This time around we made some painful cuts, some people we really didn’t want to let go, we had to let go,” Butcher said. We did a round last year, and then a smaller round a couple of months ago. “Yeah, unfortunately we had to do staff layoffs. They went from being open seven to just four days a week, they cut the online marketing budget, and lowered their labor costs. Retail sales at sporting goods, hobby, music and book stores have stalled out.Īnd Butcher and his partner have been cutting back. It’s not just his business experiencing this. “We’ve been seeing demand erode - maybe 18 months,” he said.īutcher has a good idea why: “Now the relief money is gone, and people are back at work and maybe they’ve already spent money on their hobbies, their music equipment,” he said. But when I spoke to him earlier this week, he was singing a different tune. ![]() They’re looking at ways to bring themselves joy at home, maybe learn a new instrument.” “Things have been going pretty well for us,” he said. Early in the pandemic, the store was shuttered and half the staff laid off.īut when they reopened, business went through the roof, as Butcher told me heading into the holidays in 2020. ![]() Tom Butcher is co-owner of Patchwerks, which specializes in synthesizers and electronic instruments. Like at Patchwerks, a musical instrument store in Seattle that’s on that roller coaster right now heading down. Jobless claims have been pretty steady lately, and are holding pretty close to the pre-pandemic average.īut, the point is, even if we’re not seeing a big spike in new jobless claims (which could translate to a higher unemployment rate - we’ll get that tomorrow in the November Jobs Report) every one of those layoffs has a story behind it, of slack or changing demand for the goods or services the business doing the laying-offs sells.Īnd in this unpredictable post-pandemic economy, some of those changes are coming fast and furious. Last week, it was precisely 220,000, up a smidgen by 1,000 from the previous week. That means, in most cases, they got laid off from their job through no fault of their own. Every week all across this country, thousands of American workers file for unemployment - what’s called a new or ‘first-time’ claim for jobless benefits.
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