I’m a bit late to this thread but this decline and the reasons for it is something I’ve thought about a lot.
Looking at those archived pages and seeing the likes of Antonia of Diamonds definitely makes me nostalgic…
But onto the hypothesising!
1) Growth in OF etc. Definitely a factor, particularly at the ‘higher end’. Some girls switched at Covid and never came back, others may have been discouraged from escorting entirely. I do however think this has been exaggerated as a cause of decline in escorting, because it is an oversaturated global market: available statistics suggest the vast majority make very little, a top few percent do nicely, and a tiny elite are printing money and becoming millionaires. Also, in reality we see an OF business can actually reinforce an escorting business and vice versa, making both more lucrative: see for example the NE’s own Porscha who seems to combine the two well - much of OF content seems to be filmed with clients, and I expect OF acts as an additional funnel of client interest when she’s on tour.
2) The UK labour market. Mostly I think that the issues with punting are tied in with a lot of other issues in the UK economy.
- Loss of dynamic young single workers through ending of free movement* (no politics please, hear me out😂). These people created more competition in the casual labour market generally, making escorting more relatively attractive, and also created more competition specifically within escorting.
- Covid and people leaving the workforce. Again, even if these mostly aren’t potential sex workers I’m more talking about lower competition in the labour pool at a macro-level. Even the government / civil service seems puzzled as to why 1 million people left the workforce, but apparently aren’t on benefits or at state pension age. Then you have the massive increase of people on disability since Covid, particularly for mental health.
- National Living Wage. This is probably the biggie. In 2015/16 this was £7.20 ph for 25+. Now it’s £12.21. That’s a 70% increase! This is creating lots of weirdness in the labour market more generally, like if you work 40 hrs a week at McDonalds you can earn almost as much a year (~£25k)as what many entry-level graduate jobs are (laughably) advertising for. But let’s talk about escorting and agencies specifically. In 2015/16 Amour’s hourly rate was £100. Now it’s £120. That’s an increase of only 20%. And some girls at Diamonds were already asking for £120 back then (there was a whole drama). Now I’m sure you can still earn way more than NLW as a successful agency escort but the point is more the relative gap has been closed. Also, girls often have another job and “top up” via a few hours escorting. There’s less incentive to take more hours meaning you often see girls these days working 1 day a week with agencies. If you’re a student like Lily D was, supplementing your income through other escorting is now relatively far less attractive than in 2015/6.
- Fixed costs like accommodation rent has gone up by roughly 25% across the UK since 2015, excluding London. Obviously this differs for agencies and independents but the cost has to be met by someone, and it has already eaten the 20% increase in agency fees we mentioned earlier before we even talk about what inflation has done to the remaining earnings.
- Escorting carries more risks than many jobs, such as violence, social stigma or even loss of education opportunities and other jobs through outting etc. The risks need to be adequately defrayed with “danger money” relative to alternative employment.
Conclusions (the unpopular part where I speak hard truths and get yelled at)
1) Agencies are no longer setting rates appropriately to attract enough of the same calibre of girls as 10 years ago. Take Germany, for comparison. At FKK Saunaclubs pre-Covid the going rate was €50 for 30 mins. Now at the majority of places like FKK Sharks near Frankfurt it is €100 for 30 mins. You can try to negotiate because technically they are self-employed and can set their own rates but you will not get far in most places. So that’s a huge increase by comparison with our local situation, in a market which still has access to EE girls.
2) There will be no return to the “glory days” because even if agencies started to set their prices more appropriately - which will certainly stimulate some improvement - there are wider structural issues with the UK labour market, which is acting as a giant drag on the whole economy, and escorting / punting isn’t immune to this. As many on this thread have attested, they have disposable income but decide not to spend it, or spend less often. That in turn deflates demand leading to a vicious cycle.
*Note on immigration/ free movement: I want to avoid politics here, but sufficed to say, while there was a post-Brexit so-called “Boris Boom” of legal non-EU immigration, most of these people seem to have come specifically for certain jobs in healthcare, carers, IT workers, students etc, with many bringing their families, with fewer single women available to integrate. In the 2000s and 2010s you had a constant influx of dynamic young, European, unattached workers from (relatively) socially liberal countries, looking for temporary or flexible work. Now only a small % became sex workers, but it created more competition for casual work in the labour pool overall, be that hospitality work or whatever. This made escorting a more attractive option for UK nationals and EEA visitors alike. I do think this is part of the issue but definitely not the whole issue. For example, in Germany paying for sex has definitely got worse / more expensive post-Covid while still obviously being in the EU, but the dropoff is nowhere near as dramatic as in the UK.
