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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?

#241

Post by honkycat »

SoftTalker wrote: post #44
jdiff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's grim everywhere, for everything, all at once. I haven't been able to find work as a graphic designer, motion designer, web designer, web developer, software developer, and a large variety of retail jobs. Been on the job hunt since May, all I've been able to find is a part time position at The Home Depot.

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

Yea! Start over my career, work way longer and harder hours, and make 1/3 of what I currently do! Sounds great!

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

#242

Post by karlshea »

reactordev wrote: post #110
bluGill wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that story every few years for the last 30. I know when it is your personal situation things are hard, but your story is nothing new and people recover. Some get back into whatever their degree was, others start a new career and never do. this will happen again.

I was going to say this. Money comes, money goes, that’s life. Ideally you’re smart enough to save and invest to weather these storms but for those (like myself) that are still working hard post 40, we know it’s all part of the game. I tell the younger generation the same thing. Save, invest, max 401k, before you go off and party. Your older self will thank you.

I'm gonna have to hold your hand when I tell you this: when you tell the younger generation to "save" or "invest" they are going to walk away from that conversation knowing they were just speaking with one of the most mind-numbingly naive Olds they're going to encounter in probably the next several months.

Please, if you ever want any respect from anyone younger than you ever again in your entire life, do not say those words again.

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

#243

Post by reeredfdfdf »

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…

I live in Finland, with over 10% unemployment according to official statistics (second highest in EU, just after Spain). From what I can tell, things really suck especially for fresh grads. There's fierce competition for jobs like cashier at supermarket, hundreds of applications for one position is normal. Lots of fresh grads with bachelor's or master's degree compete for those jobs too, since they can't find anything better. Also, of the few open positions, many are the kind of "rental work" that offer only limited hours a week, at unpredictable times.

So, this is what an objectively bad job market looks like in Europe.

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

#244

Post by 05 »

tibbar wrote: post #130
echelon wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Asi…

This is not the picture I'm seeing on the ground. AI is eliminating certain classes of junior software positions. (Roughly: jobs where explaining a task to junior engineer is more work than asking Cursor/Claude Code/Codex to do it.) Junior engineers can fight back against this by a) getting really good at clarifying requirements b) learning quickly, so their work quality is eventually higher than Cursor can work out…

> learning quickly, so their work quality is eventually higher than Cursor can work out in one shot.

This sounds almost word for word like The Onion’s classic: Secretary Of Labor Assures Nation There Still Plenty Of Jobs For Americans Willing To Outwork Robots

[0] https://theonion.com/secretary-of-labor-assures-nation-there...

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

#245

Post by fooker »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #233
fooker wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah someone joining a good company as a senior engineer in 2015 would retire with about 15M in assets now assuming smart investments (say... half on big tech stocks, half in market indices) Someone joining now on the other hand, might have to resort to physical work at some point in the next ten years of things go south.

This is very much tech bubble thinking. Most developers in the US don’t work for tech companies and will never make ovdd $200K inflation adjusted. Developer salary is very much bimodal https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal If you are working for boring old enterprise companies like banks, airlines, insurance companies or even most YC funded companies, “senior” developers will top out at around $160K-$17…

Okay, assuming you could invest 100k out of your 170k per year into companies you know were doing well on tech from 2015, how much would you have ?

(say: AMD, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Facebook)

The answer is about 10M, which is not that far from what I estimated, even without including Nvidia. Now add in house price appreciation.

There are plenty of people who have managed to do this, from fairly normal tech jobs.

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

#246

Post by cal_dent »

jameslk wrote: post #235
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?

K-shaped economy is the buzz word these days

i remember when it was the buzzword in q3 2020 too....

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

#247

Post by oblio »

dtech wrote: post #218
agentultra wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven’t passed the stage where we convince policy makers to stop dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We’re not going to convince anyone to keep hiring software developers. I think we ought to be keeping people trained and employed but it seems we’re not on the winning side here.

> I think we ought to be keeping people trained and employed I never understood this sentiment. We don't have a massive manual weaving industry anymore, 95%+ of people used to be farmers in 1900. Tech comes and replaces humans, and the transition can be extremely painful especially for the people replaced, but ultimately it's better than keeping people artificially employed in obsolete jobs. (I don't think SWE will b…

Most deindustrialized regions in the West haven't recovered to full prosperity and are quite depressing to live in, sometimes even 30-40 years later: US Rust Belt, Wallonia in Belgium, the French North East, etc.

At a large enough scale, most people don't really move on, their lives are wrecked and they just suffer through them.

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

#248

Post by strken »

mbfg wrote: post #187
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where do you eat when you downgrade from McDonalds? You buy groceries. And if you must downgrade from there you eat the rich.

the advantage of fast-food over groceries, is that you don't have to worry about spoilage and waste. So the delta is probably less than you think. Now granted McD is an s-show, they are no longer the restaurant of the poor, You likely can get a better burger meal deal at a Chilis than a McD, as sad as that is.

This is just wrong. Beans and rice are more than an order of magnitude cheaper than McDonald's per calorie and they're non-perishable. Combine that with whatever fruit and veg is affordable fresh or frozen, a bit of cheap seasoning, and you're still coming out ahead.

You obviously need access to cooking and storage facilities to eat like this, but the target audience of McDonald's is the time-poor, the resource-constrained, or the depressed and disabled, rather than just the money-poor.

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

#249

Post by SilverElfin »

smileson2 wrote: post #226
thewebguyd wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you read nothing about how graduates during 2008 pretty much had forever stunted careers? Myself included. Graduated in '08, had to work various minimum wage jobs in retail for several years because no one was hiring. I'm just now at a point in my career, nearing 40, where I should have been at 28. Degree doesn't matter much when your only work experience is 5 years of working at Starbucks, and you barely have p…

I'm a little older but I have found it strange how well economic crisis has been almost wiped from our collective memories it was a horrible period and I have many friends who are in the same boat especially those not in software

I think it is wiped from memories because it very specifically affected one or two years of college graduates (that had the experience the parent comment mentioned). Not an entire generation. The data shows millennials as a whole are better off than boomers were at their age.

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

#250

Post by oblio »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #146
agentultra wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven’t passed the stage where we convince policy makers to stop dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We’re not going to convince anyone to keep hiring software developers. I think we ought to be keeping people trained and employed but it seems we’re not on the winning side here.

We gotta gather ourselves and remind companies why they once paid handsomely to not let potential disruptiors run rampant on the market. Long term new teams will form once productivity is valued again and not this giant incestuous GDP-maxmizing scheme.

On the long term, we're all dead.

I doubt things will recover to 2018 levels. Too many new software devs coming out each year, too much AI, too little big company growth once everyone already has an internet computer in their hands. The Wild West is over and now the digital economy has entered the boring phase.

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