If you feel like you don’t have enough free time to pursue your hobbies, you’ll be jealous to hear that manufacturing contractors have shedloads of free time.
Umbrella workers and freelancers alike are sadly finding their chosen vocation suffering a rather pronounced slowdown. In fact, the Office for National Statistics just said that there was a 2.3 per cent production output year-on-year from May of last year, while manufacturing output likewise went down by almost three per cent.
What does this mean for someone not so mathematically inclined like me? Well it means that these decreases mean there’s just less work out there for not just contractors but permanent workers alike. This means all of you manufacturing freelancers could very well begin to experience a lessened demand for your services and expertise if you haven’t already, though an umbrella contractor does have at least one last secret weapon in his arsenal: flexibility.
Nearly every industry will look to cut costs but still keep production as high as they can during times of market contraction. This typically means a very tight control over payroll outgoings, and guess what? Contractors are much less expensive to hire on temporarily than permanent employees are to pay day in and day out. This is an advantage when you’re trying to keep the money rolling in, but the bad news is that competition for vacancies is going to most likely get much more fierce as a result of the general slowdown if it continues into this year like many economists have begun to predict.
Of course there’s nothing that says these predictions could be accurate. The lion’s share of economic analysts thought that production and manufacturing volumes were going to go up, so really it’s not much better than a crystal ball and a handful of soggy tea leaves when it comes to prognosticating how the markets are going to hold up over the course of a year.
Still, I don’t think anyone around here is of the opinion that things are going to get suddenly better overnight. Now might be a good time to look into learning a new hobby, because it looks like you’re going to have more than a little free time – either that, or begin improving your skills to include different and more varied sectors to increase your viability as a freelancer or contractor.
Or you can just get together with all your mates in the manufacturing industry that don’t have any clients at the moment and play a good game or two of rounders. That always makes me feel better.
