime soon. Those big shows are generally planned 2 years in advance, and to make sure the sponsors are getting what they pay for as far as attendees, nobody will be rescheduling any of these shows until it is clear that the business community is comfortable with travel again. Best educated guesstimates out there say about 2 years from now.

Sorry, but not many people are buying this COVID isn’t anything to fear line. If you’ve got elderly relatives, spouses or children with health issues, or have health issues yourself, then you sure as hell do fear COVID. Also, it’s the disruption in lives that is the problem as much as the risk of dying from the disease. Nobody wants to have to pull their kids back to home-only school, pull their spouse out of work, and quarantine for weeks because they or somebody in their family got the COVE. Because of this, you aren’t going to see bouncebacks in the impacted areas of travel or restaurant industries anytime soon.

For the people who are doing well in this economy, I hope you share it and have some empathy for those who are in the industries that took the hit.

Grouse

yeah its very much a split economy right now. the stock market is fine but those are giant companies which are built to thrive in these types of volatile environments. some industries are just fine. others, like travel/service industries are taking it on the chin. Some are adapting and reaping the benefits but there has been some separation of the wheat from the chaff.

I expect we will not see the full repercussions of this virus until 2021.

A friend of mine who works for a large lender that specializes in restaurants and breweries said he expects at least 40% of his customers have either gone under already or will. But he said he’s also getting new customers, business rising out of those ashes. Its a pretty crazy time. We are seeing some brilliant re imagining of business through this that will change things forever.

It truely is industry based… here on Maui… lots of Hotel employees/restaurant/hospital staff not working… airport went from non-stop flights in and out, to “hey look a plane”… All the tourist traps are closed, some golf courses have closed and others dropped their rates to get more locals playing more often. They are shipping boatloads of rental vehicles off island, to the auctions on the mainland, to cut costs… they went from renting about 40,000 cars a day to 400. In my business we are busy, we didn’t rely on rental cars that much, other than warranty work and even that, Enterprise had their own certified shop… but we are definitely getting more business, because all the rentals are full of gas and have to be under 1/4 tank before they can get on the boat, so we are degassing a lot of these now. I also assume when it picks up, we will have a few old gas issues on some vehicles. If you go to Home Depot, Target or Lowes, people are spending money… maybe it is the stimulus money that is hiding or kicking the can down the road, so to speak of the real economy.

rjthehunter wrote:

Being in the construction industry, I can tell you that nothings slowing down here. We still have more work coming at us from owners than ever before. People are expanding, small jobs, but jobs, throughout all phases in construction from finishing up to owners reaching out to us with new ideas. Don’t listen to the news. Go out in the real world and see for yourself. At the beginning of covid there was a slight slow down but people quickly realized that covid isn’t anything to fear and are continuing on with their lives.

And there is a shortage of most lumber for building, the price of OSB has tripled since April. I work in the glass business and we were told to expect overtime next week