Lab shutting down?

I’m a packager along with two others, and we have two lab assistants, an assistant lab manager and Sr. Extraction manager. (We also have a inventory control manager who is usually out of town on business but she’s been here every day the last 3 weeks)

We haven’t had anything to produce and package in 3 weeks. They have been sending the other two packagers to our only other facility in Coolidge to keep busy, but now one of the packagers has been calling off the last few days and the other packager isn’t going to Coolidge anymore, and the other lab assistants haven’t been here a whole week.

The assistant lab manager has been conducting personal interviews for different jobs so he can leave this one. No one is saying anything but our Sr. Extraction manager keeps saying he’s trying to get us more stuff to do and the reason he’s giving us is that upper management didn’t anticipate such a slowdown in sales so we don’t have the green light to produce anything right now.

Does this genuinely seem like a slow period or is a shutdown amidst?