What All Computer Technicians Should Know About The Recession

In my last post about the coming recession, I talked about how the recession doesn’t appear to be effecting computer technicians as much. In fact, most computer technicians I have talked to are seeing increased earnings over the last few months. I looked further into why this was happening and found some interesting information.

According to the American historical statistics, one of the fastest growing jobs during the 1929-1933 depression was “Persons engaged in repair services”.

Here are a few more of the fastest growing jobs during the great depression:

• Persons engaged in gasoline service stations: 34 percent
• Persons engaged in liquor stores: 335 percent
• Persons engaged in second hand stores: 35 percent

It make sense. When money is tight, people are more likely to put up with a slow computer and get it repaired instead of spending more money and purchasing a new one. The “Persons engaged in second hand stores” statistic also reinforces this.

Although the economy isn’t currently at a stage where many people are losing their jobs – people are more aware that bad times are ahead and start being mindful with their money in preparation for it. In most cases, repairing a computer is much cheaper than getting a new one and this is why I believe computer repair technicians will have plenty of work through the recession.

However, we won’t get through the recession unscathed. If your core business is selling new computers, you may see a downturn in sales as people begin to scale back their spending. However, it is also possible that this may not happen because as people begin to lose their jobs, they lose access to their work computers and will need a computer at home to look through the job sites and update their resumes. New computer sales could go either way.

There is something I know of that will definitely hurt many of us: Petrol.

If you are a onsite computer technician like myself, I am sure you have noticed that the price of petrol is increasing rapidly.

This is normal for a recession and it explains why the great depression statistics reported “Persons engaged in gasoline service stations” was up 34 percent. We still need petrol for our cars to go onsite so some of us will be feeling pinch there. Technicians with stores that dont go onsite much will be better off with the petrol situation.

As for the “Persons engaged in liquor stores” statistic that I mentioned earlier; and was up 335 percent. We all know why that was is up during the great depression.

Lost your job? no money? Just go drown your sorrows at the bottom of a bottle of liquor.