Is recession just a state of mind? Well partly, as it all depends where you are, what you’re doing (or did, if you’ve lost your job) and on the effect whatever’s happening to ‘the economy’ has on you. Just as everyone has a personal inflation rate – for some, the price of a pint of milk, for others, spending £150 instead of £100 on a meal in a nice restaurant – it may be life-changing or recession-schmcession. In 1992, my job was to recruit new financial advisers, and I saw an endless trail of recently-redundant engineers and others desperate to save their homes from repossession. By the time of the next one, 2008/9, I was working with mostly-retired clients who were glad to be out of the workforce. With a government propping-up, rather than letting everything collapse, it all felt more positive than negative to someone like me who had just started their own business at the depths of the fall. Then, of course, came austerity. But I think we’ve learned that lesson. Haven’t we?
“UK slips into recession as economy contracts 0.1% in December”
This week’s big economic and bad election news is that we are, or certainly have been, officially in a recession. You may not have thought you were, or you may have thought you have been for some time, as we and its effects are all different.
