Credit Crunch – It’s All A Matter Of Perspective – Job Losses
According to Alistair Darling, we are facing our worst economic climate for 60 years, a little extreme I’d say, but then that’s what sells newspapers I suppose. Credit crunch mania is well and truly here with household bills spiraling through the roof, perfectly timed with house prices crashing through the floor. And to top it all off, one nice Bank of England policymaker has just predicted that there could be two million people unemployed by Christmas, drastically reducing levels of Christmas cheer across the country — bar humbug!
But could all this doom and gloom predicted for the currently gainfully employed be just the push that some need to set in motion the cogs of entrepreneurial stardom?
If you are unfortunate enough to lose your job, you will find that many firms may well be “putting their recruitment drives on hold,” a common characteristic of media-led recession panic. If you manage to keep your job, you will probably find that this year’s pay rise and bonus will be profoundly less juicy than it has been in previous years, and you may even be asked to suffer other indignities such as a pay cut to “ensure that the possibility of redundancies in this unstable time are reduced”. In a better market you’d jump ship to someone who does value your worth, but in the fear-led culture of an economic slowdown people will suffer all manner of insults just to keep hold of their right to work to make money for someone else.
Whilst traumatizing and possibly devastating for some, many now successful entrepreneurs admit that they needed a “push” to send them in the direction of self-employment. A nine to five (or eight to six, or any other pairing of clocking in and out times) is sometimes the comfortable, soothing, stress-free shackle that holds would-be very successful people back.
Whether you decide to take that jump or find yourself pushed in the wake of recession panic or credit crunch mania, take this opportunity to pursue that entrepreneurial idea you have been saving for a rainy day; let this “push” be your nostalgic story of where it all began.
If you have an idea that you believe will set the world alight, go for it — building and running your own business can be incredibly satisfying. And if you need a little help along the way, Angel’s Den has hundreds of investors hungry for involvement and investment in promising start-ups.
Image © Steve Punter
