The fed strategy will fail because the labor market will always be tight due to retirements.
Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast
201–210 of 254 posts
Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There will not be a soft landing. The reality is we cannot see the future of our incredibly complex, ever-changing economy. Sure, this hasn't happened in the past, but on the other hand the economy today is vastly different than it was even fifty years ago. Not to say we couldn't end in a recession - of course that is a distinct possibility - but the reality is that we don't have a ton of history to draw on when it…
This is a classic, desperate hope that people have going into a recession. "This time could be different". We've been waiting a long time for this one. It's not just about COVID, otherwise why would it happen as things get better. Many of these businesses being hit were long overdue for a fall and behaving highly irrationally. This borders on the severity of the .com bust, though it does appear to be less severe. How…
I have a pretty good memory three recessions.
All had massive amounts of domesday comparisons to the Great Depression.
None came close.
Irrationally businesses being hit hard is a normal part of the economic cycle.
The big question is “is this recession going to reveal some hideous flaw in our financial system we didn’t know about and couldn’t plan for.”
So far the answer is “no” - just like the dot com burst, and unlike the Great Recession and the bond crisis of the early 90s.
Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There will not be a soft landing. The reality is we cannot see the future of our incredibly complex, ever-changing economy. Sure, this hasn't happened in the past, but on the other hand the economy today is vastly different than it was even fifty years ago. Not to say we couldn't end in a recession - of course that is a distinct possibility - but the reality is that we don't have a ton of history to draw on when it…
This is a classic, desperate hope that people have going into a recession. "This time could be different". We've been waiting a long time for this one. It's not just about COVID, otherwise why would it happen as things get better. Many of these businesses being hit were long overdue for a fall and behaving highly irrationally. This borders on the severity of the .com bust, though it does appear to be less severe. How…
> This borders on the severity of the .com bust, though it does appear to be less severe.
I don't think this is remotely true - the .com bust killed off a huge number of companies (and an enormous amount of market cap) that weren't profitable and had no real path to profitability. This time we're talking about layoffs at companies like Meta and Amazon that are just throwing off money every quarter.
Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast
#204Perhaps I'm naive, but I think companies are doing massive layoffs these days because of some sort of "domino effect". There are companies out there who would love to lay off half their staff, but in regular times they couldn't just do it (because it wasn't a common thing, and makes them look "bad"... everyone would protest). But since nowadays every damn company is doing massive layoffs (and not unknown companies, b…
The FED is currently raising rates to fight inflation. One of the FED's main goals is slowing down demand, as policymakers can't control supply. So, to fight that elevated inflation they are killing demand, and when demand sharply drops, you can't keep paying your workers as before (because you sell less goods!). Moreover, companies simply got fat during the pandemic and over hired. I mean, there are probably also a…
They can control supply via immigration and lowering tariffs.
Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast
#205Perhaps I'm naive, but I think companies are doing massive layoffs these days because of some sort of "domino effect". There are companies out there who would love to lay off half their staff, but in regular times they couldn't just do it (because it wasn't a common thing, and makes them look "bad"... everyone would protest). But since nowadays every damn company is doing massive layoffs (and not unknown companies, b…
This was my initial take six months ago, but I've come to realize this is about runways. Imagine you just lost your job. First thing you'd want to do is get some idea of how long it'll be until you can get another one, then look at your budget and cash on hand to make sure you can pay the bills. If you don't, you have the options of borrowing money (which is hard and a bad deal in these circumstances) or selling some…
Amazon and Meta are at 0 risk of running out of money. They make billions in profits.
Smaller companies that are still not generating profits? Absolutely they need cuts to survive.
Both of these things are true at the same time. I’m continually surprised at how quickly people have bought the excuse trotted out by extremely profitable companies for mass layoffs. In that situation it is primarily an exercise in juicing up the stock price and keeping investors happy.
Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast
#206Barely two months from their announcing a hiring spree... https://www.reuters.com/business/logistics-startup-flexport-...
They’re one of the biggest job promoters here, so it will be odd not seeing their jobs show up for a while.
Flexport always seemed to be hiring.
Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you seen housing? https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/12/01/real-estate-... it's going to get hit even harder. Unemployment is low due to a lot of early retirement/retirement. It is obvious we're headed for a recession, the question is how bad will it be. Will China's housing market collapse?
Retirement doesn't explain the economy adding 230k jobs. Retirement leads to the same jobs being backfilled. Housing market is a completely different discussion. Interest rates rising of course lead to price drops here. I'll start worrying about a recession once GDP falls and jobs are eliminated instead of added from the economy.
Retirement explains the low unemployment % since they're no longer part of the workforce.
The jobs added are great, especially since we need ~140K additional jobs per month due to the growing US Population. (that number probably dropped due to reduced immigration)
Unfortunately I don't work in all sectors of America so even if the GDP goes up to a China-inflated 10% or higher but I'm unemployed, it'll suck.
Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast
#208The fed strategy will fail because the labor market will always be tight due to retirements.
And lower immigration levels.
Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
The FED is currently raising rates to fight inflation. One of the FED's main goals is slowing down demand, as policymakers can't control supply. So, to fight that elevated inflation they are killing demand, and when demand sharply drops, you can't keep paying your workers as before (because you sell less goods!). Moreover, companies simply got fat during the pandemic and over hired. I mean, there are probably also a…
They can control supply via immigration and lowering tariffs.
Not the Fed. The rest of the government, yes.
Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
The prediction was that we are guaranteed to go into a recession. Are you suggesting that we might have a recession in which the stock market doesn't decline? Bear in mind that this is a situation in which we can be sure the Fed will not prop it up, since they're the cause of it going down in the first place. If we're making predictions about recessions based on history, then it seems pretty clear that the result of…
I think the issue is that we’re already in a recession, everyone has been talking about this for months, and the stock market has taken a giant turn downward already last year. It could stay at its current level for a year or two before rising again, but the stock market has already been expecting a recession and that’s likely why it’s this low already. It doesn’t have to drop more in a recession because it already h…
Plausible, but if this is the worst it gets, wouldn't we call this a soft landing?