These days, everything seems to be getting more expensive, so people are tightening their budgets and thinking twice about where they spend their money. The effects of this rough economy are showing up everywhere, from what people buy to how often they spend and what they decide to skip altogether.
Workers who deal with customers and businesses up close get to see these changes play out in real life. We found a Reddit thread where they shared the little details that made them think the economy could be taking a turn for the worse. Scroll down to see which of these warning signs you’ve noticed in your own life.
#41
I’m in banking, commercial real estate underwriting to be precise. You guys don’t want to know how many businesses aren’t going to be able to afford to refinance their properties when their loans come due because interest rates are now more than double when the original loan was booked.
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6points
#42
Uber driver. There 3 big things I've noticed is that there are a lot more new drivers than normal, a lot of long term drivers have stopped because of fuel costs, and a lot of riders from every walk are complaining about how expensive things are.
Though it is interesting to see the new drivers trying to do this in a pickup truck that gets 14 mpg.
Though it is interesting to see the new drivers trying to do this in a pickup truck that gets 14 mpg.
6points
#43
Fewer people are giving to non-profits. The total donated may be higher, but it's because of larger gifts from a few wealthy people. Smaller donors can't afford to continue donating.
6points
#44
More and more people relying on unorthodox ways to cope with disabilities as the government social programs just cannot help them all, and are so underfunded and understaffed that they cannot give the time and attention to the clients they do have.
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6points
#45
Plenty of folks are purchasing $16k dollar, 5 year old cars with 18% APR, 72 month term loans. YIKES.
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6points
#46
Veterinarian (ER) here. People are less likely to do certain things for their pets, and doing less than optimal. It doesn’t make them bad people. Sometimes they’re choosing between food, rent, their kid’s college tuition, etc. It can be heartbreaking for all. I wish that I was a secret multimillionaire and just be like, “it’s your luckily day! You don’t have to worry. Some generous person donated…’”.
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6points
#47
Insurance. You wouldn’t believe the number of lapsed policies and pending cancellations from nonpayment.
5points
#48
In the finance industry and the number of businesses showing up on credit concern lists is growing and surpassing to see some of the companies listed.
On a personal experience, I had 2 major surgeries recently and our healthcare is beyond fixable. Our household income is 4x the average for our area and we can’t keep up with bills and have what most would consider great insurance. I’m glad this will be temporary but don’t see how anyone making below 75-100k per household can survive and raise a family.. something has to give and corporations need to lower prices, executive pay and pay the people doing the work better.
On a personal experience, I had 2 major surgeries recently and our healthcare is beyond fixable. Our household income is 4x the average for our area and we can’t keep up with bills and have what most would consider great insurance. I’m glad this will be temporary but don’t see how anyone making below 75-100k per household can survive and raise a family.. something has to give and corporations need to lower prices, executive pay and pay the people doing the work better.
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5points
#49
The cracks in the supply chain are getting wider. Random items suddenly become unavailable or out of stock for a month or so until the new shipment can land. Some items will skyrocket in price with no warning.
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5points
#50
I have 4 unemployed friends. They are college educated with advanced degrees in STEM. They all were laid off, two of them because the entire division at their company got cut. They are all delightful, hard-working people who are actively job hunting. A year ago it was 1 unemployed friend. The layoffs keep coming and they are interviewing and not finding new work.
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5points
#51
Architect here: Material prices have spiked yet again, but the biggest pain point right now isn’t materials…it’s electrical.
Good electricians are increasingly hard to find, and the combination of labor shortages and rising electrical costs is blowing through what used to be perfectly reasonable project budgets.
Curious if others in construction are seeing the same thing. Electrical has become one of the hardest costs to predict and control thanks to the data center boom.
Good electricians are increasingly hard to find, and the combination of labor shortages and rising electrical costs is blowing through what used to be perfectly reasonable project budgets.
Curious if others in construction are seeing the same thing. Electrical has become one of the hardest costs to predict and control thanks to the data center boom.
5points
#52
Amazon Deliveries are taking longer than usual. No one is really talking about it but it's happening. Logistics is in shambles.
5points
#53
I work in the public sector and we are severely understaffed to the point that we can't run things anymore and we are all on the verge of a breakdown.
I was the last hire, nearly two years ago now, and since then we have lost 1 full time and 1 part time positions, with people not being replaced when they left/retired. We are supposed to be half the time public facing and the other half in the background actually running things, but since we don't have enough people to run the public facing part it has become the main part of our job, which means that the place is collapsing in the background with things not done.
Normally they would have hired someone. Maybe not enough people to make sure we're not understaffed, but at least enough that we're not all about to snap. But instead they are trying to cut off some mild advantages we had to save money, and we suspect they are trying to reduce the numbers even more by pushing people to quit in prevision of the coming economic downturn.
I am lucky to have a strong job security and sound managers, but the situation has gotten impressively bad in less than a year.
I was the last hire, nearly two years ago now, and since then we have lost 1 full time and 1 part time positions, with people not being replaced when they left/retired. We are supposed to be half the time public facing and the other half in the background actually running things, but since we don't have enough people to run the public facing part it has become the main part of our job, which means that the place is collapsing in the background with things not done.
Normally they would have hired someone. Maybe not enough people to make sure we're not understaffed, but at least enough that we're not all about to snap. But instead they are trying to cut off some mild advantages we had to save money, and we suspect they are trying to reduce the numbers even more by pushing people to quit in prevision of the coming economic downturn.
I am lucky to have a strong job security and sound managers, but the situation has gotten impressively bad in less than a year.
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5points
#54
As a firefighter—private equity destroyed the companies that build fire engines. Costs have gone through the roof and wait times are measured in years.
Also… and probably more scary, in the west we are limiting training with water so that we can save it for emergencies. These droughts are getting severe.
Also… and probably more scary, in the west we are limiting training with water so that we can save it for emergencies. These droughts are getting severe.
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4points
#55
I work for a charity that relies on funding from external sources.
There is no funding to be had.
There is no funding to be had.
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4points
#56
Patients can’t afford to travel to our referral medical center for things like transplant evaluations.
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4points
#57
I work for a "Marketing Automation" company. If you're getting email or text messages telling you to buy stuff... there's a pretty good chance we're the software that's generating those sends. Sorry... :/
Customers are getting way more risky with deliverability, and broadening their message targeting. Aggressively. And they're willing to risk ruining their sending reputation, annoying customers, and even burning their current IP pools.
Some explanation - Email marketing cares a *lot* about deliverability. Getting the message in front of the contact is basically the whole thing marketing departments exist to do. Companies like Google are very strict on sending reputation - things like spam complaints, targeting non-responsive inboxes, sending to inboxes that don't exist... those all hurt your rep, and get you de-inboxed by google. Either your messages get delayed, or they get spam-boxed, or they get removed from automatic flagging.
The consequence is we spend a *lot* of effort helping our customers target marketing tightly. We focus on people who are engaged with the brand - they click links in the email, they've visited the sight recently, they've recently purchased stuff, they don't mark messages as spam - all that sort of stuff. That keeps deliverability high; keeps the messages actually landing in customer inboxes, and keeps the sending reputations up. We try to keep "engaged" pretty recent - mostly last 30 days.
And we're seeing our customers, who've previously been very happy with tight targeting, come back and say "No, we want a messaging campaign targeting *everyone who's engaged with anything in the last 3 years*". The marketing teams are getting desperate, which says to me the sales numbers just aren't coming in, and they're getting leaned on to generate more leads. And they don't care about the long term.
It's happening across industries too - clothing, fashion, real estate, furniture, pet supplies... everything.
Customers are getting way more risky with deliverability, and broadening their message targeting. Aggressively. And they're willing to risk ruining their sending reputation, annoying customers, and even burning their current IP pools.
Some explanation - Email marketing cares a *lot* about deliverability. Getting the message in front of the contact is basically the whole thing marketing departments exist to do. Companies like Google are very strict on sending reputation - things like spam complaints, targeting non-responsive inboxes, sending to inboxes that don't exist... those all hurt your rep, and get you de-inboxed by google. Either your messages get delayed, or they get spam-boxed, or they get removed from automatic flagging.
The consequence is we spend a *lot* of effort helping our customers target marketing tightly. We focus on people who are engaged with the brand - they click links in the email, they've visited the sight recently, they've recently purchased stuff, they don't mark messages as spam - all that sort of stuff. That keeps deliverability high; keeps the messages actually landing in customer inboxes, and keeps the sending reputations up. We try to keep "engaged" pretty recent - mostly last 30 days.
And we're seeing our customers, who've previously been very happy with tight targeting, come back and say "No, we want a messaging campaign targeting *everyone who's engaged with anything in the last 3 years*". The marketing teams are getting desperate, which says to me the sales numbers just aren't coming in, and they're getting leaned on to generate more leads. And they don't care about the long term.
It's happening across industries too - clothing, fashion, real estate, furniture, pet supplies... everything.
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4points
#58
A colleague opened a sw dev role identical to one he opened 18 months ago.
applications 18 months ago: 8
applications this month: 320.
applications 18 months ago: 8
applications this month: 320.
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4points
#59
I work in food system sustainability and people are finally actually interested. It's terrifying.
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4points