The Economics of Stripping

I've been club mongering for over a couple decades now and noticed that inflation hasn't hit the clubs nearly as much as other industries. not that i'm complaining lol, but when i started a lapper was $20. This was a nude mostly air dance. That same club now has dances for $25, $5 added around 10 years ago because of a supposed "sin" tax. That's the excuse they used. Contact nude lap dances were as much as $30 at other clubs around that time. Those same clubs still offer them for $30 today. There may have been a bit or more than a little bit of "shrinkflation" in the length of an average lap dance, but still mostly marginal. Meanwhile the price of everything else in that same amount of time has almost or more than doubled.

Don't know much about the economics of hooking, but i suspect they haven't gone up as much either. I know that the average pay per scene for porn stars, both female and male has actually gone down in real nominal terms (non inflation adjusted). When i think about it, the peak of the adult industry (which includes stripping) was probably in the 90s up to the early 2000s in terms of the amount of money that could be made for the workers. There was a period where porn (hardcore and softcore) was basically advertisement for the pornstars to enter a strip club circuit/tour as a feature dancer where they would make tens or even up to hundreds of thousands a month (over 30 years ago) as fans wanted to meet these adult "celebrities" in person. They would sell polaroids, merch and very expensive private dances. Many also escorted on top of that. This business model still exists to some point, but now almost no one even really cares about feature strippers.

So what can be the reasons for this? The internet made porn largely free. Did strip clubs also have to compete with internet porn? Are more women flooding the sex industry? You have onlyfans, cams before that, sugaring, this anti slut shaming movement, and a largely free hookup, tinder culture. And yet men overall, especially younger men, are having less sex than ever. Women, especially the non sluts lol, are having a bit to quite a bit less than before. Makes you wonder.

Having said all that, the reality is that sex work pays less than before. It's closer to a regular job now than the potentially very high paying work in a short amount of time that it used to be. And the risks haven't decreased. The stigma is still there. the odds of being doxxed or outed have actually increased now with social media and modern technology. There are virtually no benefits given and many strippers don't report their incomes at all losing out on tax credits and welfare benefits. Also they aren't able to put this period of work onto their resumes for future jobs/careers, so they either can't stay in the industry long at all or end up staying way longer than they intended. The longer they stay, the harder it is to get out actually, but this is an industry where you age out much more quickly than most other industries.

In my personal observations, it seems that clubs have been closing much more frequently. Strip clubs used to be like casinos. They never seemed to go under unless they were absolutely horribly run. So there are fewer clubs for dancers to work at. I would say the quality of dancers has gone down a bit too. Some of that is just the rise in obesity in even younger women, but some of it could be that it's just not worth it for the average hottie.

However, nowadays with inflation going higher in basically all other things and quality jobs being harder to find regardless of education level which itself is becoming less worthwhile, some women will still resort to stripping/sex work to simply survive in an age where people are less willing or able to pay for sexual services in general.

So the question becomes what happens to strip clubs moving forward (and sex work in general)? We haven't even touched the prospects of AI and how it will largely change the porn industry. a already AI generated porn is infiltrating onlyfans and trying to cheat people into paying for that slop. My belief is that AI will never (at least in my lifetime lol) be able to fully replace the real life physical experience (human touch and companionship) of the stripper and strip club. and this goes to hooking as well. So in this respect, the industry will not be replaced by AI. Humanoid robots are not an acceptable replacement either for the vast majority of people. The only thing that could happen is that people will not be able to afford strip clubs at the rate they once did, even despite the relative lack of inflation in strip clubs.

To go off on a tangent, we can compare the strip club industry to the restaurant industry and more specifically, the fast food/fast casual restaurant industry as this part of the restaurant industry saw the most shocking price increases. Inputs of food went up. Wheat largely from the Ukraine conflict, but supply chain disruptions also played a part. There were ecological disasters that struck chickens and cattle to increase the costs of eggs, chicken and beef. This doesn't factor tariffs. Also the pandemic led to a worker shortage of "essential" services including restaurants, and employers had to pay more for workers to keep their restaurants open. The restaurant business is among the most competitive industries out there, with very low margins and high failure rates. If restaurants could offer lower prices profitably to customers they would, but a perfect storm of rising costs have all but made that impossible. Instead of lowering prices, they are closing restaurants. Not necessarily because of greed, but because you can't go into business losing money for perpetuity. It just makes no sense.

Strip clubs fortunately don't rely on physical inputs or costs of goods, outside of beverages and alcohol and to some extent food for those that serve food, but most strip clubs will stop serving food if it becomes an overall loss generator. Their increasing costs have been rent and utilities and insurance. So they probably push some of these costs to the customer but also to the dancers in fees. The labor costs of the dancers as "independent contractors" is largely reliant on their salesmanship. Even many of their official employees/staff are largely tipped workers. So this is a big reason why strip clubs have largely been able to avoid the inflation shock that most other industries have faced.

Having said that, i don't see the industry expanding. Unless this is the only business where an investor can make money, i doubt many more clubs will start opening. And again, if the overall economy suffers, only the true mongers will keep the industry afloat. A smaller number of strip clubs still open will mean that there will probably always be a relatively high supply of prospective new strippers albeit with questionable quality, even with the lack of mobility in income. Especially as many other types of entry level work quickly diminish due to AI and job cuts in an economy that can't afford inefficiencies and bloat.

So TLDR, enjoy these SCLing times while they last because it's probably as good as it gets at this point...