My God, the SMMT have just released the car sales figures for Nov 08:
* New car registrations fell 36.8% in November to 100,333 units.
Makes Japans fall seem small. This sort of cliff fall wasn't seen in the last recession suggesting things will be sharper and deeper this time. The car industry just cannot cope with those sorts of falls. You'd need a quarter of car makers and dealerships to cease trading just to keep the others at break even.
That's not tens but hundreds of thousands of quality jobs lining up for the chop. Shattering.
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Glazierflyer - good decision. Keep your powder dry for when the cycle turns to the upswing around 2011. Waiting is frustrating. Its wise though.
Don't anybody pin hopes on the interest rate cuts and government spending sorting this recession out. They tried it in Japan, repeatedly, for years, And It Didn't Work. It won't work here this time either.
Massive consolodation is on the cards, think Qantas/BA/Iberia/AA. The main driver is efficiency savings for which read needing fewer pilots to operate the same capacity. We will see a squeeze at the bottom where airlines go bust and release pilots and a squeeze at the top where airlines consolodate and either freeze recruitment or offer voluntary redundancy. Its all bad news for Wannabes and established pilots.
2009 will be a blood bath.
WWW