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Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

economist.com

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Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#111

Post by cyanmagenta »

AstroNutt wrote: post #86
SoftTalker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Construction, trades, and basically physical-world stuff that AI cannot do are still hiring.

Believe it or not, I've been in construction/remodeling for 35 years. We currently have 3 home remodels going on at the moment with more down the road. I've never experienced a slow down. Even during COVID. I'm not your typical HN member I don't think. I've been a computer nerd since I was 14 years old. I come here to stimulate my inner nerd.

> I've never experienced a slow down

You didn’t experience a slowdown at the height of the recession circa 2008?

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#112

Post by reactordev »

epistasis wrote: post #73
cal_dent wrote: post #62

I think there's something quite interesting (well to me anyway) where if you go by the internet, there is this bloodbath (slight exaggeration perhaps but feels like that) in jobs out in the US, UK, Aus and major European countries (the volume of anecdotes & complaints would suggest a significant downturn in employment) but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbin…

At least in the US we haven't had official data for quite some time. The BLS lost its chief because of "bad numbers" The numbers we do have show significantly worse jobs numbers compared to prior years. We might get data again, maybe not, but the US government has had an internal revolution, and it's doubtful we will have data as good as in the past, and it's quite likely that any bad news will be deeply buried.

BTC would agree with you. It’s nose diving.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#113

Post by tadfisher »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #56
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may, a bit. If the 401k is in the stock market, and the stock market is down, their total visible money is down. That tends to decrease enthusiasm for spending.

It may also affect it a lot. Retirees I know have a retirement plan that involves their retirement accounts being at a specific level at the end of each year. If their accounts are over that level because the stock market had a good year, they consider it funny money that they're allowed to spend.

That's not a plan, it's a suicide note with extra steps.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#115

Post by echelon »

markus_zhang wrote: post #107
sheepscreek wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary Cause garbage in, gets garbage out. With AI models being all the more rage in the coming years, unexperienced hires will prove many times more costly. (10x garbage with agents). So companies are going to concentrate their worker base even more with experienced folks. They need fewer of them. Yes. But quality matters more…

I agree with you, but I forgot to mention that in the original reply I meant to say that "After the economy turns around, there is no point to hire me, an older guy with maybe a couple of gap years, who worked as a Uber driver for the last two years and can't leetcode". But yeah, new graduates is going to suffer anyway. And I'm scared of the collapse of the existing world order. Maybe we won't see a turn around for m…

New folks will never be hired. RIP to the CS degree.

Old staff will be exited. Especially senior and mid level management.

If you lose your job, you won't get the same comp again. The days of $500K TC are long behind us.

It's the era of downsizing and outsourcing while blaming AI.

None of this has anything to do with AI. That's just a scapegoat.

Google and Amazon are culling entire US teams and rebuilding them in Asia where the cost of labor is significantly lower.

The best thing ICs can do is fight for big tech monopolies to be broken up. (Call your reps leading up to the midterms.) If several members of the Mag 7 are broken up into smaller companies, that'll inject tons of energy back into the ecosystem and enable the wheels of competition and employment.

Bonus - if big conglomerates are fighting to pick up the pieces of a Ma Bell style dismantlement, they won't have time to manage teams 12 hours away.

Nothing against our colleagues in Asia. They're brilliant. But American companies built with American labor shouldn't shut us out in the cold while they reach record profits and continue to hollow out entirely new industries simply by outstretching their arms.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#116

Post by gruez »

markus_zhang wrote: post #78
cal_dent wrote: post #62

I think there's something quite interesting (well to me anyway) where if you go by the internet, there is this bloodbath (slight exaggeration perhaps but feels like that) in jobs out in the US, UK, Aus and major European countries (the volume of anecdotes & complaints would suggest a significant downturn in employment) but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbin…

Reality is not particularly rosy for new graduates AFAIK. If I lose my job, I wouldn't be super surprised that I might never get a similar job for the rest of my life -- it is not that I do not have the skills, but 1) the amount of time for a laid off SDE to get a new job could reach to years, not months, so I need to do something else to earn $$$, and 2) why are companies going to hire me, who have gap years and are…

>Reality is not particularly rosy for new graduates AFAIK

I looked at the statistics[1], and while you could argue new graduates have seen worse (recent grad unemployment is actually lower than much of the 2010s), you can also see that in contrast to previous periods where new grad unemployment is lower than all worker unemployment, this time around new grad unemployment is actually slightly higher. However if you look at the chart this wasn't a post pandemic phenomena. The gap has been closing since the back half of the 2010s, and doesn't show much of a spike after the release of chatgpt, so "AI" isn't a good explanation either.

[1] https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#117

Post by WalterBright »

jdlshore wrote: post #91
bequanna wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offshoring (India + LATAM) with a side of h1b. Offshoring is by far the biggest culprit. Plenty of Jr/Mid roles hiring…but not US based.

Offshoring has been a thing for decades. Seriously, Yourdon wrote a doom-and-gloom book about it in the 90s. It was called “Decline and Fall of the American Programmer,” published 1992. Then in 1996, he wrote “Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer.” The software industry is extremely fad-driven. During the pandemic, the fad was to hire programmers. That created a lot of busywork and coordination jobs that…

As always, free markets are a chaotic system of creative destruction.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#118

Post by jasonjayr »

csomar wrote: post #79
aorloff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gotta tell you man, if you can find someone in charge at the backend of the Home Depot and let them hire you as a systems uptime troubleshooter you would easily make any salary you could name for them tenfold. I at at a Home Depot like 10 times a week and let me tell you, they have a major systems problem that is making their operations look like a joke

Home Depot is a chain, so the backend is probably being handled from some R&D center somewhere. Your maneuvering area at the local home depot is probably pretty slim.

I've worked with a vendor listing products in their IDM (Item Data Management) System. IIRC, it's from https://www.stibosystems.com/ . From a SMB vendor supplying one type of product it's frustrating to work with, with a lot of back and forth and workflows for verifying all manner of compliance with data quality, global regulations, and laws. From their internal perspective, it's probably the bee's knees, supporting a wide variety of taxonomies, considering the variety of products they sell & support, some rather dangerous and hazardous.

From looking over the shoulders of the staff, some aspects of the system that I've seen as a supplier are directly visible to them too.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#119

Post by shagie »

t-writescode wrote: post #92
fragmede wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they perhaps more vocal because they have a lot of time on their hands?

You mean spending all their time looking for a new job, applying for various benefits, doing side work as much as they can, at pay far lower than they're used to so it takes more hours of gig work to reach equilibrium?

> ... at pay far lower than they're used to ...

Is this saying something more about the relative expectation of compensation bands?

New grads are unlikely to have a comparable benchmark.

People who've worked in Big Tech and finding themselves applying to regular companies where the revenue per employee is in the $200k range are likely going to have difficulty adjusting to such.

I work in the public sector and make very low six digits. Others I know have compensation that is 3x or 4x what I make while working in technology industries.

If both I and the people I chat with were to find themselves suddenly out of a job, I suspect I'd find an acceptable job elsewhere more easily than they would because anything I did would be a pay raise while anything they took would be a pay cut. This in turn translates to that I would be the less risky candidate (that I wouldn't be looking for a new position that would pay more within the year)... and thus I believe not only would I be more likely to accept the job I would also be more likely to be extended the position.

Browsing reddit there are a lot of people on cscareerquestions (and similar) who have the mindset of FAANG or bust as a new grad. That they wouldn't even consider working at a company like Little Cesar's or Home Depot despite those companies having open positions.

---

Furthermore, this gets into a lemon market situation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons ). Where it becomes harder to distinguish a good candidate for a poor one and that can only be found out after someone is hired, the companies that have people are more afraid of hiring a lemon than so don't hire anyone. This further depresses the market for the highly skilled candidates. Additionally, people who are skilled are less likely to look for a new job because the market is depressed and they're not as likely to get a good position afterwards.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#120

Post by gruez »

3Mathematicians wrote: post #22
chasd00 wrote: post #4

Ftfa (the part I could read) “ growth is buoyed by an exuberant stockmarket and artificial-intelligence investment, while ordinary Americans languish” Black Friday sales set records and it not even cyber Monday. If Americans are languishing then shouldn’t holiday spending be down?

Consumers in the top 10% of the income distribution accounted for 49.2% of total spending, per Bloomberg. If anything, in my opinion, this strengthens the k-shaped economic growth stat that the article mentions.

>Consumers in the top 10% of the income distribution accounted for 49.2% of total spending, per Bloomberg.

What was the historical trend? Otherwise you can't draw much from just "49.2%" alone, aside from a vague sense that stuff should be fairer.

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