What's happening where you work?

I work for a major heavy equipment manufacturer and it started slowing down in summer. At the time they said, everything's OK, business as usual, nothing to see here, and now a few months later it's really slow.  This company is great, and treats their employees very well. Considering how slow it was, we could have seen some serious layoffs, but didn't. Now it's starting.

Just wondering, what are you seeing? Slow? Layoffs?

We're going gangbusters.  We're just 2 partners, 3 associates, and 1 architect for a total of 6. 

We have more than $200M in building construction on the boards.  We've got about 3 months' backlog on these projects, and more to come in the first half of next year, though maybe not quite as large as what's on the fire right now.

[edit]  I'm an architect, specializing in educational work, with other moderate scale stuff as well.

I just hired a new guy because we can't keep up. I had been holding off expecting a slowdown, but it hasn't shown up for us yet. We fill a fairly small niche market that is pretty steady. 

I do a lot of service work as well as construction. When construction slows down, repairs pickup. While the overall numbers may look worse, repairs pay a higher margin so it's kind of a wash.

So far so good, though it is keeping me awake at night on occasion. 

GM mechanic. The strike pretty much wrecked things at our level. Plenty of broken stuff (GM products after all) but everything is backordered

Graphite electrode manufacturer here.

We are running at about 20% capacity.  Still making money....  for now.

We are busier than ever, tons of special projects and even hiring more people. 

They don't seem to been even considering slowing down or layoffs in my building. 

Note this is tire r&d 

we're finishing off a major project  and things are looking like they'll slow down, but I've heard rumblings of an even bigger on that hasn't quite been sold yet

Three people in the staff meeting this morning had dogs. I didn't have time to grab a bird, so the mammals win this round.

I work at a Port. It's real slow. But that's because one company owns all three major terminals in this town and the guy running them all was just ousted. Everyone is running around like crazy thinking the world is going to end but people will continue to ship freight so I'm not too worried.

In July we were going balls to the wall, overtime was unlimited, and we had 100 job postings. I was trying to convince one of my sons to apply here. Then it hit a wall. Apparently all the orders in the books were canceled and our distributors are not ordering either. Management is blaming everything they can think of.  I'm going with interest rate fallout 

I work in aerospace. We can't make enough parts to fulfill the demand for commercial aviation. There is a lot of belt tightening though. There was some really small RIF's earlier this year but I believe they were more dead weight trimming than structural changes, still a lot of open positions. We are at pre-pandemic demand rates and struggling to make the supply catch up.

Been unemployed since July. Applied for over 100 jobs, 2 interviews, no dice. Unless you want to work E36 M3ty hours for minimum wage at a retail place, the jobs have evaporated. 

Going back to grad school now to be a CPA. Things are really tight. Trying to turn YouTube into an income stream is about my only option left. 

Body shops were starting to Catch up until the strikes. Now gm and Stellantis stuff is unobtainium. Been waiting for a fiat 500 windshield forever. Was originally shipping from Italy, 30 days. Hit the warehouses the day they walked out. A dozen jobs with similar stories. Luckily we are heavy into Germans so that hasn't been a business killer but there are a LOT of soon to be former big 3 owners. My guess is you'll be able to snag a lightly used big 3 car later this winter for pennies on the dollar. 

Commercial construction. 
 

It's slowing, but management is afraid to say so. My company is pretty good at knowing that when things slow down, there is a choice. They can scale back the company, or sell harder. Scaling back the company is a death spiral, so they sell harder. Thankfully, they are good at keeping us employed (even when things slow down)
 

But my VP of operations just told me that he is on a 0 out of 7 streak for selling jobs. (He's usually more like 4 out of 5). That's a lot of effort to post a big zero. (Especially when each job is several million dollars)
 

COVID made a lot of companies rethink how they want to do business, and those companies are our customers. Add interest rates and inflation, and it equals a major foundational shift (which hasn't really been figured out yet)

Pretty busy. Construction seems to be going non-stop. Can't find decent engineers.  The tech layoffs seem to have everyone really worried but I don't think thats an indicator of the actual economy, just a poorly managed portion of it.  

The large project I am on for a major EV auto manufacturer seems to be revealing some cracks under the surface. They are making some pretty big changes in the timeline moving forward, and in the milestones they are projecting. Many of the goals are being moved out several years. 

Company line: " We had a very good 3rd quarter, strong results, a great showing overall.  Not 100% to plan but close and that's good so everything is fine."

Internal chatter: Talk of a slight reduction in engineering headcount, like a few percent, supposed to happen sometime in the three to six months.  Likely a few percent, maybe five, probably saying that it's "performance based" and not enough to get a WARN notice going or severance.  We're also effectively in a hiring freeze.  My location, both in the org chart and physically, has me far from general population so I don't hear many rumors.  

I think high interest rates are starting to take a toll. 

Residential real estate lending...

More fires than we typically have this time of year. 

Dicks warehouse that a month ago was sending people home for days at a time is now in full OT mode, opened up 4 hours per day, voluntary Saturdays on top of the upcoming mandatory, and full OT pay for every hour worked over your scheduled 37.5 instead of over 40.

The wife is busy busy for now, till about Superbowl time. 

Beermaker here.  Beer is pretty much recession-proof.  Less people dining in, but more people buying on the shelves... It all evens out for the most part. 

Wife is an RN, so yeah... That job is always insane. 

The boss brought donuts in to the office today.  I'm working from home today.  Maybe there will be one left when I come in tomorrow.  

Engineering consulting.  The good people all have jobs.  Companies are looking to hire people, but the only ones who are looking for jobs...

You fill in the end of that sentence.  

bludroptop said:

Residential real estate lending...

 

I thought that was Sergey Brin's latest toy over at the old NASA base at Moffett Field.

The distillery is doing well. Just did some light rebranding of some products that went close to perfect, you wouldn't know the difference if it wasn't pointed out. 

I've been brought back in as a consultant for the brewery, they're getting by, but it's ugly. I'm trying to convince them to start making hop water as production time is so short and recreational cannabis is legal here and hop water is a product that dispensaries and smoke shops want. 

The automotive service consulting side is... interesting. My employer, a parts distributor, needs to lop some heads at the top, some of them are new, like 4 months on the job new, but they haven't even begun to address the issue that the previous regime should've fixed when there were massive supply chain issues over the pandemic. Inventory management. They missed earnings by 19% last quarter and the stock price drop resulted in a $2B loss in evaluation. More than 80% of the district managers should be gone. It's worse than when I was advising Pep Boys on their exit strategy from the market, except this entity isn't leaving the market. The board is definitely dragging on making the needed changes though. I'm upping my client count within their portfolio, all of said clients know what the next move is and are planning to come along. 

Commercial powertrain OEM. We stayed busy with lots of backlogs tied to pandemic supply shortages that have now mostly fulfilled. Forecasts are gloomy for 2024. Business results have remained strong, but the belt tightening has gotten progressively more aggressive. OT used to be the norm in my department. Then it became limited in Q2, and now it's been nearly eliminated through the end of the year, and they're not expecting enough work to need help during the regular holiday shutdowns. Travel budget for Q3 and Q4 was basically zero. Emails came out last week that they're restructuring top level leadership a bit to plan for expected downturns in key markets next year, and they're offering early retirement packages to many salaried employees. And yet they're about to reopen an office building that they've probably spent $10mil renovating over the last 3 years, so that all of the employees that have been successfully WFH during the pandemic and renovation can come back in a few days per week.

No RIFs yet, but it definitely seems like they're more likely than they have been at any time in the last 5-7 years.