I’ve mentioned that this Current Situation is an excellent chance to observe and learn. This is a dress rehearsal for whatever bigger things come down the pike next. If you’ve been watching the news lately, which is rather tough to avoid, we’ve been told that unemployment is rocketing through the roof as people are laid of, furloughed, fired, downsized, or otherwise off the payroll. Makes sense…if a business is closed then there’s no way to pay the employees.
But…some people are not only still getting paid, they’re getting paid more. They are in a position that allows them to continue to have employment in this situation. Let’s examine that.
I read somewhere that people who made it through the tumult of World War Two noted that no matter how bad the situation in the civilian population, certain trades or businesses were able to stay afloat. Broadly, there were five: food, medical, sex, weapons, and entertainment. If you were in a business that was in one of these categories, the odds were better in your favor during recessions, depressions, etc. With various states on lockdowns, people holding onto their money (if they’re smart), and social distancing the order of the day…who is still in business?
Well, the gun and ammo businesses are doing well. Weapons always make people feel, right or wrong, that they have some control over their lives. If you’re in the ammo business or the gun business right now, and you have some inventory, you’re probably doing pretty well. So…thats 1/5th that seems accurate.
Grocers are always going to see people buying from them. Folks have to eat. And, again, as long as they have inventory there will be no supermarket that has sales flatline. Pandemic or no, people wanna eat. (Also folding booze and smokes into this group.) 2/5ths.
Nurses and doctors are probably not short of work right now unless youre something a little more pedestrian and a lot less ER. For example, I don’t think there’s a lot of dentists or podiatrists doing business right now. But you’re an ER, ICU, or flight nurse? Bet you’re getting all the work you want. So, yeah, 3/5ths.
Entertainment? Thats tricky. Mass gatherings are kinda frowned upon right now..concerts, movies, etc, are not doing well. Even if your venue isn’t closed down by .gov edict, no one wants to sit elbow-to-elbow with coughing strangers. So, no, this fifth doesn’t work in this situation.
Sex? Well, with everyone staying at home there’s a rise (ahem) in online porn, toy purchases, cam shows, etc, etc. And, I suppose that for those who make house calls…there might be a consistent demand. 4/5ths.
So out of those five businesses, it looks like four of them will weather this pandemic. Others I’ve noticed: the local gold/silver shop is doing crazy business.
If you work for government, you’re probably also somewhat bulletproof in all this. Certainly if youre a cop or fireman you can expect to keep working.
All in all, this is an interesting subject to watch play out in the real world. If you’re looking for a career or sideline to give you an extra income in all sorts of situations, you might want to look around your neighorhood and see who is open, and how much business theyre doing. If they can make money during a crisis like this, then perhaps its a business worth looking into.
As you pointed out, podiatrist and dentist are not probably seeing a lot of work. Well it may even be worse than that, one of our small hospitals furloughed over 100 people since they are not doing any elective surgeries . Talking to my friend who is a VIce President in a Major Hospital here in Pa he said the Hospitals are Ghost towns. Emergency room visits are down by over half, unless your community is being hit hard with Covid. I suspect hospitals business will bounce back as things open back up.
We are seeing the same thing here is Texas concerning medical workers being laid off. Most are or were tied to the elective procedure industry.
I’ve heard (anecdotally) that NYC is offering $10,000/week + hotel lodging & sustenance to nurses willing to come to the city & work in their hospitals. If I were young, healthy & unencumbered, I’d likely take that deal.
$10K/wk?
It’s absolutely true.
Questions to ask:
Does the facility have enough PPE?
Am I paid if I get infected?
Am I covered for hospitalization?
Can I secure transport home afterwards, in any event?
For some to all of those, not so much.
You can’t spend your $10K from Forest Lawn Memorial Park.
You can spend it pretty fast as a patient in the ICU.
Caveat nutricem.
Yeah, but if you’re young & otherwise healthy, the mortality risk falls to ~0.002%.
More likely to get shot in NYC than die of the Kung Flu.
Unless you’re a health care worker. Then your odds go WAY up. 100 Drs dead from covid in Italy.
NYFC getting plenty of HCWs sick and some dead. Given the limited population of HCWs, the percentages are pretty freaking high.
https://dnyuz.com/2020/04/14/im-an-e-r-doctor-in-new-york-none-of-us-will-ever-be-the-same/
For a view from the belly of the beast.
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And how many of those 100 dead doctors were over age 60 and in not the best of health themselves?
There’s a myth that ‘healthcare professionals’ are especially healthy themselves. I’ve seen too many obese nurses and too many doctors taking a smoke break outside the ambo door at the ER to believe that one any longer.
Myth-schmith.
If you go there, get it, and die, you’re just as dead.
What was the Klingon proverb line?
“Only a fool fights in a burning house.”
Anyone paying world-class stupid money to get staff has self-demonstrated that no one sensible will take the gig.
IOW, it ain’t “just another gig”.
QED
If you own livestock and your area is experiencing drought, keeping your animals fed is a priority. So feed lots and hay bales
I’m guessing that due to travel restrictions, ranchers are not allowed to sell off excess animals via trailer to stockyards (not sure if transporting is considered an essential task). Maybe a potential food source though – I’m sure if an individual or group want to buy an animal for slaughter, ranchers will make some accommodations for that. Maybe make more $$$ selling that way.
I’m also sure that barter will increase as well. Might not have $$$, but skills and tools in vital areas always come in handy when the economy tanks. YouTube has university level ‘School of Hard Knocks’ instructions on-line whenever you want.
I will tell you that I’m in medicine, and a lot more people are getting furloughed than you would think. The orthopaedic surgeon I used to work for went from 40 cases per week to less than 10 (which isn’t enough to pay his office staff). Granted, you did specify ER related. But ER is about the only place that is doing well. Surgeons and specialists are getting hit hard – most states have ban elective procedures, which is what brings in the money (or at least a big portion of it). Everyone wants/has to save all supplies for the ER.
You also need to think “upstream” for each of those industries. Sure the grocers are doing well, but the food doesn’t show up on the shelves by magic. The seed companies, crop growers, animal farmers, processors, slaughterhouses, packaging and distribution businesses which make up the food supply chain are also each (to a large extent) sheltered from the worst impacts of the Situation.
Good point on being at some point other than just the end of each supply chain.
But is the company that makes the plastic pellets — that are used to make the milk jugs — considered an essential business? The company that makes the ink to print the labels? The company that makes the plastic bags that the fertilizer goes in?
A lot of ‘soft’ med people (pediatricians, proctologists, etc.) are getting over to the ER/Acute care side of the house. They may not have been there since the left mad school, but they are technically ‘jacks of all trades’ as well as their specialty.
It’s not all sunshine and bonus checks for everyone. One of the nurses I’m working with just got laid off from her other nursing job along with several hundred of her co-workers.
Most hospitals are actually part of a consortium that owns several hospitals. It’s estimated that %50-60 of their profits are made up from elective surgeries. When the cash flow gets cut like that, the axe falls fast.
If you’re what I call a ‘grunt nurse’ (no specialty, run of the mill average nurse) you’re doing ok. More overtime than you can ever claim, bonuses, mad props from the public (Girl Scouts brought us free cookies; Thin Mints for the win!) and general blanket immunity from moving violations until this is over.
BUT if your a specialty nurse, say a 10-year ICU/Critical Care/Vent-type nurse, well you’re golden. Agency ICU nurses in NYC are getting offers of 3-6 grand per week. Gotta work 12’s for a week straight and it’ll knock you down a few pegs, but it’s mad bank.
Smart folks are socking it away and waiting until their neighbors start missing mortgage payments. Then you’ll start seeing guns, vehicles and the like priced to sell.
Mayo clinic gave its M.D.s a 10% pay cut, and the rest of its clinical staff a 20% pay cut. With the cancellation of elective surgeries, most hospitals are in financial crisis. ER docs are even getting shifts reduced, furloughed (outside of NY) because of a reduction in patient volume (the usual bullshit isnt walking in because of a fear of getting the virus).
Healthcare demand is indeed elastic, and the healthcare sector is far from recession-proof.
I work for att/DirecTV we are working although slow. Also got %20 “hazard” pay increase.
We’ve heard a lot about truckers, nurses, grocers, others G_d bless them all for trudging through.
One group never mentioned is the group that keeps the electricity flowing to ALL these places.
Thank a Lineman if you get the chance, they are low profile yet VERY necessary in all areas.
Thanks to all the high wood walkers out there keeping the lights on… gas pumps running refrigerators cooling … and so on…
I wonder how hospice worker job opportunities are working out. Visiting the patient’s homes to take care of needed tasks. Don’t know if their visits are considered essential, but when Mom passed on two years ago, they were a Godsend.
Hospice still comes out to see my Mom and they still do deliveries.
As an EMT, I can say that Hospice and Home Health are still out making rounds and caring for patients.
Best kept secret for jobs, electric utility lineman. Tornadoes, storms and piss poor management create a huge demand. Just talked to some ‘boomers’ who chase the most money all over the US. $125/day per diem, (and some of them get paid room and board on top of that) over $50hr for straight time and working 12hr days. A lot of them only work 10 months a year then take two months off to go hunting and fishing.
Well, yes…but what about in circumstances similar to what was mentioned in the post – specifically a near-total collapse such as the kind experienced in a war or great depression. I’d imagine the linemen in Venezuela aren’t doing much work. I was referring to ‘jobs’ or , more accurately, income streams, that are resilient through a large gamut of societal failures.
Yeah.
If the guy can also help set up your genie switchover, battery bank, solar or wind rig, or home electric production lash-up, he’s a Swiss Army Knife guy, and he’ll stay employed.
If he can only work bucket trucks and big iron towers, there’s a civilizational freshness date on that.
as a lineman I had to successfully complete a 4 year apprenticeship that dealt with classroom topics such as electrical theory, math, advanced first aid, fire safety, rope rescue, etc. Not exactly all bucket trucks and towers but wiring a house, water well, or business, troubleshooting solar, and even wiring cars is fairly simple for people that apply the training to equate it to the task at hand.
Not saying it isn’t, but learning something once a decade or two ago is not the same thing as “can do it everyday, under less than ideal circumstances.” There’s guys that can, and guys that can’t.
Some doctors would be great to have along if your plane crashed in the jungle. Others can’t cope if there isn’t electrical power, running water, a computer display, and a sterile OR, and/or their residency was twenty years ago, and all they know well now is their specialty. Same problem, different field. It happens.
How about CNA’s working in nursing home, understaffed and underpaid? I’m married to one, my wife 70. They call and depend her even though she has retired.
CNA’s are absolutely underpaid for what they do!
As the Bloghost noted under food production, somebody who can discreetly distill and distribute drinking-grade and medicinal alcohol product will never starve to death.
(Which, upstream necessitates brewer’s yeast, sugar, and grain/etc. sourcing, and downstream bottles and caps or corks.)
Might die of explosion, fire, or lead poisoning.
But starve?
Nevah!
Hmmm.
Might be time to pull the trigger on that small still I’ve been looking at.
My main income stream (midlevel in an urgent care) withered away, and I got laid off. Since I have, historically, worked two jobs, well, that second job is looking like my lifeline right now, even if part time.
Ref new job: well, about that. I am extremely reluctant to pick up on an offer for NYC or Detoilet, both for the reasons outlined above by Aesop, as well as the fact that like my quiet little country town just fine, tenkeweberrymuch! Were I in Detoilet of NYC, I’d feel the need for a fashion accessory representing 300 years of Connecticut craftsmanship and the right of a free people to keep and bear arms.
Other than that, not a lot of anything out there right now.
I’ll never forget a friend’s dad’s saying about three bulletproof jobs:
“People have to do three things – they have to eat, they have to get sick and they have to die”.
He recommended learning to be a butcher, a medical professional or an undertaker.
I probably should have worked for a butcher shop for a while to learn the trade. Another old friend did just that by working in a commercial butcher shop in his early 20’s. He’s in incredible demand during hunting season because he doesn’t waste anything, and packages everything ready for freezing. He makes burgers and sausage with a mix of beef and pork fat so that they cook up juicy and not dry. You would be amazed what he pulls in for a little side job. He gets paid both in cash and meat.
I work as an IT Systems Engineer for a community college. Staff and students are under stay at home orders, but IT staff have been given full pass (expendable?). In addition to the Kung Flu virus, we were also hit with ransomware on our network, which is keeping us extremely busy to recover from. All classes have been converted to online, which makes me think – if it works good now, why would they not just keep doing online for the long term? I think there might be lots of empty classrooms in buildings after this is over, and I see a lot of labor jobs no longer needed should that happen. IT jobs should be safe unless they decide to go with contract services. In the meantime, I’m exhausted, wanting to retire early, and be the hermit I’ve always wanted to be…
Brick and mortar education just died in this crisis, even if they don’t know it yet.
Leftist indoctrination prisons and overpaid teachers unions will be the losers in the end. Great instructors, at any level from K-PhD, will move towards rock star status. If you’re going to take Econ 101, do you want to get that credit from Prof. Fluff from Bugtussle Community College, or Thomas Sowell? Why take astronomy and astrophysics from Prof. Pointyhead Shortbeard, if you could get it from Neil Degrasse Tyson?
Gonna be a lot of available campus real estate opening up in the next decade. The only reason to have a campus is to support the sports program.
Boo frickin’ hoo.
One thing that can’t be done in front of a computer is labs,the hands on real knowledge from actually doing something. Chem 101 is a lot different than Phd Pharmacy or Phd Chemist or even practice for Welding certification. To experience the future of education look to “The Great Courses” audio/visual courses by premier educators on a long list of subjects mostly “Humanities” but some good basic math/science. Can’t wait to push tax cuts for the cr*phole the local schools turned into(used to be excellent).
Good advice. Undertakers in particular are getting swamped right now. I always thought that would be an interesting career.
Undertakers have been in demand for awhile(takes a special personality to do it and do it well). Was dating a woman who was studying it. A month before she graduated she was offered a job with just a phone interview(Florida-$90k+housing+car to start),wished her well and helped her pack
Your entertainment sector is still going, just not in the traditional areas. Video game sales are up, console and TV sales are up, new computer sales are up….
Netflix and streaming services are up too. Even youtube is now downgrading standard quality of videos to try to keep up with increased bandwidth usage.
People are stuck at home and indoors, electronic toys are going strong to fill the gap.
Trucking seems to be another resilient career, people need stuff no matter what the situation.
Expect to see an accelerated push for driverless trucks. Once perfected and in production, the sensors and software will not be expensive — maybe even balanced out by the lack of a need for the human-interface parts of a current-design tractor. Transportation companies will dump human drivers the minute that becomes possible.
That will probably happen right around the time you get a flying car and a jet pack.
The real decider on autonomous vehicles is the insurance industry,the question of liability is the decider. When Amazon #479564 kills 7 kids and a crossing guard in a school zone who is responsible? The second truck out is going to get stopped and ripped off(they going to run over a car or pedestrian to prevent a theft?).
WW2 documentary showed boarding houses near defense plants went as far as “hot sheeting” rooms(double occupancy rooms 12hr shifts-one sleeps as other worked) at war time rates!
Good mechanics will be in high demand unless we go back to stones and clubs.
Sister’s husband has two medical clinics, and I was told they have laid off 35 0f 50 employees so far. Hearing that medical personnel are losing jobs during a pandemic is mind boggling.
Another sister is a very high level nurse, who was in school to acquire another certification to add to a long list, but I think that came to a screeching halt. Haven’t heard what she is doing since, but I hope it’s not heading to NYFC for that sky high money they are paying.