Looks like we're in a recession, my fellow Americans (if you happen to live somewhere else, more power to ya!). Home prices are dropping and foreclosures are up. Over 500,000 private sector jobs have evaporated since November 2007. We're even seeing runs on banks. If you want to know how bad it could get, but also get some reassurance that things aren't as bad as they could be, check out these graphs provided by the New York Times.
Then yesterday, Google shares lost nearly 10% of their value after reporting earnings that disappointed investors. When the public radio show Marketplace reported on this, they made two interesting points:
On the one hand, they emphasized that Google is not a tech company, with Martin Pyykkonen explaining,"At the end of the day, in terms of running the business and how they get paid, it is through advertising." That statement was followed by this comment, "And we all know what happens to ad budgets in a weak economy -- they get cut."
In other words, things could continue to get tight for people who have jobs related to advertising. Not to put too fine a point on it, this means many of the folks - graphic designers, copywriters, etc. - that we work with and, frankly, us!
On the other hand, things are going OK for companies in the hardware business, like IBM, primarily because they have a lot of long-term service contracts in place that act as a recession buffer.
Bringing it all back home, I think the trick will be for folks who write and design to position themselves and their skills as a necessary, even critical, kind of ongoing service to their clients.
Is this realistic? Can it be done? Are you doing it? Are we?
Image Courtesy of Brent and MariLynn.
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