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Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

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Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#21

Post by graeme »

JackMorgan wrote: post #6
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

There aren’t enough homes or jobs. What do?

We're heading further into a reality where there just aren't enough jobs. All the money has been hoovered into the stock market. There's just not enough floating around to pay people, it's all going into LLM electricity or graphics cards. We should be living in a time of ease, where the whole planet is sustained with all of us only working a few hours a week. Instead most people are fighting for scraps barely able to…

If you buy a stock from a new share sale, that goes to the company as capital. The company then spends the money.

The unenployment rate is quite low. There are complaints you can make about the economy but the model of money you laid out is completely wrong.

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#22

Post by donatj »

I've been casually job hunting for a couple months since rounds of layoffs started at my company.

I've applied to umpteen places and haven't had a single callback. In my twenty+ years working as a dev, this is the worst I've seen it since about 2005.

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#23

Post by willis936 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5
Esophagus4 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you believed 7-8% loans were normal, you might be more likely to bite the bullet and make your move. But if you believe 3-4% is normal, then you’re probably waiting for rates to return to “normal.” I think it’s a side effect of years of low interest rates… people are conditioned now to believe low is normal, and they want to hang on until we get back to that. I was hoping rates would stay “high” for a whil…

Real estate market will soften as the economy comes off the rails [1]. 6-12 months from now should have more motivated sellers depending on market (foreclosures in Clark County Las Vegas market are up 32% year over year June 2025, for example [2]). Short sales and foreclosure auctions are also options. If you still want to buy down the road, be in the strongest financial position possible to get financing and make an…

The housing market won't soften until we build a shit ton of houses which will never happen until there are a lot of very angry people willing it into existence.

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#24

Post by eigen »

clipsy wrote: post #10
la64710 wrote: post #7

Homes are unaffordable to most. Even if you sell your house for a million dollar where will You move to? As far jobs are concerned the job market is completely fucked up. Their is oversupply and there are no wage increase. It does not take a genius to understand why there is no mobility.

> Even if you sell your house for a million dollar where will You move to? Literally anywhere in the "bottom" 99% of the country by real estate costs?

median home price was 410k in 2025Q2 [1] so it may take most/all the net gains to purchase a median house.

1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#25

Post by sidewndr46 »

simpaticoder wrote: post #13
JackMorgan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're heading further into a reality where there just aren't enough jobs. All the money has been hoovered into the stock market. There's just not enough floating around to pay people, it's all going into LLM electricity or graphics cards. We should be living in a time of ease, where the whole planet is sustained with all of us only working a few hours a week. Instead most people are fighting for scraps barely able to…

Wouldn't it be nice if individuals decided at the start of their career how much money was "enough" for them, and made a pledge to retire once they hit that number. Then society can give them an "I won!" hat or gold card or something, and the next guy can take the role. In this way all enterprises become an engine pulling new hires off the street, and emitting independently wealthy people to go and enjoy their lives.…

You'd have to have some guarantee that the government would never alter the amount of inflation they create for that to be reasonable

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#26

Post by chao- »

JackMorgan wrote: post #6
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

There aren’t enough homes or jobs. What do?

We're heading further into a reality where there just aren't enough jobs. All the money has been hoovered into the stock market. There's just not enough floating around to pay people, it's all going into LLM electricity or graphics cards. We should be living in a time of ease, where the whole planet is sustained with all of us only working a few hours a week. Instead most people are fighting for scraps barely able to…

EDIT: I wrote this in a rush intending to refer to general market entry. In a broad sense, what I ended up writing is incorrect. To preserve the accuracy of the comment history I will not remove my mistake.

>All the money has been hoovered into the stock market.

I think you might misunderstand what the stock market is. Or perhaps you misunderstand what what stocks are? When you purchase stock, it doesn't get locked in a vault, with your name written next to it, and the number of shares it got you on that day. That money goes to the company, and they use that to finance their operations (and ideally, further growth). That financing may go directly to salaries, or even if it goes to services, those services are paid to someone who pays salaries.

If your claim is instead that "all" of that money, or some meaningful majority of that money, is going to electricity and AI silicon, I would invite you to do some basic math on the companies involved.

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#27

Post by dismalaf »

abbycurtis33 wrote: post #12
JackMorgan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're heading further into a reality where there just aren't enough jobs. All the money has been hoovered into the stock market. There's just not enough floating around to pay people, it's all going into LLM electricity or graphics cards. We should be living in a time of ease, where the whole planet is sustained with all of us only working a few hours a week. Instead most people are fighting for scraps barely able to…

Money doesn't sit in the stock market. Value, sure, but the money goes right back into the economy.

Money only goes to the company to get reinvested when the company sells shares, so at IPO time, when an insider sells, when more shares are issued, etc...

Otherwise, it's one asset holder selling to another asset holder, usually at ever increasing prices. So yes, a lot of money is simply sitting in the stock market.

Now, some does come back in the form of share buybacks and dividends. That being said, the average dividend yield is significantly less than the long-run average (it's less than 2 percent right now, long term average is above 3%).

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#28

Post by yolovoe »

Just a single data point against this. I got interviews with 4 companies out of 30 or so I applied to. Cleared all the onsites. Think FAANG, famous hedge fund, popular data analytics platform, and defense. 4 different industries. Job market's not the best, but it's also not that bad if you have 5 YOE+. Offers were good, ~$50-100K over my current pay.

So many people are using AI during the interviews to cheat, as long as you don't use AI and are good at leetcode, probably not that hard to snag an offer. I also interview people at a FAANG, and #1 reason to reject people these days is AI use. If you don't use AI and can leetcode and system design, you're pretty solid and will stand out from other half-baked candidates.

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#29

Post by SoftTalker »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #4
petra303 wrote: post #3

Why get out of a 3-4% loan just to get into a 7-8% loan?

I think if you believed 7-8% loans were normal, you might be more likely to bite the bullet and make your move. But if you believe 3-4% is normal, then you’re probably waiting for rates to return to “normal.” I think it’s a side effect of years of low interest rates… people are conditioned now to believe low is normal, and they want to hang on until we get back to that. I was hoping rates would stay “high” for a whil…

7% is close to normal, historically. But not for the past couple of decades, so people forgot.

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#30

Post by chao- »

It is difficult to balance the competing priorities of "home ownership is widely affordable" and "home prices must always go up".

When the balance is not broadly possible, our system seems to favor "home prices must always go up", at least in the short term.

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