Surprisingly (to me at least), so is higher education. A fair percentage of people who get laid off decide to go back to school, either to finish undergrad degrees, to get a higher degree in their field, or some to switch tracks to a new career.
In spite of the crunch, enrollment numbers at our uni are up, way up, for next fall. That's a reassuring thing.
In seems like a similar thing is happening on the music front. Budgets are shrinking, so sessions are only a half-day or so where before it might be been two or three days, a lot more work being done in smaller home studios, but overall there are plenty of projects going on.
I've been called on maybe a half-dozen projects for people who 6 months ago were making good money in finance or some other field, got laid off, and decided that they wanted to be 30-year-old rock stars instead of 30-year-old stock brokers, so they're funding projects out of pocket. That's kind of a new thing for me.
Must be nice to have an extra $50k kicking around to blow on a totally unmarketable vanity project!
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