The recession has seen the street price of oral sex, the most common service, plummet from $60 last fall to $20 today. “Full service” involving intercourse has dropped from $150 to $80.

And it’s not just street prostitutes who are being hit. Escort workers, both those with agencies and independents, report a 15 per cent decline in clients, says Valerie Scott, executive director of Sex Professionals of Canada, a volunteer group working toward the decriminalization of sex work.

As well, she says, the clients they do have are scrimping.

“If they had previously paid for an hour, they are now going for half an hour. Or they are having only three sessions a month, not four.”

Toronto’s sex trade workers began feeling the pinch of the economic meltdown last fall.

“That’s been the vibe on the street since October,” says Scott. “How we are doing is a reliable indicator of how the economy is doing.”

Wendy Babcock, 29, a harm-reduction worker with Street Health, says the weekly prostitute drop-in she runs has been dominated by concerns about dropping prices.

She has noticed escorts dropping their prices dramatically in their advertisements on the back pages of local free newspapers.

An hour and a half in the prostitute’s home with the client’s choice of services “used to be $250, and now they are asking for $60 or $80,” she says.