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Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

cnbc.com

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Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#131

Post by laughing_man »

12hasgt wrote: post #12
an0malous wrote: post #7

The money printing during COVID screwed everything up. Most of the capital was directly given to banks and businesses, fraudulently in many cases and unnecessarily in most, and everything pooled up into real estate and stocks so anyone who had already owned a large proportion of those became absurdly wealthy in the span of a couple years and everyone else effectively lost 20-30% of their income through inflation. The…

You get the money back the same way Roosevelt did, 94% tax rate on the rich.

Nobody paid those high tax rates. Everybody was writing off cars, home offices, hobbies, "business" dinners, and everything else.

The tax simplification that occurred in 1986 struck a bargain: We'll lower your tax rate, but we're not going to allow you to take all those BS deductions anymore. The effective tax rates barely budged.

An effective 94% tax rate is a huge drag on the economy, since it makes risk taking impossible to justify. You'd be stupid to start a business or invest in a startup at that rate. There's no surer way to throw half your work force out of work.

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#132

Post by AaronAPU »

gilrain wrote: post #75
crossbody wrote: post #4

Sounds more like people retire somewhat early - for 25-54yo labor force participation near all time high: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 And here is one for 55+yo: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11324230 All is fine

I did retire somewhat early but also somewhat involuntarily and only after a somewhat fruitless search.

I consider myself to have retired at age 41 in hindsight, because a job never materialized and I also found that apparently I didn’t really need one.

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#133

Post by AaronAPU »

Alien1Being wrote: post #81

Our HR department has given up. They are being inundated with thousands of AI slop applications each week. Hiring has devolved to word of mouth recommendations.

Word of mouth isn’t even a way in anymore because HR demands you be plugged into the dysfunctional rube goldberg hiring machine.

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#134

Post by Alien1Being »

punkbit wrote: post #108
Alien1Being wrote: post #81

Our HR department has given up. They are being inundated with thousands of AI slop applications each week. Hiring has devolved to word of mouth recommendations.

C’mon! So, when HR manages to get real candidates, why do we have to go through 8 stage of interviews that take months? It’s humiliating.

You are a compliance candidate, to show that they follow the mandated process.

The real candidate has already been recommended by someone trusted on the team and is going through a much shortened version of the same process.

"Council staff dubbed the ‘Pink Ops’ allegedly promoted friends, NSW anti-corruption watchdog hears"

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/may/11/counc...

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#135

Post by ghaff »

laughing_man wrote: post #129
ghaff wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that it's simultaneously easy for a lot of companies to do automated filtering and for candidates to do a lot of automated applications in a way that's easier than sending out a bunch of envelopes. Which makes it harder for candidates who don't have either networks or impressive credentials.

On the other side, I notice it's so much easier to apply for a job today that people apply for thousands of jobs. When I graduated from college I applied at 70 different places, and my peer group thought that was a crazy high number.

When I was graduating from grad school I certainly sent many dozens of letters. Which I think was pretty typical. When I went to another grad school a few years later, I probably traveled to a good dozen interviews in addition to a whole bunch of other letters.

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#136

Post by triceratops »

trescenzi wrote: post #33
12hasgt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get the money back the same way Roosevelt did, 94% tax rate on the rich.

Yea the covid money printing is regularly pointed to as a reason why MMT is clearly bad but that ignores that there’s literally a solution to this problem in MMT. Raise taxes to reclaim the money. It’s a trivial solution which is sadly politically incredibly challenging.

> Raise taxes to reclaim the money

Only works if the government doesn't turn around and spend the money. And feeding dollar bills into a furnace just looks bad.

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#139

Post by kristianp »

mothballed wrote: post #83
0x20cowboy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it’s in how you word it. I’ve given up on trying to get a job because there is no point in trying. I can’t afford to pay my rent, but I guess you could call that early retirement.

If you can stomach it, the seafood canning and fishing industry in Alaska will usually (IDK what the situation is this year) hire anyone off the street, work them 16 hours a day for several months, and give them "free housing." You'll get dumped back in Seattle in several months with at least $10k in your pocket. Edit: genuinely perplexed on the response. This saved my ass one winter when I had nothing for rent.

Surely it's not actually 16 hours a day, that would leave maybe 6 hours for sleep after other needs are taken care of.

Re: Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years

#140

Post by ozgrakkurt »

tamimio wrote: post #25

It was never AI, it’s not “recession”, it’s not xyz, it’s simply since covid the wealth distribution got worse, further. It’s why you see the very few are with an exponential networth increase while the majority are suffering, at the same time, those who hold that networth are pulling all sort of shenanigans to keep the market alive and far from crashing for as long as possible, but it’s eminent and it will happen so…

> the only exception is starting a major war to meat grind all these young men otherwise they will revolt for sure

Or they will start electing people like Trump/Mamdani to shake the system on both sides

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