Is Being a Personal Trainer a Recession Proof Profession?

As a response to the Global financial crisis in 2008, the Conservative party led coalition government of the United kingdom have embarked upon a financial policy of strict austerity for the last few years. Whether you agree with this policy or not, their intention is to cut government spending and the deficit, with the ultimate goal of getting the country into a position where it is able to eliminate the budget deficit altogether. They have used the slogan “In it together” both as a reference to their unlikely coalition cooperation and to the hard austere times the people of the UK would have to endure for better or for worse under their government. The measures have damaged many small and large business as well as entire sectors and seemingly nobody was passing through completely unscathed.

However certain professions are said to be “recession proof” in that they will always be needed regardless of how the economy is doing because they provide a service that is vital to people’s everyday lives. Furthermore there are even professions which will specifically benefit from hard economic times like bailiffs, bondsmen and even in some accountants. A profession I would not have expected to find on this list however would have been personal trainer. I would have assumed that in hard economic times people are much more concerned with feeding their families and paying the bills than they are with getting shape and working on their fitness. Apparently however, I would have been dead wrong.

So far as I can tell and the evidence suggests, personal trainers are thriving, providing personally tailored fitness advice and training is a real growing industry. All you have to do is look on any job search website to see the dozens of adverts posted all looking to hire personal trainers. Looking for a reason for this the first thing that came to my mind was that perhaps the trend of people taking more of an interest in their fitness and appearance was outstripping any possible damage being done by the economic conditions of today. Perhaps they would be doing even better in more prosperous times thanks to a new increased emphasis, particularly on men to work on their bodies and improve their physical fitness. However then I thought maybe the reason for its apparent immunity to recession is because it is simply not linked so strongly to the economic fortunes of the public as one might think.

Because another important angle to consider could simply be that those who might have been inclined to hire a personal trainer do not overlap much with those feeling the pinch of austerity. Which is to say that anyone who could afford the services of a personal trainer, which is of course something of a luxury, must surely be more financially secure than to be too badly inconvenienced by the global economic downturn. This might be a simple imaging of the more wealthy but it certainly stands to reason that the austere conditions of the last few years have done little to affect the client base of the personal trainer.

Whatever the reason for the success of this profession, it is unclear if personal trainers will continue to thrive in the future or how long they can resist the ebb and flow of the global economy but one thing is for certain: it’s a good time to be a personal trainer.