As with lipstick sales and luxury hair treatments, the success of strip clubs seems to be another marker of an economic downturn.
Strippers are taking to social media to share how less high-earning clients are visiting their clubs and bars and they’re making less money per shift.
One Twitter user shared about how her earnings have halved, and the clubs are almost empty. Another commented, “Strippers have been telling y’all the recession is coming baby. We are feeling it in the clubs everywhere. You know it’s bad if girls from Miami are coming to New York to work.”
Another shared clips of an empty bar with no customers to be seen.
“During recessions people stay at home more; they don’t want to pay and go to bars. They’re going online to meet each other,” said Markus Frind, the chief executive of the dating site Plenty of Fish, during the 2009 financial crash.
What effect is this salary slump having?
According to data from the market research group IBISWorld, it estimates that the profit for US strip clubs has declined more than 12 per cent to $1.4bn (£1.2bn) in 2018, which is down from $1.6bn in 2012.
The research group also shared that the annual revenue growth at US strip clubs was 4.9% between 2012 and 2017. It slowed down to 1.9% from 2013 to 2018 and is projected to slow even further at 1.7% by 2023.
So what effect is the slowing of traffic in strip bars having on strippers and sex workers here in the UK? Speaking to the Metro, Niki Adams, of the campaign group English Collective of Prostitutes, says: “The cost-of-living crisis is having a terrible effect on sex workers.
“We recorded a 30% jump last year in the number of callers seeking support for starting sex work.
“The people who are calling us are upset and scared. Women are frantically asking if we can provide food vouchers for food banks. One person hadn’t eaten properly for three days,” she stresses.
“Others have rung in with housing problems, being threatened with evictions or having been bullied or harassed by landlords,” says Niki. “They’re desperately trying to work out how they are going to get through the next week.”
The group have teamed up with Hookers Against Hardship, and Niki says that they are ‘demanding some immediate action that would massively help’. They’re also working to ease sex workers’ financial hardship and are lobbying politicians to combat criminalisation laws that put sex workers in danger.