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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?

#481

Post by lesuorac »

pm90 wrote: post #287
lesuorac wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. T…

> Popping bubbles can be contained and not blow up the entire system if we have proper regulations, for instance.

Perhaps we have a different definition of recessions but to me you cannot pop a bubble without a recession. How does the bubble deflate without a decrease in nominal GDP? The recession doesn't need have effects lingering for years/decades but one needs to occur.

> Both parties want to avoid recession

I mean in name only. Republicans pretty consistently just cut taxes while shifting government spending from poor to wealthy which really just causes a recession since the marginal propensity to spend of the wealthy is lower (hence ballooning SNP500 while weaker retail spending; wealthy's savings goes into SNP500 while non-wealthy cut back on consumption).

> its just that one of them believes in established economic theories and is successful

Which economic theory do the Democrats believe in? Any real theory has upsides and downsides and I just never either of the two major parties acknowledge or implement the downside (which is always required for the upside).

Large social nets are about redistributing wealth so everybody is (within a _very_ large range) equal but Democrats don't actually do this; they just give money to the bottom individuals without taking from the top which just means the future poor generations have less as they have to repay with interest to the original wealthy generations (and inheritors).

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

#482

Post by gruez »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #210
gruez wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Consumers in the top 10% of the income distribution accounted for 49.2% of total spending, per Bloomberg. What was the historical trend? Otherwise you can't draw much from just "49.2%" alone, aside from a vague sense that stuff should be fairer.

> What was the historical trend? No, it is not normal for 10% of the coountry to power half the spending. Just think about that statistic for a second. Spending includes groceries, services, and other continual needs. A few private jets can't outspend millions of people buying food. But here's your chart: https://preview.redd.it/2pcvmm0u3jpf1.png?width=798&auto=web...

>No, it is not normal for 10% of the coountry to power half the spending.

Yet, if you look at your chart, it was 40% in 1989s and have been slowly edging up. While 40% is a smaller number than 50%, you can make the same argument about 40% not being "normal", yet society has been chugging along just fine.

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

#483

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

LunaSea wrote: post #444
fooker wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

$170K as a starting salary, scratch that, as any salary, is already way beyond the average SWE salary.

That’s true. I said “top out at”. When I left AWS working in the ProServe (cloud consulting division) in 2023, I was seeing “architect” positions in Atlanta - I didn’t live there any more, but most of my network was still there - topping out at $175k. But for “senior” developers it was even less.

I obviously decided to stay in consulting and work full time for a third party consulting company.

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

#484

Post by John23832 »

ponector wrote: post #361
mschuster91 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. No one has the resources left to pay for it, that's the thing. Clients are cutting budgets because no one is buying their stuff, so everyone is looking for seniors and above only, and replacing juniors/intermediates with AI. Trickle-down ideology is now beginning to eat it…

>> No one has the resources left to pay for it Record profits reported by tech companies says the opposite. Money are there, but no will to spend them on people. We had multiple layoffs recently so parent company could report a billion USD in quarterly profits.

> Record profits reported by tech companies says the opposite. Money are there, but no will to spend them on people.

And you buy things/services from these major tech companies, but in return they buy nothing from you.

The circular stream that was "supposed to be" capitalism is broken.

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

#485

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

fooker wrote: post #339
matwood wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so you need 2 people working in tech making near top end salaries for the area? You do see how this simple idea of saving 100k/year isn't so simple for anyone outside of FAANG?

What's a realistic number in your opinion? I managed to save about 100k per year in Denver and Salt Lake City with mid tier tech and govt lab jobs. I'm suspicious of the claim that Atlanta is significantly different. From what I have seen, it's usually bad financial decisions. And for context, saving about double that during and post COVID by obtaining a remote job where the employer does not discriminate by location…

I posted calculations. $170K a year after taxes is $9900 a month before health insurance. To save $100K a year since only some of it would be pretax means you are living off of around $1600 a month.

And while I work remotely, remote jobs are getting more scarce and more competitive. Every job gets hundreds of applications within the curse few hours.

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

#486

Post by ponector »

kome wrote: post #373
modo_mario wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I genuinely have zero idea what you're looking for if the literal perfect fit isn't it. Maybe someone on a visa that can't leave and will take peanuts.

how the tech world is becoming trumpian-like is a funny thing to witness - try to unionize next time

Good luck unionizing together with offshore office in Bangalore.

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

#487

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

Marsymars wrote: post #295
fooker wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant everyone with a good tech job, not everyone in the country. About a 1:1000 ratio I'd guess.

Sure, but there was nothing stopping people with $10k in savings in 2015 from buying Nvidia. If someone with $10k in savings had bought Nvidia in 2015, they’d have $2.5m today. But that only works for a relatively small number of people before the $2.5m is no longer $2.5m - they’re all drawing from the same $6 trillion pot. “Everyone with a good tech job” is accurate, but besides the point, it would work exactly the…

If only someone knew in 2015 that Bitcoin and then AI would be a big thing and choose the one stock that was going to benefit the most from it…

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

#488

Post by potato3732842 »

venturecruelty wrote: post #42
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.

I wonder if it has anything to do with all of the 10-200% taxes we've levied on random things.

By "200% tax" surely you're talking about the fact that my boss just paid (as he was compelled by law to) a licensed plumber a 3-digit sum to tee the coffee machine into the water line for the fridge ice maker...

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

#489

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

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.

I did the math by going over to PayCheckCity.com. It’s actually $118K before health insurance.

https://www.paycheckcity.com/calculator/salary/georgia/resul...

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

#490

Post by potato3732842 »

ux266478 wrote: post #163
SoftTalker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

People will roll out the trades whenever employment is mentioned, but do you have tradies in your family? Do you have friends who are tradies? It's not easy to get in, it takes a long time to make journeyman, and work can have seriously spotty periods no matter who you are. Fact of the matter is, it's not really an alternative to anything except other types of bluecollar work.

It's easy to get a foot in the door to any of the trades but you're gonna slog out 5+yr of doing "bitch work" before you even have a chance to make real money because that's the nature of the licensing systems that these trades have that are enshrined by various degrees of law.
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