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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?

#461

Post by bluGill »

CalRobert wrote: post #419
reactordev wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you save for retirement, you will be outbid for housing by those who are not saving.

Only if you bid on the same houses. Bid on a smaller house.

Don't forget too that inflation works for you! If you save and get in a nice house early and the STAY THERE (I can't emphasize enough how important this is - sometimes life forces you to move, but avoid it), your payments measured against inflation will go down - just put that difference into a 401k (that is don't do a cash out refinance along the way as so many do) and in 30 years the house is paid off and your have a great retirement account.

When you are in the early years the above plan looks impossible, but time is your friend.

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

#462

Post by skandinaff »

raffraffraff wrote: post #337
SilverElfin wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others are criticizing you but the reality is that people usually spend more and save less than they could. There are plenty of people with modest income who manage to build a decent retirement. But it takes discipline. You have to be okay with sacrificing for the future.

As an "Old" who was a kid in the late 70s to early 90s, I'm telling young folks that there is no first world poverty like there was then. Not just because "we" were poor, but because you couldn't get "stuff" anyway. Like, the biggest TV I ever saw back them was 25". Nobody had a computer. Unemployment across the board was high. I saw my first kiwi fruit or avocado when I was 10. Clothes were expensive (even thrift /…

In the part of the world I'm form, my childhood of the 90's to early 00's was exactly the same, and I experienced explosive increase in "stuff" surrounding me. Going from landline phones and phonebooths as status quo - to mobile internet just in 10 years. But I digress. Your point made me wonder - is it possible that the culture of material wealth - is the problem here? Could we have stepped on a poisonous flower - and now suffocating in the abundance of stuff we dreamed about as young people, now realizing, but not brave enough to admit that there is no meaning in it? And the optimism we had then, was a byproduct of a tighter communities, common struggles and just the architecture of life where we had to interact and care for one another more?

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

#463

Post by [deleted] »

deadbabe wrote: post #417
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, once you hit 50 the wall is real. You need to maximise your earnings during your 30s and 40s to be able to just do contracting, etc. then.

Take care of yourself: exercise, skin care, fashion trends, botox, hair dye, etc. so you do not look 50+ and no one will know the difference.

[deleted]

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

#464

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

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?

The point of an economy is to put a stupid flag on mars. Or to melt the ice caps so that Russia has access to ports that aren't clogged with ice. Or to get revenge and throw lavish parties. Or any of a million other arbitrary goals dreamed up by those few who get to steer this thing.

For most of us its just gas or breaks, but those at the top have non economic goals. The economic indicators are looking positive because progress is being made towards those goals, but the gloom persists because most of us don't want the outcomes that were progressing towards.

We're in a car that we can't steer, and the economist article says everything is fine because look how high the number on the speedometer is.

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

#465

Post by tarsinge »

forgotoldacc wrote: post #429
DrProtic wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That goes against the idea that impressive candidates have a difficulty finding a job.

No. Impressive candidates are applying to jobs that pay somewhat reasonably, even if it's below what they expect. If candidates who are desperate are still completely skipping over a company, that says something about that company.

I am also hiring, in Europe with very good work/life balance but modest salaries and like the parent I'm also not that impressed with candidates, so to me the other explanation is that candidates have a wildly incorrect estimation of what is a somewhat reasonable pay in 2025.

The position with FAANG like salaries have reduced drastically. Companies paying 6 figures just to have the privilege to have an entry level developer with this then seen as magical skill of being able to type code was a dream that is over. Look at salaries of engineers in other industries, breaking 6 figures needs a lot of seniority, $150k is rarely heard of for ICs.

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

#466

Post by thechao »

spwa4 wrote: post #404
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they bother wasting time on interviewing the person though? Or does it never get that far?

It is one trick that allows management to lie to everyone, and to implement downsizing. Fact is that A LOT of US businesses became unsustainable due to the tariffs (which Trump totally did for "US first" and not , I repeat NOT to get an extra tax started for him to spend), the retaliatory tariffs, followed by Trump doing the largest mass-firing in US history, presumably because this is listed in introductory economic…

Two things: (1) Trump doesn't control the prime lending rate (and that's not the interest rate, either); and, (2) he's rapidly headed to lame duck status, already.

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

#467

Post by bluGill »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #325
SilverElfin wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others are criticizing you but the reality is that people usually spend more and save less than they could. There are plenty of people with modest income who manage to build a decent retirement. But it takes discipline. You have to be okay with sacrificing for the future.

>the reality is that people usually spend more and save less than they could. You can't save your way out of rent being 70, 80+% of your paycheck. For my area, minimum wage is $18 and your best hope for rent is sharing a $3k 2 bedroom apartment. quick napkin math suggests $2400 take home pay and ~$1800 eaten up between the rent split, utilities, gas, and the most basic rice and beans diet of "groceries". Not even inc…

Renters, make sure you vote. NIMBY really hurts you when the house owners who vote make it impossible for you to get affordable rent. Rental properties get higher property taxes: rent goes up, or the quality of the house goes down. When cheap apartments cannot legally be built: there are no cheap apartments.

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

#468

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

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.

$170K a year after taxes is $9900 a month net if you are living in GA - with fairly low state taxes. I calculated this on paycheckcity.com. That’s without taking into account health insurance cost.

So to invest $100K a year let’s say some pretax and some post tax, they would have to live off of $1700 a month. They are not going to be buying a house with that.

As far as wealth through equity in a house, that’s not liquid. What are you going to do borrow against it?

And actually I can speak for one of the best case scenarios for buying a house. I had a house built in 2016 in the most affluent county in GA for $335K - a 5 bedroom, 3.5 bath - and sold it in 2024 for $670K and moved to state taxe free Florida and bought a condo in 2022 for half the cost (we kept both for awhile)

Even then, we could only do that because my (step)kids were both grown and I pivoted to customer facing cloud consulting in 2020. A niche that hasn’t suffered from the return to office mandates - ironically enough except for AWS ProServe (former employee) and Google’s equivalent internal department (who has been trying to recruit me for years).

Most people won’t and shouldn’t be picking individual stocks. Of course it’s easy to be a genuis saying what would have happened if you picked stocks that went up.

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

#469

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

fooker wrote: post #286
ahtihn wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 experi…

I calculated saving $100K out of $170K gross some pre tax and most post tax is living off of around $1800 a month.

And again, expecting your salary to double every six or seven years is not realistic for most developers.

Most developers making around $120K in 2013, aren’t making $480K now.

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

#470

Post by lumost »

seanw444 wrote: post #318
donatj wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We really need a regulation on job openings being real. Each interview costs the candidate roughly one PTO day.

Mandating something like a minimum of 40:1 interviews to extended offers should correct for at least the worst offenses.

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