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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?

#311

Post by donatj »

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…

The number of just straight out NO's I've gotten has been surprising and disheartening. I've been a developer for 20 years and genuinely don't think I've gotten an outright "no" before this year. Usually just no response. I've gotten maybe eight or nine actual rejections this year. It's honestly worse, emotionally.

Ideally I want a job outside my wheelhouse to learn and move forward, but it seems like no one these days is interested in any sort of training.

There have been two gigs I was really excited about that seemed more-or-less exactly what I have spent the past decade doing and they've BOTH actually replied that they didn't think my skills were a good fit. I genuinely have zero idea what you're looking for if the literal perfect fit isn't it.

Before COVID I would regularly apply for jobs, almost always get them, and decline largely to keep my interview skills fresh.

This last year of looking has been the total opposite. I've applied for umpteen places, and gotten a little bit of email back and forth, and a single interview (it's in a couple days, wish me luck).

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

#312

Post by matwood »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #149
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…

Yeah pretty much. Engineers are going to be at a crossroad where they either turn to the government to finally build in some proper labor laws and other obvious controls (how about re-banning stock buybacks?) or go out to the Wild West and hope they idea can sustain their livelihood. Given the vibes of the community here: I guess I'll look for a Mad Max mask (I'll ofc keep performing my civic duties, though).

> how about re-banning stock buybacks?

This is pretend boogie man. Banning buybacks will not automatically make that money flow into hiring or salaries. Companies are not charities, they exist to make a return. If hiring people and/or paying more will generate a larger return than giving the money back to shareholders either through buybacks or dividends, then companies will do that.

AI is now giving companies something to do with excess cash that could generate better returns (shareholders believe so) and buybacks are being pushed out as money goes elsewhere[1].

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/move-over-stock-buybacks-ai-1...

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

#313

Post by johnnyanmac »

SilverElfin wrote: post #303
Den_VR wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers that interest me are comparing home ownership rates at various ages between the generational groups Lots of research shows about a 8-10% gap, that only at very specific ages finally achieved parity. The consequence of this is a difference in wealth building, economic security, and family planning for millions.

Why does home ownership on its own matter? Net worth is inclusive of housing and assets and debt. And net worth is a direct measure of the wealth that is being built.

Because homes are pretty much the only asset a millenial would have at that time that would have grown over time. a 08-9 graducate wouldn't really have much money to spar for stocks unless they made really lucky bets or happened to mine a fewbitcoin they forgot about.

Most all else would have inflated or depreciated.

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

#314

Post by jcheng »

Lio wrote: post #278
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lead cloud consulting projects as a staff consultant specializing in application development. I use to need myself to lead the project, customer management, design work and some development. I would add usually another developer to do some of the grunt work coding and usually a cloud architect to take care of infrastructure as code, security, etc. Not that I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to do it all myself, I just d…

> GenAI can definitely do CloudFormation, Terraform or the AWS CDK GenAI does not exist yet.

Generative, not general

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

#315

Post by matwood »

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.

In GA, after taxes your take home would be ~125k. So you think someone can live in a big city like ATL for 25k/year? What if they have a family? Ok, are you assuming their spouse is also in tech and making at least similar? The 125k also doesn't have healthcare deducted yet.

Some of the comments on this thread highlight just how disconnected many people were/are from everything outside of the FAANG bubble.

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

#316

Post by johnnyanmac »

jameslk wrote: post #274
johnnyanmac wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have it backwards. Layoffs these days increase stock value because everyone is hedging that bad job numbers will force the feds to lower interest rates. Something Powell has hesitated to do in order to keep inflation in check. It's a very screwed up incentive to be rewarded for breaking the system, but that's 2025 in a nutshell.

> Layoffs these days increase stock value because everyone is hedging that bad job numbers will force the feds to lower interest rates. Layoffs generally cause stock prices to go up because of anticipated cost reduction/efficiency: https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwab046 If you have some source to make the case that layoff-stock price change is correlated for a different reason these days, it would be interesting to read…

>If you have some source to make the case that layoff-stock price change is correlated for a different reason these days, it would be interesting to read it.

The phenomenon is pretty recent so there won't truly be any studies on it in a while. But look up "Jobless Boom". Here's a piece of what I'm talking about:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jobless-boom-ai-economy-labor-m...

>For much of 2025, the job market was described by economists as "no hire, no fire," meaning an environment where workers could count on job security even as hiring around the U.S. cooled. But conditions have changed, and the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate in both September and October, citing increasing risks to employment growth and with Fed Chair Jerome Powell noting that policymakers are closely watching layoff announcements by big employers.

personally, I think the AI efficiencies are a smokescreen, but the point of how this job contraction is forcing he fed's hands is hard to ignore after some 2 years of holding rates steady.

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

#317

Post by matwood »

ta12653421 wrote: post #266
adamredwoods wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Situational. IMO, I think it breaks even, but eating out saves a lot of time! Healthier cooking at home? Yes. I studied this for myself (N=1), and my cooking is about US$10/meal give or take (asparagus, chicken, rice, water to drink). If you cook for two or more people, then I think cooking at home comes out ahead financially.

...and add the time for preparation, cleaning up etc.: Thats one of the most frustrating things when cooking for one person - you invest 45min to eat 5min and the rest is "organisation & logistics"

45 minutes is crazy. I have a chicken and rice dish I can make in 20 minutes (yes, I've timed myself because I'm weirdo and enjoy those chef shows). It takes 20 minutes because that's how long the rice takes. It can be faster if I use shrimp instead of chicken (more expensive though) and noodles instead of rice. It also makes ~3 servings.

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

#318

Post by seanw444 »

donatj wrote: post #311
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…

The number of just straight out NO's I've gotten has been surprising and disheartening. I've been a developer for 20 years and genuinely don't think I've gotten an outright "no" before this year. Usually just no response. I've gotten maybe eight or nine actual rejections this year. It's honestly worse, emotionally. Ideally I want a job outside my wheelhouse to learn and move forward, but it seems like no one these da…

> I genuinely have zero idea what you're looking for if the literal perfect fit isn't it.

The simple answer is that they probably had no intention of hiring you, or anybody, in the first place.

The amount of fake job listings is absurd.

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

#319

Post by elric »

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…

Some anecdata from Belgium: the software market is dead. Hardly anyone is hiring. Rates have plummetted. There are (virtually) no startups. Big corpos are hiring in Southern and Eastern Europe instead, when they're not outsourcing to India.

Unlike some of the US commenters, our high tax rates and lack of stock-options driven reward schemes means that most of us don't have enough money in the bank to casually found a startup.

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

#320

Post by fooker »

matwood wrote: post #315
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.

In GA, after taxes your take home would be ~125k. So you think someone can live in a big city like ATL for 25k/year? What if they have a family? Ok, are you assuming their spouse is also in tech and making at least similar? The 125k also doesn't have healthcare deducted yet. Some of the comments on this thread highlight just how disconnected many people were/are from everything outside of the FAANG bubble.

If you live in an expensive city and do not have a proportional salary, obviously you are going to save less.

> Ok, are you assuming their spouse is also in tech and making at least similar?

Yes, suppose spouse contributes to household expenses, but assume separate savings and investments for this calculation. Do you see you'd easily get to 100k saved?

The difference between having a large fraction of your savings in your bank account versus invested for the last 10 years can be quite a few millions, which is what most commenters here are failing to see. I'm sure the story was different between 2002 and 2012, but that was not what I talking about.

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