Newsweek Article on Dubai: Is the Party Over?

From Desktop

This very interesting article showed up in December's Newsweek. It was the cover story on the edition that was released in the Middle East and Dubai. I saw a whole rack of them at the Geant store in Ibn Battuta mall a month ago. The downturn has just been hitting Dubai in the last two months. Seems that we're hearing of layoffs almost every business day. Projects are being cancelled. A friend who runs a job search coaching business is having business boom for him; not a good sign for the economy in general here. A number of friends have noted that the slowdown has visibly effected the number of workers you see on job sites just driving down the road. I talked to a construction safety engineer this morning who told me that his company was instituting mandatory salary cuts starting with 2% for laborers and up to 40% for top level people. It will be interesting to watch and see how Dubai weathers this 'storm'.