Cheltenham and Gloucester, a UK building society (credit union), just announced 1,600 layoffs; meanwhile the London Tube strike continues, following the breakdown of talks over the reinstatement of 2 (TWO) workers.
Are the two sides living on different planets? In the UK it appears that the entire burden of job losses has been shouldered by the private sector, whilst public sector jobs keep growing….last year they increased 50,000 every QUARTER!
Meanwhile, over 1/2 of UK firms have imposed a pay freeze ( or plan to do so), whilst public salaries enjoy healthy increases.
And what of pensions….with the recent tax changes its pretty much impossible for anyone in the private sector to accumulate as good a pension as someone in the public sector AUTOMATICALLY acquires.
Can this imbalance continue before the suits rebel! In the US the liberal government is just getting started, but whose nest will they feather along the way?
Ever wonder why traffic jams seem to just happen for no apparent reason? This video from research in Japan shows how, despite traffic traveling at a constant speed on a test track, a traffic jam shockwave forms….fascinating.
Serving as a proxy for the general decline in newspaper readership and ad revenues is this chart based on data from the AIM Group and the Newspaper Assn. of America (NAA):
Newspaper classified ad revenues peaked above $16 billion in 2005 and then plummeted to around $5bn in 2009. Meantime, from its launch in 2003 Craigslist revenues have skyrocketed – advertisers had a free alternative. Note the axis – which means that around $10.9bn of that $11bn decline has simply disappeared – the power of ‘free’!
Some interesting stats from the latest Newspaper Association of America (NAA) report:
Print ad sales declined 29.7% to $5.9 billion
Online sales down 13.4% to $696.3 million
Classifieds down 42.3% to $1.5 billion
Ad sales collapse 16.6% to $37.8 billion in 2008. The worst decline ever.
2009 revenues will likely come in lower than $30 billion, less than they did in 1987
Employment advertising shrank 67.4% to $205.4 million
Real Estate down 45.6% to $336.9 million
Auto down 43.4% to $332.8 million
National campaigns down 25.9% to $1.1 billion
Retail down 23.7% to $3.3 billion
“Other” down 16.5% to $587.7 million
Ad spend in newspapers dropped around $2bn in the last quarter alone, so where are all those $ going? Sure, online ad spend continues to grow, although not at the double digit rates quarter-on-quarter that everyone hopes for, which essentially means that most of that $2bn simply got wiped out of ad budgets. The net net is that the reality of the value of newspapers as a channel and impression-based ads as a medium is finally dawning – they simply dont work!
Posted by warrickt 
