The Gabem Umbrella Companies Blog:
Home of Umbrella Company Gossip Online

The economic outlook appears to be improving, and yet it's as if everyone is crossing their fingers and keeping quiet about it just in case mentioning it ruins everything.

I say "everyone" but that doesn't include "The Metro" who have stuck their neck out and confidently said "Recession 'will end in 40 days'".

It's quite likely that they are right in a very technical sense, all that's needed for the recession to end is one quarter of non-negative growth (the definition of a recession being 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth). The problem is that this doesn't mean we're out of the woods, we have a long way to go before that happens.

Within the last month there have been reports that 50% of UK firms intend to or are thinking about laying people off over the next 6 months. This may be good news for temporary contractors, and good news for recruiters, but it's not so great news for the permies out there, and that's a bad sign for the economy as a whole. If the supply of temporary work is a good measure of how active an economy is, the supply of permanent work is a measure of its stability and overall health. When the supply of permanent jobs starts to pick up that is the point at which we will see real improvement.

What all this means is that things are improving there is light at the end of what may be a particularly long tunnel, and we can all start feeling a little more hopeful. The fact that it's happening in time for Christmas is just icing on the cake.

So here's to the end of the Recession in 40 days, and the hope that the light we see in that tunnel isn't a fast moving train.

Hugo
21/08/2009