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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?

#281

Post by maxnevermind »

AIorNot wrote: post #260

Well as a single datum: After I got laid off in late 2023 I had a devil of a time finding work (despite having AI experience) to the point my unemployment ran out - And I was 20 years as a dev and tech lead and full stack, (never had trouble finding work) including stints as a leading EM and CTO, I’ve been an industry award winning innovation lead,a digital studio director, switching tech stacks and cloud certs all m…

Were you flexible with re-location or you were looking just at you current region or it is that bad no matter your flexibility?

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

#282

Post by goodolddays9090 »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #230
goodolddays9090 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit over 40, not liking parts of my FAANG job, worried I'll lose it, and worried no where in the industry is as fun as 12 years ago, but being on the low end of Fat FIRE makes it a lot easier.

FI is more valuable than RE. After three years or so I got the itch again and decided to self fund my own thing. Also looking back on around 10 years ago more fondly..

> Also looking back on around 10 years ago more fondly

When the work didn't suck and the product didn't suck.

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

#283

Post by pm90 »

Its a little strange for the article to not mention how much of the "stock growth" and GDP growth is mostly due to unsustainable, large investments in Data centers. Its not clear if that will continue into 2026, and what will happen when it stops.

My personal prediction is that, barring some kind of insurrection/revolution, Congress will flip in 2026 and force POTUS to back down on tariff nonsense, which will finally un-paralyze businesses which will resume capital investments and hiring. 2026 itself might be really rough though, if the AI bubble pops.

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

#284

Post by Marsymars »

fooker wrote: post #245
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Yeah, but there also isn’t enough wealth in the system for everyone to do this.

Like suppose that a) we’re now at a reasonably correct valuation for Nvidia b) assume a hypothetical where everyone in the US had plowed all of their savings into Nvidia in 2015. Result: The market cap of Nvidia is still $6 trillion, and the median American owns less than $10k in Nvidia stock.

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

#285

Post by intended »

bequanna wrote: post #57
OgsyedIE wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The investment thesis in AI is that the decline in consumer spending in the other sectors of the economy won't matter when the consumers cease to be a significant participant in the economy in the near term: that moving investment away from the activity in agriculture, transportation, goods and services, etc., is rational because those sectors are soon to be obsolete when their customers buying power and long term ca…

I’m not sure I follow. So, are you saying that wealth will become completely concentrated at the top and the rest of us are obsolete, out of work and broke? That seems unlikely. What is the point of an economy if there is no one who is actually able to consume?

Mixing two things up.

A point for the economy.

The mechanics of trade.

Or the objective outcomes vs subjective goals.

It is entirely possible for an economy to land up in an equilibrium point that works for a small set of people and not for the majority.

The point of the economy is a subjective societal thing, achieved via laws, regulation and enforcement of those rules.

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

#286

Post by fooker »

ahtihn wrote: post #270
fooker wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, just save 100k out of your 170k comp, that's totally how normal people operate. And not only that, also pick the right stocks rather than just sticking everything in an index! Just magically turn 10x 100k into 10M!

You do not understand compounding growth.

You could have looked up the numbers for indices yourself, but here you go -

S&P500 -> ~4 million

NDXT (top 100 tech) -> ~14 million.

> just save 100k out of your 170k comp

Yes, that was my starting salary, and that's almost exactly what I saved.

This calculation assumes your salary is somewhat constant and maxed out as the person I was responding to claimed, but in my experience you can expect your tech salary to double every ~5-6 years.

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

#287

Post by pm90 »

lesuorac wrote: post #154
mullingitover wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since 1953 10 out of 11 recessions happened when republicans held power I used to think this was because the party that represents the ruling class didn't know what they were doing. Now I think these economic collapses and ensuing fire sales are not accidents, they know exactly what they're doing.

Recession are a natural part of the business cycle though. Like it's good to have them, Democrats not allowing a recession to occur just makes the next bubble even bigger. And all kinds of inefficient businesses are allow to zombify when the resources could be used elsewhere. Now, the bigger problem is that you're supposed to raise taxes during the boom so that you can run deficits during the recession to recover qui…

Just because recessions do happen, does not mean that its good to have recessions, not does it make them necessary. Popping bubbles can be contained and not blow up the entire system if we have proper regulations, for instance.

> Democrats not allowing a recession to occur just makes the next bubble even bigger. And all kinds of inefficient businesses are allow to zombify when the resources could be used elsewhere.

This is honestly just horseshit. Both parties want to avoid recession, its just that one of them believes in established economic theories and is successful; while the other one is steeped in crackpot economics which have failed repeatedly.

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

#289

Post by fooker »

Marsymars wrote: post #284
fooker wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There are plenty of people who have managed to do this, from fairly normal tech jobs. Yeah, but there also isn’t enough wealth in the system for everyone to do this. Like suppose that a) we’re now at a reasonably correct valuation for Nvidia b) assume a hypothetical where everyone in the US had plowed all of their savings into Nvidia in 2015. Result: The market cap of Nvidia is still $6 trillion, and the median Ame…

I meant everyone with a good tech job, not everyone in the country.

About a 1:1000 ratio I'd guess.

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

#290

Post by fuoqi »

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…

There are several factors which contribute to the "rosy" official picture:

- A lot of people participate in the gig economy instead of getting registered as unemployed.

- AI has eroded a lot of employment opportunities for graduates, i.e. people relatively active on social networks.

- Official data can be horribly inaccurate (phone surveys in 2025, seriously?) with grossly outdated models (remember the recent huge revisions?). Political pressure does not help here either.

- The unemployment stats do not account for significant downgrades in salary and working conditions. They will show the same picture for a person with a cushy office job and the same person working 2 jobs in retail from paycheck-to-paycheck.

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