News for Tool Hire, Equipment Hire & Plant Hire and Rental Professionals

Half full or half empty?

6 January 2023

Half full or half empty?

Two prominent stories in the media yesterday showed once again how events can be interpreted very differently depending on whether you adopt a negative or positive outlook. 

One was that Amazon plans to cut 18,000 jobs throughout its global network in order to reduce costs. It’s not known whether UK locations will be affected. 

This led some commentators to detect not unreasonably a slowdown in demand. However, when you recall the astonishing boom in internet shopping in the wake of the pandemic and the rapid expansion of online retail facilities to cope, surely this should be seen as a correction from abnormal to something more like normal, which was to have been expected. 

And with many employees in diverse industries likely to be at home for some or all of their working week, online shopping certainly won’t disappear. 

The second story was that new car registrations fell last year to their lowest level in three years, with 1.6 million vehicles being sold in 2022. 

Again, some interpreted this as a sure sign of economic downturn; yet we’ve all heard about the shortage of new cars available for sale as production struggled globally to reach pre-Covid levels, especially as supply chain disruptions led to a scarcity of many components. 

Indeed, that’s one reason why the second-hand vehicle market is booming. And the figures show that new car sales were stronger in the second half of 2022, suggesting that activity will increase as manufacturers again go from abnormal to normal. 

As the blog often maintains, it’s a case of whether you believe your glass is half full or half empty and it’s probably best to proceed with cautious optimism. 

Photo: Derek Robinson 


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