Mining is a notoriously cyclical industry and good mining companies always maintain strong balance sheet to defend themselves because it is hard to predict when bad times come. They also follow the same strategy to hire people: they keep their own workforce slim while attract and retain valuable employees by providing much better than market compensation. They hire contractors to do projects and even design, build and operate a mine. When bad times come, they always let contractors go first and keep their employees, in particular salaried employees, as possible. Maybe I am wrong-the mining industry is still in the midst of the largest mining super cycle never seen and I only experienced a very short period of down times (the second haft of 2008 and first half of 2009), when my company laid off almost all of contractors immediately while tried to keep all of its employees.