The cost of living crisis as it has been called, the events of high inflation, increasing energy prices, increasing interest rates and increasing competition in the job market, has hit us all in the pockets.
Individual, couple or household incomes have all felt the squeeze since we came out of the Covid pandemic in the final quarter of 2022. As always, in circumstances of economic downturns, unemployment has risen as corporations look to cut costs. The post-pandemic world also had a unique situation on it’s hands. Many students graduated towards the end of the Covid era and coupled with the peak salaries being offered, especially in tech, early in 2022, companies suddenly had a flood of fresh grads to choose from.
These graduates were desperate to land their first job to start gaining experience and the corporations also found their budgets squeezed. With interest rates and energy prices soaring, as well as rising costs in pretty much all tangible and non tangible goods, those hires that were taken in on very high salaries were now first to the chopping block.
COVID-19 accelerated digital adoption and businesses across all sectors rapidly shifted to remote work, cloud infrastructure, and digital services.
This created unprecedented demand for software engineers, cloud architects, cybersecurity experts, and data scientists among other tech roles.
Those that were senior in their roles were relatively safe from the onslaught of redundancies but the rest such as Product Managers/Owners, QA testers, support staff and Project managers were all dispensable.
Unemployment, Desperation and Opportunistic scams:
Now that competition for jobs is at an all time high, with remote work being heavily sought after since the great Return to Office movement of the last two years, the scammers are out in force.
Unsolicited Text and Whatsapp messages seem to be the weapon of choice.
A common one making the rounds now pretends to be the HR department for well known companies offering lucrative day rates and remote work.
Scam Message template:
“Hello, this is the HR team from Flexwork. We noticed that your profile has attracted strong interest in the market, and we’d love to introduce you to an exciting online work opportunity. We offer flexible remote part-time or full-time positions with comprehensive pre-job training – completely free of charge. You can work according to your own schedule, with just 60 minutes of work per day. Daily earnings range from £300 to £800, and we guarantee a minimum monthly income of £8,000, paid out daily.
If you’re interested in this opportunity click the below link to communicate on Whatsapp. +447832763203″
The punctuation and grammar mistakes make it obvious to some but still, many will have fallen for it and had their phones hijacked and banking apps compromised as a result.
Remember the old saying: If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
Nobody is going to pay you a large sum of money for little work AND provide you all the training. Companies are hiring Seniors only to hit the ground running and graduates are being offered petty salaries just to get their foot in the door.
Stay awake people !
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