(Update 04-14-2024) I may have written this on Twitter/X, or here in my blog, that once at Sam’s Club (Manchester road), I saw a lady who is probably laid off from the media industry. And she was doing samples there. We all praised her for her cooking skills for salmon samples. She said she had degrees in journalism but it’s hard to find jobs in that area 🙁 If I find the tweet or the blog post, I will put a link here.
I found out I wrote it on my FB. I copied the content and put it in my blog post (scroll to the end).
(Original 05-2020, during pandemic) The recent pandemic hit some industries particularly hard, for example, airlines, hotels, cruises, casinos, car rental (enterprise layoff), car dealer and other hospitality and sport venues. The impact will be more wide spreading when we saw even the healthcare industry (for the lack of good word) is doing layoffs (BJC; SSM, Mercy), because one of the revenue stream elective surgery were cancelled in the COVID-19 world. Many laid off workers were hoping for a quick come back though, I sympathize with their thinking, but I also believe “hope” is not a strategy.
Over the time US industries go through a lot of changes, some grow, some shrink. A good example is Uber / Lyft are taking a lot of market share from the taxi because of lower price / smart phone integration. I worked for Arch Coal and Mercy between 2011 and 2015, and I can see both industries were not on a solid footing due to various reasons (both internal and external, mostly external forces). For example, Coal is replaced by natural gas in many power plant. For healthcare, government regulations is not helping providers financially. Because I work in IT / software world, I can switch between industries: I feel lucky in that sense.
Another industry is shrinking in recently years is the media esp. the newspaper. They were disrupted by Google News, Facebook news feed and twitter. People get news in new and different ways from the traditional newspaper. I think both Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger said similar things about that. Traditional cable TVs were on that trend too, as streaming and other over the tv top devices are getting more popular. So think about working for Netflix, Disney+, Roku instead of the local news paper or local tv station. It’s a trend and it usually take sometime for the complete or big shift, but we are getting there.
One thing I am interested to see, is how the grocery store, and Costco plays out. In the near term, I felt people are going to Costco less. And going to local grocery store (Schnucks or Aldi here), or using Instacart more. I am the former group.
And colleges too. I am not sure how fall semester will play out.
Last but not least, I am interested to help out any one (IT, software) who were impacted by the pandemic and I can do job referral or mock interview. Just let me know. My twitter handle is @stlplace