America has two labor markets now

https://www.axios.com/2025/07/06/unemployment-job-market-education-health-care

40 17 1 year ago

jongjong3• 1 year ago

Likely the result of 50+ years of a pure fiat money system. The system has been supported by an unprecedented acceleration of technology and increasing globalization; likely why it kept going for so long. We could speculate that the fiat system may have helped to accelerate tech innovation in its early days (since decoupling from the gold standard) but now it seems to be causing stagnation due to systemic wealth concentration.

It may be the same kind of stagnation people faced under the gold standard; all the gold and assets had made their way into the hands of a select few people and so the appetite for risk dropped along with number of new opportunities and class mobility. Fiat money creation allowed elasticity of the money supply and thus the creation of new opportunities outside of the existing power structure. People started being empowered to make funding decisions using "Other people's money" and this facilitated investment and risk taking.

Now the issue is that the money flows themselves have been monopolized. It's still largely "Other people's money" being created and invested, but the anti-competitive dynamics are very strong. People aren't thinking about just numbers anymore (as they did with gold), they are concerned about 'rates of change' in money flows. I think that's what's driving the urge to control money flows and prevent risky spending and prevent competition. It's all about growth numbers and monopolizing growth itself.

This might explain why tech companies are laying off staff whilst having record profits and stock prices. It's about maintaining a leading position in a race, not about satisfying anybody's needs. It has become a zero-sum game about who can take control of existing money flows 'more efficiently'; meaning with less risk and less effort than anyone else. Unfortunately, the winning 'shortest path' to getting money does not align with risk-taking or value-creation.

bitmasher92• 1 year ago

It has become a zero-sum

The real economy is not a zero sum game (and never was), if you find a way to make a widget cheaper then everyone benefits from cheaper widgets and you get paid for it. The other widget manufacturers might lose, but you can create a net positive effect.

jongjong3• 1 year ago

This is not the case because being able to make a widget cheaper than everyone else doesn't guarantee that you will be able to secure funding for your operations and secondly, it doesn't guarantee that you will be able to capture enough people's attention from media to make enough sales to keep you afloat or gain the required initial traction. Thirdly, your bigger competitors may deny the quality advantage of your solution (ruling out an acquisition), they might defensively take the position that "You're cheap and low quality". Quality is a subjective metric; if both products were put in front of a consumer, the consumer may very well confirm that your product is higher quality but that doesn't matter if you lack the means to get your product in front of enough people to begin with. Your know-how and abilities are worthless until a certain (very high hurdle) is cleared in terms of funding, media coverage and adoption.

Also, it's possible that your product could be cheaper to produce than your biggest competitor, but you won't know for sure until you reach the same scale as them; which you may never reach due, again, to the massive hurdles you have to clear to get started.

The software sector is full of high quality software which nobody uses and low quality software which everyone uses. There are software companies worth billions of dollars which produce software which all users nag about constantly. Sometimes software which people have to use daily, many hours per day. They hate it, they all agree they hate it, but they have to use it anyway because the boss says so and the boss doesn't need to use it.

Don't even get me started on the hurdle of regulations/compliance. The idea that the most efficient solution wins is a myth. Mostly, they lose and they don't just lose a bit, they literally lose completely and get NOTHING, not even recognition of their work.

Our society is full of highly skilled, capable, ambitious people who are totally broke. It's relatively feasible to get a corporate job paying a high salary contributing basically nothing of value... But try to do the BEST WORK of your life working for yourself and there's a very high chance you will get precisely $0 after your 5th startup.

cjbgkagh• 1 year ago

It’s an increase in consumer surplus, where all wealth comes from.

timewizard• 1 year ago

then everyone benefits from cheaper widgets and you get paid for it.

Ah, but the original widget manufacturer bought a Senator, and so now there are onerous widget regulations that specifically target me while leaving them unscathed.

Don't you know widgets could somehow be dangerous in the hands of.. uh.. the Chinese?

The real economy

It's possible it stopped existing decades ago. To quote the character of Dr Burry: "It's possible that we are in a completely fraudulent system."

crooked-v• 1 year ago

the same kind of stagnation people faced under the gold standard

The entire reason that basically the entire world switched away from the gold standard just about the second the US proved it was logistically practical was that specie-backed currency had no long-term stability at all.

giantg2• 1 year ago

Well, that sucks even more now. I'm about to get fired and the stats related to that and having a disability were already bad.

bitmasher92• 1 year ago

Uncertainty can lead to reduced risk taking activity. Both hiring and firing have risk associated with them. This is probably a limited time impact and will change once people have a strong understanding of the current “trade war”, and an understanding of any impacts the Middle East conflicts will have on the global energy supply.

If you’re in business, look for opportunities where others inaction can benefit you. Maybe that’s quality talent available in the labor market.

breakyerself• 1 year ago

Seems like uncertainty is inherent to the current political leadership in the US.

msgodel• 1 year ago

This was deteriorating before the "trade war" and the Middle East has always been in conflict. I think there's a deeper cultural problem here.

decimalenough• 1 year ago

https://archive.is/2025.07.06-134546/https://www.axios.com/2...

burnt-resistor• 1 year ago

There are multiple, mostly separate realities now:

- The tiny ultra rich who've never had it better and don't see a problem.

- The very rich who are also doing really well.

- The moderately rich are okay too.

- An ever-shrinking middle class who either own or have a mortgage on 1 home.

- The masses of people living paycheck-to-paycheck without savings without a path to property ownership or raising a family.

- Undocumented, unskilled, and UberEats workers living in their cars and can't afford the basics of life to keep going.

There is some visibility up and down 1 strata, but very little beyond that.

jschveibinz• 1 year ago

I took your strata and did some research:

1. The Tiny Ultra Rich (Top 0.1%)

~0.1% of the population

⸻

2. The Very Rich (Top 1% excluding above)

~0.9% of the population

* the top 1% control about 35% of the total wealth

⸻

3. The Moderately Rich (Top 10%, excluding above)

~9% of the population

⸻

4. Shrinking Middle Class (Homeowners with Mortgage, Some Stability)

~25–30% of the population

⸻

5. The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Majority (Working but Financially Precarious)

~40–45% of the population

⸻

6. The Invisible Class (Undocumented, Unhoused, or Living in Vehicles)

~10–15% of the population

In 1900, you might have seen a similar stratification. For example:

Below is a historically grounded approximate breakdown of the adult population by economic stratum in 1900:

⸻

1. Capitalist Elite / Plutocratic Class

~1% of the population

• Industrial tycoons, major landowners, top financiers.

• Controlled a disproportionate share of national wealth (upward of 25–40% in the U.S.).

⸻

2. Upper Middle Class / Bourgeois Professional Class

~5–7% of the population

• High-status professionals, corporate managers, senior civil servants.

• Educated, well-connected, often urban.

⸻

3. Lower Middle Class / Petty Bourgeoisie

~10–15% of the population

• Shopkeepers, skilled tradespeople, clerks, schoolteachers.

• Often lived modest but stable lives; economically vulnerable to downturns.

⸻

4. Urban Working Class (Skilled and Semi-skilled)

~25–30% of the population

• Industrial workers in factories, transportation, and infrastructure.

• Many joined trade unions; others lived paycheck to paycheck in cities.

⸻

5. Rural Laboring Class / Tenant Farmers

~30–40% of the population

• Agricultural workers, sharecroppers, farm tenants.

• Still a dominant population in 1900, especially outside major cities.

•In the U.S., this included a large population of Black agricultural laborers in the South.

⸻

6. Underclass / Casual Labor / Destitute

~10–15% of the population

• Unemployed, chronically poor, recent immigrants in slums, itinerant laborers.

• Often invisible or ignored in public discourse except as objects of reform or charity.

America has two labor markets now

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