Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/11/30/is-americas-jobs-market-nearing-a-cliff

by harambae • 8 months ago

291 659 8 months ago

economist.com

https://archive.is/NvSXc

OgsyedIE3• 8 months ago

https://archive.is/NvSXc

Also, shocking to see no mention of the investment thesis, let alone critique of it.

AnimalMuppet2• 8 months ago

Thanks for the link.

What do you mean by the "investment thesis"? Would you clarify?

OgsyedIE3• 8 months ago

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 capacity to produce buying power is sucked away.

Think of the promise of AGI as a promise of billions of tireless immigrants with PhDs who outcompete the other ethnicities in the labor market. It's the same reason people stopped investing in Detroit-based things years ahead of the industry pullout.

juujian2• 8 months ago

Investment thesis?

chasd002• 8 months ago

Ftfa (the part I could read) “ growth is buoyed by an exuberant stockmarket and artificial-intelligence investment, while ordinary Americans languish”

Black Friday sales set records and it not even cyber Monday. If Americans are languishing then shouldn’t holiday spending be down?

seanmcdirmid2• 8 months ago

Shouldn’t every year be a record considering population growth and inflation?

eru2• 8 months ago

You could look at inflation adjusted per-capita sales, of course.

bitwize• 8 months ago

One of the truly great things about American toxic individualism is that it need not be constrained by rationality; American capitalism finds ways around that. Need to Christmas shop for everyone in your family but don't have enough actual income? Simply go into massive credit card debt! You're probably pre-approved for several cards already; check for our flyer!

nrhrjrjrjtntbt• 8 months ago

Black friday is a datapoint. But maybe people are deferring purchases to these sale periods. What proportion of goods were luxury vs. not.

Also poor people can get into debt they are still poor. Maybe they can afford a nintendo switch but not afford to raise a family.

thinkingtoilet• 8 months ago

The only things I bought on Black Friday were things I would normally have bought but just waited a few weeks/months to get.

kshacker• 8 months ago

Deferring sales is one datapoint. But setting records is another datapoint and counter to deferring IMO.

Edit there is talk below of inflation adjusted numbers being high but meh

tomrod• 8 months ago

K shaped economy with increasing expenditure means the wealthier increase their spending as a portion of the economy and at an absolute level. It is not interpreted as the polity doing well - if anything, it is cause for concern.

Ericson23142• 8 months ago

The wealthy don't buy more crap on black Friday.

Inequality is very visible in terms of what sort of consumption occurs. Gotta look at the qualitatives.

Libidinalecon• 8 months ago

I don't know if it is just the wealthy either.

The retired middle class boomers I know are completely outside the business cycle.

While I don't think they have enough to really be considered wealthy, they have no mortgage payment, a social security check, a pension and most have a 401k.

The business cycle will not change their spending one bit.

alfalfasprout2• 8 months ago

Not necessarily. Lots of explanations:

(1) People wait for when they perceive they'll get the best deals to do their shopping. (2) K-shaped economy (data is already bearing this out btw): Spending from the wealthy is driving consumption figures vs. the bulk of the population (3) Anxiety about rising prices cause people to purchase now vs. later. See for example RAM prices.

AuthAuth• 8 months ago

the country is growing so it will commonly "set records". We need to look at it in the context of previous years. Before I went and checked the stats I expected to see instore shopping to be down since americans are poorer than previous years and online shopping to be up since demand is growing and online caters to a worldwide audience.

Checking the stats online growth is up and on par with previous years creating that record breaking stat. Instore numbers arent out yet but some figures are claiming less foot traffic in stores compared with previous years. So i'd say to early to really call if spending was down(compared with expectations)

jinushaun• 8 months ago

Don’t underestimate credit cards and consumerism.

anon373839• 8 months ago

The rise in Black Friday sales is misleading because the sales reflect inflation rather than increased consumer demand.

listenallyall3• 8 months ago

I think it is more that a greater number of products were heavily marketed by a greater number of companies. My social feeds were flooded with single-product companies and online-only companies aggressively selling all kinds of gear and gadgets. Travel pillows (like 5 different brands), ski socks, luggage, exercise equipment, etc etc. Not gonna lie, I bought some stuff I likely would not have otherwise!

master_crab2• 8 months ago

Black Friday did not set records. Bloomberg stated that it was up 4.1%, but that was not inflation adjusted. So it was just slightly higher than flat.

Not necessarily a bad thing…but not great either.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-29/black-fri...

jeffbee3• 8 months ago

You also have to adjust such things for population, which was up about .6% in August vs. last August, the latest data we have.

chasd002• 8 months ago

“Slightly higher than flat” is still a new record.

tayo42• 8 months ago

Doesn't black Friday kind of suck now and for the last few years? There's sales all of the time, and there's all those open secrets about black Friday skus now.

philamonster• 8 months ago

I didn't buy shit on purpose this weekend, like every year and like most weekends. Some people do that. I wish more would.

listenallyall3• 8 months ago

Black Friday has become Cyber Monday as well. Everyone has a phone, nobody is waiting to log on to their PC at work to do some online shopping.

The holiday season on the whole is a much better indicator, not just one single day. And even then, spending needs to be checked against debt incurred.

garciasn• 8 months ago

Black Friday started weeks before the actual day in order to increase the spending. It’s not an apples to apples comparison to prior years.

3Mathematicians• 8 months ago

Consumers in the top 10% of the income distribution accounted for 49.2% of total spending, per Bloomberg. If anything, in my opinion, this strengthens the k-shaped economic growth stat that the article mentions.

master_crab2• 8 months ago

Yup, only the rich are powering this economy now. That bodes poorly for the country’s stability long term.

gruez3• 8 months ago

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.

eru2• 8 months ago

Ftfa (the part I could read) [...]

https://archive.is/NvSXc

Jupe• 8 months ago

A few observations:

1. I saw the same headline - the article stated that there were record SEASON sales, not Black Friday sales. The headline did not match the content of the article. 2. Record revenue, not necessarily record units sold. To be expected with inflation. 3. Savvy online shoppers may be bundling purchases to reduce shipping costs. Waiting for a seasonal sale to buy holiday gifts as well as detergent, snacks and underwear may be quite prudent.

Finally, increased sales revenue does not necessarily equate to more jobs. It can, but by no means does it have to.

programmertote• 8 months ago

I postponed all of my CPG and miscellaneous purchases (think AA batteries, socks, winter pants, skin lotion, body wash, etc.) until Black Friday "sales". I also stocked up on stuff like Ramen. I did NOT buy anything special for myself (e.g., I really wanted Switch 2, but I think it's too overpriced and decided not to pull the trigger).

I'd not be surprised if a good number of people did the same. PLUS, the prices rose by quite a bit between the start of the year and now. So we need to see if this increase is sales match up to inflation (which, unfortunately, would be more difficult to rely on knowing that that metric has become politicized.)

DaveZale• 8 months ago

fwiw the Tokyo noodle packs' price actually dropped, if instant noodles is one of your staples.

dudus• 8 months ago

Same here. My big purchase for Black Friday last year was an OLED TV.

This year was prescription glasses.

Iwan-Zotow• 8 months ago

Pop growth of ca .5 pct and inflation delivered said record

csomar4• 8 months ago

The volume is down. What actually increased is the $$ value.

vannevar3• 8 months ago

Not necessarily. Average income can be up substantially at the same time that median income remains flat or even declines. This means that it is possible for spending by wealthier Americans to make up for sales lost from the unemployed middle class and poor.

untwerp• 8 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipstick_effect

johnnyanmac34• 8 months ago

Ftfa (the part I could read)

You did in fact not rtfm?

Black Friday sales set records and it not even cyber Monday.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/29/business/black-friday-us-econ...

I don't know where you're seeing "record numbers". 2024 wasn't a great year and you can argue spending was flat from that after inflation. I think the more relevant factor is "who" is spending the money in such a k-shaped economy. .

jameslk3• 8 months ago

K-shaped economy is the buzz word these days

cal_dent5• 8 months ago

i remember when it was the buzzword in q3 2020 too....

intended4• 8 months ago

The market is diverging with people who are in the upper echelons having money to spend and everyone else having nothing.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2025/11/25/us-e...

The K shaped economy.

port113• 8 months ago

Others have pointed out the brackets really buying, but I'd also argue that people deferring their purchases to a period of sales is generally not a good thing.

glimshe• 8 months ago

No.

Source: Betteridge's law of headlines

Waterluvian• 8 months ago

Bettridge’s Law of Bettridge’s Law: there will always be someone in the comments section mentioning Bettridge’s Law.

Esophagus43• 8 months ago

We’re really just tired of news slowly morphing into Buzzfeed style clickbait, and this is our only outlet to complain about it.

Other annoying headlines:

“This is why interest rates are so high”

“What I learned about X from one month doing Y”

rhinoceraptor• 8 months ago

From my experience, it's grim at the moment for software developer jobs. I got laid off in August and it's been rough. I'm in my early 30s so I can't compare it to 2008, but I've been laid off before and I've never seen it this bad.

jdiff2• 8 months ago

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.

venturecruelty• 8 months ago

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

SoftTalker3• 8 months ago

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

aorloff3• 8 months ago

I gotta tell you man, if you can find someone in charge at the backend of the Home Depot and let them hire you as a systems uptime troubleshooter you would easily make any salary you could name for them tenfold.

I at at a Home Depot like 10 times a week and let me tell you, they have a major systems problem that is making their operations look like a joke

mollusc-engine5• 8 months ago

I became a USPS mail carrier instead.

Certainly less pay but I love being outside and walking.

And no Jira, changing the color of that button, or steeping myself in Frank’s eldritch horror code.

clumsysmurf• 8 months ago

I would definitely try this if the vehicles in Phoenix ran cleaner. The old ones have such bad smelling exhaust and you are always breathing it because of the semi-open cab.

protocolture2• 8 months ago

No Jira

If I was trying to attract intelligent applicants looking for work outside of software engineering, that would be in the headline.

rootusrootus2• 8 months ago

My wife and I have a running joke about her giving up accounting and working for USPS instead. Some days I think she’s serious.

JLO64• 8 months ago

As someone who is currently delivering Amazon packages with their own vehicle (Amazon Flex), what’s the process like to become a mail carrier? The miles are starting to take a toll on my car, so delivering for USPS is tempting for me…

dehrmann• 8 months ago

And no Jira

Not officially, but once you remove the skills required for the tasks, it's not all that different.

fHr2• 8 months ago

Yeah but isn't the pay shit? like making 1/3th is not a win in my books.

guywithahat3• 8 months ago

It's funny how everyone wants to get into deliveries as they get older, my dad who's been an engineer for decades talks about it a lot. Something about walking around and doing things really appeals to people as they reach the end of their engineering career

cute_boi• 8 months ago

It is all due to outsourcing. AI/H1B isn't taking that much job. Unless government put penalties on outsourcing market isn't going to improve.

itake4• 8 months ago

yep. Trump added tariffs on physical goods, but there are no taxes on service imports.

intended4• 8 months ago

The market is K shaped.

The peope will wealth are doing well, the rest of the market is not.

There are only so many apps and goods that can be made for rich people/small subset of consumers.

I bet you will find that people working on investment ideas and finance tools which focus on wealth accumulation will be hiring.

bottlepalm2• 8 months ago

I'm seeing like 80% of software dev applications at my company are H1B/OPT, like thousands of candidates - and they're getting hired just because of the sheer numbers they drown everyone else out. So yes, they are 100% taking jobs. A lot of them. I can't comprehend how there are so many.

BergAndCo6• 8 months ago

"H1B isn't take that much job"

When is YC going to add "This account is based in..." like X has?

johnnyanmac34• 8 months ago

Same story here. I work in games so it's always been boom or bust. It's real bad now.

- out of college it took 3 months to find work. It sucked, took over 100 apps, but I found a nice project.

- after that project ended, 3 more months (but less stressful because I had more than one role I was interviewing with).

- Then layoffs, another 3 months in 2022 where it was very competitive (I was in at least 4-5 interview pipelines before my first choice accepted my offer).

- Then that studio quickly shuttered and I haven't found anything full time in 2.5 years. Freelancing kept me up until that wasn't enough, and then I found some non-tech part time work.

working harder than ever with 2 jobs + more portfolio work to prepare for interviews despite having 9 years of experience now. This feels worse than the horror stories I'd hear when finding my first job.

throwaway-0001• 8 months ago

I can hire you if you decent and don’t expect high salary ports-spatial5c@icloud.com

port113• 8 months ago

Game dev acquaintances here in Belgium and back in Turkey say it's never been so bad. Studios aren't shutting down but also not hiring over here. Your industry is not having a good time…

guywithahat3• 8 months ago

I think it's largely industry dependent. Robotics/embedded/etc is actually doing quite well, lots of hiring in space and other fields. More big-data focused fields aren't hiring as much, and it's going to be even harder if you're applying for more senior/VP roles

BergAndCo6• 8 months ago

I apply to embedded/controls engineer roles and get nothing back.

khannn• 8 months ago

The Economist peddling doom n gloom IN THIS ECONOMY?

nextworddev3• 8 months ago

It’s interesting bc I still see mid level (7 yoe) developers getting jobs with no issues. Lots of dispersion of difficulty depending on speciality as well

juujian2• 8 months ago

Could it be regional?

joshdavham• 8 months ago

In which part of the world are you seeing this? In the bay area?

nextworddev3• 8 months ago

SF and NY

pm903• 8 months ago

Yes, smaller firms and startups are still hiring aggressively.

nextworddev3• 8 months ago

Not just. I know some average joes that landed at Google, Meta, and DoorDash recently

arnonejoe2• 8 months ago

It seems we are nearing the bottom of the business cycle. I lived through 2001 and 2008. Both were worse than now. It will get better.

bequanna3• 8 months ago

How do we know this is the bottom?

arnonejoe2• 8 months ago

You don’t know until unemployment and GDP numbers are released. Generally when the fed starts making successive rate cuts, the economy is doing poorly. Since 1953 10 out of 11 recessions happened when republicans held power. So maybe that is also why I think we have a little way to go before things get better. I’m not sure why that is and I don’t want to start a political debate. Things will get better. They always do.

chii• 8 months ago

Until the bottom has passed, you can't know.

zerosizedweasle3• 8 months ago

When AI finally crashes, the cycle will reset

baq2• 8 months ago

it isn't, but the post-covid inflation and subsequent rates increase has caused something like a recession, just not everywhere at once - so you see sectors busting and coming back, but overall kinda-sorta chugging along economy.

now what happens if the rates won't go down much from here might just be everything slowing down all at once and then they'll drop the rates to 0 again, so it'll get better... two years later.

cal_dent5• 8 months ago

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 bobbing along. Not great guns but still ok. The interesting thing is how much is internet chatter a leading signal for this thing now than in previous cycles?

Outside of the unique circumstances of covid, we've never had, to my knowledge, a notable downturn when social media, and all the chatter it generates, has been so prominent or mass engaged. How much of it is just internet noise vs canary in the coal mine stuff. Who knows? But curious to find out in coming months/year

epistasis3• 8 months ago

At least in the US we haven't had official data for quite some time. The BLS lost its chief because of "bad numbers"

The numbers we do have show significantly worse jobs numbers compared to prior years.

We might get data again, maybe not, but the US government has had an internal revolution, and it's doubtful we will have data as good as in the past, and it's quite likely that any bad news will be deeply buried.

reactordev23• 8 months ago

BTC would agree with you. It’s nose diving.

tencentshill• 8 months ago

I know 4 people who were laid off this year. 2 federal government (1 contractor) and 2 large corporate. Entirely anecdotal, but the data I see isn't good.

arresin• 8 months ago

The commenter you’re replying to is from Australia and things are likely different here

csomar4• 8 months ago

Tech is more affected than the rest which is over-represented in discussions. Also people who can’t find a job tend to be more vocal than the rest.

fragmede5• 8 months ago

Are they perhaps more vocal because they have a lot of time on their hands?

johnnyanmac34• 8 months ago

Based on the numbers we had before the BLS clammed up, all sectors except healthcare is going down. But yes, tech is one of the bigger slumps. If your job isn't to help take care of the aging boomer population, you're not having a good time.

I work in games and have the occasional slump. But this time is much different. all staffind agencies for temp work in my city pretty much said there's nothing out there. my local area is pretty much a bunch of fractional janitorial roles and that's it.

markus_zhang3• 8 months ago

Reality is not particularly rosy for new graduates AFAIK. If I lose my job, I wouldn't be super surprised that I might never get a similar job for the rest of my life -- it is not that I do not have the skills, but 1) the amount of time for a laid off SDE to get a new job could reach to years, not months, so I need to do something else to earn $$$, and 2) why are companies going to hire me, who have gap years and are older, but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary?

And yes I believe this time it's going to be different. I believe that if the economy dumps again, we are really going to see more hot wars. It is different from 2001, and different from 2008. We have kicked the can for almost 20 years and I kudos the policy makers who managed to achieve this.

sheepscreek2• 8 months ago

but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary

Cause garbage in, gets garbage out. With AI models being all the more rage in the coming years, unexperienced hires will prove many times more costly. (10x garbage with agents).

So companies are going to concentrate their worker base even more with experienced folks. They need fewer of them. Yes. But quality matters more than ever.

I really feel bad for the new graduates. For no fault of their own, the bar went up so high. Unless they’re a child prodigy doing some coding projects on the side since the age of 10 - no one will hire them. So how will they ever gain the experience they need?

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a reinvention of coding schools - that will now focus on fundamental and industry knowledge - imparted by other veterans, instead of teaching applied skills.

bluGill14• 8 months ago

I have heard that story every few years for the last 30. I know when it is your personal situation things are hard, but your story is nothing new and people recover. Some get back into whatever their degree was, others start a new career and never do. this will happen again.

gruez3• 8 months ago

Reality is not particularly rosy for new graduates AFAIK

I looked at the statistics[1], and while you could argue new graduates have seen worse (recent grad unemployment is actually lower than much of the 2010s), you can also see that in contrast to previous periods where new grad unemployment is lower than all worker unemployment, this time around new grad unemployment is actually slightly higher. However if you look at the chart this wasn't a post pandemic phenomena. The gap has been closing since the back half of the 2010s, and doesn't show much of a spike after the release of chatgpt, so "AI" isn't a good explanation either.

[1] https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market

skybrian• 8 months ago

“The rest of my life” is a very long horizon for making predictions. I don’t think I could predict much about politics or the economy two years out.

hombre_fatal• 8 months ago

Your competition isn’t new grads. It’s experienced engineers in other countries who will work for half your wage in your own city on an H1B or similar.

raw_anon_111120• 8 months ago

I saw this coming way before AI became a thing around 2016 when I was 42. Software development was becoming a commodity where there were plenty of “good enough” developers where no matter what, it was going to be saturated.

If someone is trying to sell themselves as an undifferentiated developer in 2025 or later, it’s going to be an uphill battle unless you can lean on your network.

At 51, if my only differentiator is I can code, I’ve done something horribly wrong in my life.

Anecdotally, I found software development adjacent roles quickly when I was looking both last year and the year before.

mywittyname4• 8 months ago

why are companies going to hire me, who have gap years and are older, but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary?

Given cost of living, I have a hard time believing young people come out being cheaper. I live in an area with cheap rents and my mortgage is still less than the average price of a one-bedroom apartment in the area. My cars are new and paid off, and I have pretty much all of the stuff I'd ever need in my life. Plus, no student loans.

That might be one of the real root causes of the job market for new grads being shit. The amount of money people need to meet their basic needs has skyrocketed, and young people bear the brunt of the burden. The only people who can readily afford to work too cheap are those with parents who can continue to support them to a degree.

sheepscreek2• 8 months ago

I believe you’re in the minority here. Perhaps your experience is different because of your skill set or the market you’re in. Anyone that I know personally who got laid off (in tech) took at least 6 months to find a job. I don’t know about anyone else but that to me is pretty brutal. More so as the people getting laid off are mid career, some with kids.

Edit: Add to the above that companies like Walmart are seeing an uptick in high wage earners becoming their customers, and McDonalds seeing a shrinking population of low-wage customers.

It’s easy to infer the rest from there. People who used to do well are cutting expenses and those who were already struggling are..I seriously don’t know what they’re doing. Where do you eat when you downgrade from McDonalds..Wendy’s? It’s a sad state of affairs.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-11-16/mcdonalds-...

__MatrixMan__3• 8 months ago

Where do you eat when you downgrade from McDonalds?

You buy groceries. And if you must downgrade from there you eat the rich.

HDThoreaun• 8 months ago

McDonald’s is expensive. Much cheaper to cook yourself.

kragen2• 8 months ago

You ask, "Where do you eat when you downgrade from McDonalds..Wendy’s? It’s a sad state of affairs." On the off chance that this isn't a joke, you need to know that eating out is very expensive in the US, even at McDonald's. According to the obviously highly credible https://mcdonalds-menu-prices.us/ a Quarter Pounder With Cheese costs US$7.99 now. I think home-cooked rice and lentils costs about US$0.20. Other similarly low-cost foods include polenta, homemade bread, homemade mayonnaise, zucchini, spaghetti, sunflower-seed cheese, homemade peanut butter, onions, potatoes, etc. Those numbers aren't even the same order of magnitude.

cal_dent5• 8 months ago

I believe the long-term average in the US and UK was somewhere around 20 - 25 weeks so that's still broadly in line. Not trying to dismiss anyone but there is a cacophony of voices about the difficulty in finding jobs but hard to ascertain if that is any different from normal or we just got used to a boom cycle (ex Covid) and that's causing the disconnect?

vannevar3• 8 months ago

...but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along.

I don't know that the official data shows things "still bobbing along." The graph of monthly employment numbers looks like it has a decidedly downward trend overall. September jobs were unexpectedly high, but we've had a lot of subsequent downward revisions and it may happen again for September.

https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2025/11/2...

cal_dent5• 8 months ago

looks like a return to post GFC pre-covid trend. That's sort of what I mean, we've obviously come from a boom-ish market and correcting. How much of it now is the shock that now isnt the same as the 2021-2023 market v this is the start of a real downturn. I don't know

duxup• 8 months ago

I find that social media just trends more negative generally. People engage with the negative.

johnnyanmac34• 8 months ago

out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along.

The Titanic had 3 days of warning and took 3 hours to sink. A large ship takes a long time to do anything, be it turn or drown.

If you've been following the breadcrumbs in pretty much any industry (especially tech), you know the market isn't in a good shape. If you're looking outside expencting to see the world burning, you gotta wait another 3 hours (or hope someone steps in first).

vachina• 8 months ago

Jobless are probably a vocal minority.

Nothing paints a picture of recession in reality right now.

MangoToupe2• 8 months ago

Well for one, the concept of a recession is entirely unrelated to employment rates

ta126534214• 8 months ago

Clearly: You are not in one of the major EU-countries :-)

iwontberude2• 8 months ago

Actually having trouble finding candidates...

pyuser5835• 8 months ago

What are you looking for?

reeredfdfdf• 8 months ago

I live in Finland, with over 10% unemployment according to official statistics (second highest in EU, just after Spain). From what I can tell, things really suck especially for fresh grads. There's fierce competition for jobs like cashier at supermarket, hundreds of applications for one position is normal. Lots of fresh grads with bachelor's or master's degree compete for those jobs too, since they can't find anything better. Also, of the few open positions, many are the kind of "rental work" that offer only limited hours a week, at unpredictable times.

So, this is what an objectively bad job market looks like in Europe.

torginus2• 8 months ago

Is having temporarily high unemployment that bad? Sure, demand is not as sky high as it used to be but doesn't mean people won't get a proper job eventually.

Imo it shows that you consider your people valuable and have a strong social safety net, so people are not forced to accept the first job that comes their way and compromise on pay or what you want to do.

I'm sure those grads could get underpaid crappy jobs the next day if they had to, but the point is they're not forced to.

If you can't sort this out in a couple years, then you have a real problem.

MangoToupe2• 8 months ago

we've never had, to my knowledge, a notable downturn when social media, and all the chatter it generates, has been so prominent or mass engaged

How would we even know? It's not like there's a practical way to measure this from an individual's perspective.

fuoqi• 8 months ago

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.

port113• 8 months ago

I've been unemployed for quite some time as a software developer with 13 years of experience.

The unemployment agency of my country tries to help, but the reality is that the amount of new jobs every week is staggeringly low since end-2024. The agent on my case was herself honest about the prospects. It's even worse for younger developers or very old folk.

I tuned into my old freelance network in Germany and the account manager told me they're seeing 60–70% less freelance work in tech.

I could get a job in the odd thing here and there, so I'm not immensely worried yet, plus it allows me to stay home and raise our baby. But I think everyone around me is worried, even outside tech.

elric2• 8 months ago

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.

mschuster915• 8 months ago

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.

That's because it effectively is gambling. Maybe if you are one of the first 50 employees in a startup that is one of 100 to reach "unicorn" stage, you have the chance to strike it big... but then you are 0.01% of all employees of startups.

The 99.99%? They'll have had their company fold or let them go due to the company "pivoting" or "having to look better in quarterly reports", they'll have left voluntarily for one reason or the other, or they'll have been let go right before the vesting period to save the company money and end up with nothing vested, or the company will have gone to three, four, five or more rounds of funding watering down existing options, or the company will have gone bust... all while having traded the "chance" of striking it big for lower pay, thus reducing payments into our tax, social security and healthcare systems.

Europe does not like gambling with the lives of its citizens and the stability of our systems.

fragmede5• 8 months ago

I've been lead to believe that, in lieu of startup founding cash in the bank, there's a better social safety net, for use in cases like these. Is that not the case?

Earw0rm• 8 months ago

Think it's a filter effect. The areas getting hit especially hard happen to overlap strongly with the most online, which is a relatively small part of the economy overall - and, if you get cut, you've got a bunch more time to to talk about it, which amplifies things further.

Plenty of other areas doing OK for now - construction, healthcare especially - there's no shortage of money around, it's just not going into tech projects outside of the AI bubble.

nicbou3• 8 months ago

Some anecdata from Berlin:

- It's now much harder to get a job without speaking German

- There is now competition for low-wage service jobs

- At times it felt like half of my friends were unemployed

- My dev friends have a much harder time finding work. Back in 2015-2020 I had to beat recruiters back with a stick.

prasoon2211• 8 months ago

Agree on all points, especially half of my friend circle being unemployed at one point.

Folks with amazing jobs having to spend >1y trying to find a "meh" job. Pretty much impossible to find a job without fluent German.

BenGosub• 8 months ago

IMO the shift towards AI was very detrimental to the job market, because every company started to work on their AI strategy and not on their core competencies. This has resulted in most companies failing to materialize their AI strategies, while burning their cash. One of the reasons for this is that the average company competes against Goliaths that have infinite funding.

At first many companies stopped developing mobile apps and I think mobile app devs were the first hit. Second, the frontend developers were hit because of how the AI can generate good enough websites, however, they aren't hit as hard as the mobile developers.

This has spread into most parts of the stack with a variable impact.

doom2• 8 months ago

but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along. Not great guns but still ok. The interesting thing is how much is internet chatter a leading signal for this thing now than in previous cycles?

It's really interesting to read both this comment and the featured article because my recollection is that one of the big reasons Harris lost in 2024 is that Democrats kept saying the underlying economic data was fine but voters felt things were bad, even if they weren't (the so-called 'vibecession'). Maybe also a bit of distrusting economic experts. So which is it? Are voters just being illogical and should trust when others say the economy is doing fine? Or is there something not being captured in economic data that validates people's concerns?

array_key_first4• 8 months ago

The downturn of the economy, as a whole, is very real while simultaneously we are doing "just fine".

The "just fine" part is that our stock market is doing quite well, and those who are already wealthy greatly increased the velocity of their wealth. The flip side is that everything is too expensive, including labor, and we have to cut corners to make line go up. Most companies, by this point, have been more or less stripped for parts in pursuit of growth. Most are stagnating or experiencing negative growth now, because obviously, except a key few.

And those key few are pretty much holding everything together. Speculatively. Based off of the promise of growth without labor.

So, that's kind of where we're at right now.

Finnucane• 8 months ago

"We seem to have no clue, but we can get an article out of it anyway"--the Economist.

jswelker2• 8 months ago

The author must have written the headline as a legitimate question to the audience because they certainly did not make much effort to answer it in the article.

Esophagus43• 8 months ago

Betteridge’s law!

Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.

jswelker2• 8 months ago

In this case it was more of a "Meh, maybe." Which IMO is worse than Betteridge's Law.

zerosizedweasle3• 8 months ago

This market is sick. =(

DANmode3• 8 months ago

I hope so – how else am I going to find a great cofounder?!

Mostly kidding.

mekael2• 8 months ago

-Slides up to the bar-

Tell me more…

DANmode3• 8 months ago

Stick an email (throwaway or otherwise) in your bio and I'll reach out!

naveen99• 8 months ago

No, because the only thing keeping the fed from lowering interest rates and juicing real estate and everything else is a strong labor market.

sethops1• 8 months ago

And the fact that everybody knows real inflation is still high.

yolo3000• 8 months ago

How can inflation not be high in the US given increased tariffs, deportations and uncertainty

johnnyanmac34• 8 months ago

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.

jameslk3• 8 months ago

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 it. But I doubt anything has changed

ac293• 8 months ago

The fed has cut rates 5 times in the past 14 months

Avicebron• 8 months ago

There is still half an hour until the tank, plenty of time to sell..

pfisherman2• 8 months ago

My pet theory is that we are experiencing stagflation, but only people >70 years old have ever really experienced it before, so most people are just scratching their heads wondering how it’s possible that stocks keep going up (inflation) while jobs are disappearing (stagnation). I am most definitely not an economist, nor am I qualified to play one on tv.

dragonwriter3• 8 months ago

My pet theory is that we are experiencing stagflation, but only people >70 years old have ever really experienced it before, so most people are just scratching their heads wondering how it’s possible that stocks keep going up (inflation) while jobs are disappearing (stagnation).

We do not seem to be technically experiencing stagflation,ir really either half of it, on a national scale, as we appear to still be in a weak aggregate economic expansion and inflation, while higher than the 2% target, is fairly mild at around a 3% annualized rate [0], and, in any case, stocks going up is not inflation (unqualified inflation, which is the inflation part of stagflation, in consumer price inflation, not asset value inflation.)

OTOH, we are in a very weak economy especially outside of the leading AI firms, and there are quite likely both wide regions and wide sectors of the economy which, considered alone, would be in recession, and while inflation is fairly mild, it is high for the last couple decades and being in near-recession conditions. So, for a lot of people, the experience is a something like stagflation (and there are lots of signs that the economic slowdown will continue alongside rising inflation.)

[0] though as economic statistics are only available after the fact, either of these could have changed, but the real defining period for “stagflation” in the US is the 1973-1975 recession, years which saw a minimum of 6.2% inflation (the term was actually coined in the UK for conditions which saw a massive drop in GDP growth rate, fron 5.7% annually to 2.1% in successive years, but not an actual recession, alongside 4.8% inflation.)

windward3• 8 months ago

we are in a very weak economy especially outside of the leading AI firms

Isn't that part of the cause? It sucks up so much investment, there's nothing left for anything else. Or at least nothing without such perceived upside.

Either they pull it off and you're replaced by AGI, or they fail to pull it off and you lose your job to the resulting economic implosion.

lumost2• 8 months ago

The definition of inflation since the 1970s has changed significantly e.g. owner equivalent rent. What many people describe as inflation is the change in base cost of capital purchases which has demonstrably risen at a substantially faster pace than baseline inflation see housing/car/education/healthcare prices.

Economic thought today is that rising asset prices relative to wages are not a sign of inflation. They can be attributed to lower cost of capital, increased dollar production of assets, lower risk profiles, and other aspects. However when observing housing prices and education prices which have seen declining utility over the years - it may be that we simply lack an appropriate word for the divergence of capital prices from wages, productivity, and risk.

There is an undeniable societal impact of this divergence, individuals become less economically and socially mobile. They maintain a net debt rather than net asset count for longer, they may be either practically or perceived as locked out of societal progress.

fuzzfactor• 8 months ago

only people >70 years old have ever really experienced it before,

Part of the observations from the HN reader on the current situation in Finland (believe everything he says, "canary" of Europe?):

things really suck especially for fresh grads. There's fierce competition for jobs like cashier at supermarket, hundreds of applications for one position is normal. Lots of fresh grads with bachelor's or master's degree compete for those jobs too, since they can't find anything better.

In the USA this was one of the exact "unexpected" developments in the Nixon Recession that was like no-one had seen since the Great Depression. Except that depression there were not yet enough college grads in existence to contribute as a major statistic.

By the mid-70's I'll never forget the crowds vying for a single job opening at a gas station. Pumping gas and cleaning windshields when most stations had only converted half their pumps to self-service. Some with advanced degrees, it was not pretty. These were always minimum-wage jobs too, like supermarkets and fast-food.

When I started working there was a chemical plant within 25 miles where I could have gotten a job easily if I had graduated a few years earlier. Founded in the 1950's by one of my professors, it was actually pretty advanced. The placement office said they hadn't seen an opening in over a year. I was lucky to get a job at an appliance dealer because he liked my ability to program, but he never got a computer the whole time. Otherwise I wouldn't have got noticed, but the job was to prep merchandise for delivery so I was in the warehouse installing a lot of icemakers and doing minor repairs, plus rode along with a service operator one or two days a week to help when it was commercial refrigeration. Which I was learning, but also learned that I was kind of replacing an experienced repairman because they had let too many people go when things first got bad.

About a year later things got worse and he had to kick out the new people and we were gone.

I then began to get unemployment and the need had gotten so great that it must have been the first computerized institutional job boards for that reason. Slim pickings doesn't describe it. But you had to check in every week and apply to whatever you may be qualified for. I had gotten a cheap car (was riding bike to the appliance co) and was selling fruits and vegetables when a job came up at the plant. Not in a lab but out on the large reactor areas working with chemicals and taking readings. The posting had been badly mangled by the typist and it was not obvious it was a chemical job. You could still tell it was technical though. There were over a hundred applicants anyway, and not a realistic chance at all.

Months later I got a lead from my uncle that a lumber company near him needed somebody full time. This was about 35 miles away. All they would do is take my application without getting to talk to anybody, so it took longer to drive there. Still there were about a dozen people applying while I was there so it must have been hundreds of applications overall too.

Now I was already wearing a tie so I went back to the chemical plant and what really made the difference was that there were no new job openings so that time I was the only one showing up in a while. There was only one office building outside the gate, the manager was in and came up to see me but said right away they had no openings. He invited me for a quick tour of the labs and plant anyway, it was good getting inside the gate but like everybody else it was just optimism in the face of declining prosperity.

Surprisingly, he called me back a few days later and offered a part-time job, 4 days a week. He had talked to my professor, and I was a good student. I started out doing a lot of different things for different people, mainly for the analytical lab. In less than a year, they had me come in 5 days a few times when it got heavy and months later I was full-time.

I still wasn't getting twice the minimum wage, but I was so lucky.

After that I only sold produce on the weekends, and only seasonal things I picked myself like avocados and blueberries.

citrin_ru2• 8 months ago

My theory is that all money which could have been invested else where went to AI. It can end up either in investments paying off which will result in AI investors becoming even more rich (poor don't invest in the 1st place) and the rest of society poor or investments will have no returns and it will be wealth destruction on a grand scale and everyone will come poorer afterwards.

fransje26• 8 months ago

nor am I qualified to play one on tv.

No worries, the ones that are playing economists on TV are not qualified either.

AIorNot7• 8 months ago

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 my career..mentoring juniors and doing podcasts and writing white papers etc, but peanuts - nothing

Getting ghosted by 25 year olds in interviews and doing rounds and rounds and leetcode and all that but no success- for example I had a 7 round interview with NBCUniversal in 2023 and then got ghosted (I probably doged a bullet since they had subsequent layoffs)

a 12 month stint with nothing - we lost our savings as my wife got laid off too

Since then I pivoted to AI and Gen AI startups- joining incubators and finally got some work or at least cofounded some AI startups- now money is tight and I dont have health insurance but at least I have a job… it sucks as a over 45 year old as I have so much experience but no one cares.. still dont have much grey hair so I can pass for 40 to get noticed

No one stable is hiring or your resume just goes to a dead letter queue or is lost in ether or lost amid all the ai generated resumes out there - young ML and PHds and people under 40 seem to be getting work in Gen AI but thats about it

networking is the only game left and most good recruiters I know got laid off too

At least I’ve built up production experience in agents and context engineering RL, pytorch, langchain/LangGraph, RAG, KGa, etc python, BAML, LLM and LLMops to add to my years of full stack work

maxnevermind• 8 months ago

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

donatj• 8 months ago

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).

seanw444• 8 months ago

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.

mschuster915• 8 months ago

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 itself, the ouroboros is complete - turns out, eventually the entire economy will crash down on itself when people can't afford things. Even Henry Ford already knew this...

modo_mario2• 8 months ago

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.

j-bos3• 8 months ago

Have you tried jobs.now ? In theory those are positions legitimately looking to be filled.

CamperBob2• 8 months ago

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

Well, wait, isn't this just karma in action, then? Sounds like you deliberately wasted a lot of other peoples' valuable time.

8f2ab37a-ed6c2• 8 months ago

Do you have a thesis for why that might be happening? Ageism? Overqualification? The next generation of hiring managers not knowing what to do with you? Past experience being deemed irrelevant to modern SWE problems? Is it all just a bad market? Your profile strikes me as the last one that would struggle with landing a gig.

actionfromafar5• 8 months ago

Uncertain outlooks in general + why hire people if AI soon will solve everything everywhere all at once?

deadbabe5• 8 months ago

The simple answer is we are in a recession and no one wants to spend money on new hires right now if they can avoid it.

ekjhgkejhgk• 8 months ago

7 round interview with NBCUniversal in 2023

Name and shame, this should be the norm. People are too shy on this subject. Thank you.

r33b332• 8 months ago

Are you ready for great age of suffering? Because there will be no saving, no UBI, no plan B. This is it. This is the end of careers and beginning of centuries of misery. AI will replace everyone except around 3%. If you aren't one of those 3%, start accepting the reality of infinite pain.

lotsoweiners• 8 months ago

Or you know the 97% can just kill the AI. I’d probably go that route.

GardenLetter27• 8 months ago

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.

deadbabe5• 8 months ago

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.

zipy124• 8 months ago

Being overqualified is indeed a real phenomenom. Employers can think your too expensive, or that your desperatem and that you might not stick around long. All valid concerns.

spaceman_2020• 8 months ago

My brother who is nearly 50 and has worked in tech since the dot com boom, got laid off in January and couldn't find a job until last week. This job, too, was just a contractual position at his old Fortune 50 firm.

He has an engineering degree from one of the top 5 engineering colleges in India, a Master's from one of the top 5 engineering schools in the US. He built some of the systems that form the foundation of the entire call center industry.

And now he pivoted to GenAI and has dozens of very impressive public projects including some heavily starred open source repos

And yet...nothing.

Ageism in the tech industry has never been worse

BergAndCo6• 8 months ago

The dead comment replying to this said "Start your own company," which I hear a lot. The problem is, the #1 thing YC looks for in a founder is they're wealthy enough to absorb risk. You don't take on massive risk from a position of financial insecurity.

lvl155• 8 months ago

What’s admirable is that you’ve actually applied to jobs below your pay grade. Most people won’t because doing that grind in your 40s is actually hard especially if you have kids.

yodsanklai2• 8 months ago

So what these people do if they can't find a job?

yodsanklai2• 8 months ago

I work in a FAANG as a SWE. I'm not the on selecting candidates, but I do interview a lot of them. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a 50+ year old candidate. 99% of the candidates have less than 10 year experience, and are in their 20s or 30s.

So yes, ageism is real. I suppose the company gets away with it by saying they look for candidates with 3-10 years of experience?

At that stage, I think I would pass Leetcode with 2-3 months of practice, and I don't mind putting the work if this is what it takes. I'm just not sure I'd be given the chance.

AIorNot7• 8 months ago

Yeah forget it if you look old - old people like me might have to put on our glasses

Linus Torovalds is 55 - so he’s too old right? Hes about dad age for most software engineer teams in FAANG and startups…

Software engineering team culture is young and male skewed for years-

johnnyanmac34• 8 months ago

Yeah, this ageism factor mixed with how unstable in general my industry is had me adjusting my long term plan to focus on being able to survive off my own products. I'm still far off from that point but it's probably best to plan my mid-late career before industry locks me out...

Doesn't help that I've tried to specialize for quite a while but simply can't stay around long enough without layoffs happening. Hard to be a domain expert when companies let you go ever 3 years. T shaped generalist it is, then.

ecshafer• 8 months ago

Are you in a major tech market (SF? Seattle?)

I was a laid off in the beginning of the year from my remote job, landed several interviews, and I found a new job in <2 months. My resume is less impressive than yours, ~10 years of experience.

I was able to land interviews with some remote companies. I used to work at Shopify, a got some interviews at Ruby shops from that.

Some possibilities:

1. Ageism, this is a distinct possibility.

2. You held very senior positions. I think a lot of people don't like hiring people that were more senior than them. So that CTO is being held as a negative. They are not saying "Hey I get the experience of an EM and a CTO in a Senior Engineer for a bargain salary", they are worried you will overshadow them. This is sub optimal behavior for companies.

3. Talking to people I think non-tech markets look like they are doing fine. People I know in Rochester, Syracuse, and Cleveland aren't having issues getting jobs. I think the huge layoffs in big tech have left a big supply in tech cities to less demand.

shagie9• 8 months ago

2. You held very senior positions. I think a lot of people don't like hiring people that were more senior than them. So that CTO is being held as a negative. They are not saying "Hey I get the experience of an EM and a CTO in a Senior Engineer for a bargain salary", they are worried you will overshadow them. This is sub optimal behavior for companies.

---

Not only is there the overshadow worry, but there's the overqualified for the position.

You were CTO once, and now you're a IC again... are you looking for a CTO position still?

I had an experience (post dot com crash) where the team hired a senior engineer... who left the team within a year to be an engineering manager somewhere else in the company and our team was back to interviewing for the position again.

From our team's perspective we wasted the time interviewing and onboarding a person when they job-hopped (even within the company) in under a year. Despite being qualified as a senior engineer it wasn't what they wanted to do.

To that end, overly qualified candidates are similarly risky to hire as under qualified ones.

I've also been in situations where someone in a senior or management position is hired with previous Big Tech or startup experience and tries to make the regional retail company's internals into a Big Tech engineering department which ended poorly for everyone involved.

---

To your third point, the desire to stay on the coasts and around Big Tech companies is also a thing. Being willing to move to and within the midwestern states (some companies have return to office... others don't want to create a tax nexus in another state - if you don't hire anyone in California or Colorado you don't have to follow those laws... so hire everyone in one state and only deal with one state's payroll tax and insurance options).

theplatman• 8 months ago

can't comment on west coast but from perspective in NYC, i think the market for SWEs willing to work in office here is very good. might be different since there's lots of different industries hiring for SWE roles in addition to typical tech "startups" here.

i've noticed that folks who want to work remote having a tougher time if they're looking for tech jobs. makes sense if you look for jobs at a local non-tech company, you might have better luck.

generally seems like remote jobs have the most competition so if you can find jobs localized to your market, you will have more luck there.

AIorNot7• 8 months ago

Yeah I get that I have all sorts of resumes (tailored to the job I apply for) and I took off the CTO and now am using Sr AI engineer

Still very very hard to get noticed

creer2• 8 months ago

4. Overqualified can also be seen as you are seeking this job purely temporarily. While continuing to seek better. You may be gone within weeks. A more alert project might seek to use your experience at low cost for that little while. But a harried manager already had a problem and might see it as now having two problems.

eudamoniac2• 8 months ago

I don't mean this as a judgement; I am genuinely curious: with a career like that, how are you out of money after twelve months? Do you have unusual expenses? I am 31, currently making $180k (the most I've ever made) as a bog standard 'senior SWE', and I have nearly a million dollars. I am not frugal, I don't think; I just bought a $900 pair of sunglasses last week, and that wasn't a huge outlier expense. I have at least twenty years of savings right now. What is eating up your (and any onlookers', if you care to comment) budget?

askafriend• 8 months ago

I bet poor investment planning and low-paying roles despite the years of experience.

foolswisdom• 8 months ago

It's also possible that OP means short term savings kept for circumstances like these, and long term investments bear more cost (e.g. keeping money in a money market fund vs in stocks has different tax implications when you take the money out).

BergAndCo6• 8 months ago

Getting replaced by H1Bs after a year and then being out of work for six months (because ageism), four times in a row--that'll do it! Especially now since H1Bs replacing you makes you look like a job-hopper so your job search becomes more impossible every time.

jiveturkey3• 8 months ago

Try taking 10-12 years off of your resume. Especially if you don't have grey hair this might help a lot.

mywittyname4• 8 months ago

This is what I do. I leave just enough on the resume to look "senior" while not appearing to be older than 30 or so on my resume.

Having a great, timeless linkedin profile picture helps too.

creer2• 8 months ago

"Now it's different". Is it really? One aspect of these stories is that we all do age and we do climb into higher positions. So we run into "too old" and "too qualified" and "will leave asap for something better". And the reason is not that the economy or job market are different. The reason is that we are older. Nothing wrong with both happening at the same time but this "I never ran into this problem before" does have a common difference which is "I was never that old before".

I use "old" for shock value here while being totally in the camp that companies would do well to find ways to use older, more experienced talent at a lower cost than "normal". (Even after I have run into "older" as inflexible and a pain to work with.)

But there is also another problem in many of these reports: Older and still applying by sending resumes in response for job postings! If you are older you should have a network you can use. If they find nothing for you - or don't care to talk to you, then THAT is the better signal. And still not necessarily a signal about the job market.

AIorNot7• 8 months ago

Not sure what you are on about - I have a giant network in linkedin and it did help me find a job eventually…

You only cultivate a regional network if you live in the same spot for years - i moved from the south to Seattle - Im not moving back to the South- so my network is mostly useless

I have for example a network with OpenAI, Google and Anthropic - all it got me was getting to the team match stage with Google followed by denial after almost 6 months in the interview process

As for OpenAI and Anthropic you need to have success in the AI startup world+network+ be young (old is only allowed id you have massive career success eg VP at Google or Amazon)

pm903• 8 months ago

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.

ic_fly22• 8 months ago

I don’t know, I’m hiring and the candidates so far have not been impressive.

Maybe that is restricted to my area / region but I got one am confused.

forgotoldacc3• 8 months ago

That signifies that your company is not appealing to impressive candidates for some reason or another. Companies that offer good pay, some other great benefits in the place of good pay, or kind of okay pay but very interesting work have no trouble getting people, especially in today's market.

DrProtic• 8 months ago

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

johnnyanmac34• 8 months ago

What's your area, what qualities are you looking for, and what's your filtering process?

If you're not in a major hub and ATS is filtering out all the good candidates not gaming the system, the results are inevitable. If you're looking for a senior for junior or less pay... Well, it's easier to keep searching than take a job that literally can't pay rent in some high COL areas.

break_the_bank• 8 months ago

We’re hiring software engineers, full stack (frontend leaning). Email me at gyani at tabtabtab dot ai if you are in London and looking for onsite roles.

taylorhou• 8 months ago

996 - it's a global marketplace of talent and very few in America are willing to work 996. If you are, you either are the founder type or young and unshackled.

j-bos3• 8 months ago

I worked with what are effectively 996ers in software, they largely drag on projects because they value neither their own time nor anyone else's.

DrPimienta3• 8 months ago

This is my experience as well. For a lot of these people, it's performative. Just kind of existing at work for 12 hours is "getting work done" to them, despite the fact it's life destroying for pretty much everyone that has an actual life to live.

It's really disgusting and harms most people.

johnnyanmac34• 8 months ago

Labor laws in California make infeasible (for good reason). The kinds of jobs going into 996 won't pay enough for exempt status, so that's 32 hours of overtime a week.

stuckinhell2• 8 months ago

you are 100% right.

I know people don't want to hear this . . . but at my mega large corp, we recently laid off hundreds people who basically didn't do this.

johnnyanmac34• 8 months ago

we recently laid off hundreds people who basically didn't do this.

Did you give them a choice or simply say "we've moving most operations to China?"

UnreachableCode• 8 months ago

Not sure if it's been missed or I'm an anomaly. But as a senior level software engineer who graduated in the 10s, with a wealth of experience, I too (like the juniors who get reported on) am struggling to get a new job. Either I'm just not as good as I think I am, or the barrier is ridiculously high for the next type of job I'm trying to achieve (high paying, product focused developer).

dizlexic2• 8 months ago

My experience is companies are hiring CS grads for helpdesk, and maybe eventually promoting them to what they went to school for.

I'm a self-taught senior. At my current company have only ever been a developer, but everyone I work with started as help desk and got moved to development later. I know this is anecdotal, but they all have CS degrees. I think people still underestimate the glut in inexperienced CS grads we're working through rn.

tenacious_tuna• 8 months ago

I learned recently our company has an informal policy to discourage hiring fresh grads, which would explain why I haven't seen any hires at the bottom of our grading scale. I'm one step above (though arguably I could be two up by experience, I misplayed my negotiations), but I kinda feel like I'm dangling off the edge.

dsmark3• 8 months ago

730,000 H-1B holders within the U.S. Can we just cancel this program please?

shagie9• 8 months ago

Why do you want to cancel French immersion teachers? https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=french+language+immer...

Or nurses? https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=registered+nurse&city...

The problem isn't H-1B. It's H-1B dependent employers gaming the system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B-dependent_employer https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/62c-h1b-depende...

dsmark3• 8 months ago

Wage suppression

johnnyanmac34• 8 months ago

The gaming is the problem. I don't trust this admin to fix the loopholes.

That said, I have no clue why anyone in the US is struggling to find nurses unless they expect RN's to be paid minimum wage or be caged down to fractional work. That just doesn't fly.

dvngnt_• 8 months ago

Those are really small percentages of people. I doubt they were referencing french immersion teachers

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/o... Computer-Related Occupations is more than half

nomendos• 8 months ago

I see hardest job market ever. Since 2023 I had ~dozen interviews and 0% up to offer pass rate (half fully passed interviews, with no offer at the end due to variety of cases like money change of mind, other candidates won, ghosting,..)! Up to recent couple years I had over 90% interview passing rate, even in dot com and 2010 (when I had 6 companies interview with 6 offers). I am 55y with rich experience vertically (from low level to high level) and horizontally (multimedia, high tech, many platforms and OS's, major programming languages and few good to pass hard leetcode like interviews). I am better than ever with my skills. (btw leetcode is "disease" and counterproductive the way it is used, I have to say that as that might be part of deeper explanation and I pass it majority of the times, although had few "walk on water" type that maybe only "Jesus of coding" could pass or maybe even he could not)

codyklimdev• 8 months ago

I haven't been around for much (27 y.o. with 4 y.o.e.) but I've applied for probably 500 jobs in the past 6 months, and had maybe 4 interviews out of it. It's tough out here.

thereWasAFish• 8 months ago

Huh, the link now points to an article titled:

"Why worries about American job losses are overstated."

Instead of the archived version.

While the beginning of the article is the same, the last line in the preview differs:

Original: "...to support a weakening jobs market."
New: "...to support a weakening jobs market. Look closer, however, and much of the gloom seems to be overdone."

Though I don't have a subscription to check the rest of the article.

hzcker_na• 8 months ago

no, but the purchasing power of americans is already lowering due to the taxes on imports introduced by donald trump, by chocking supply the demand has to be filled by fewer local american companies or the extra artifical cost will have to be passed onto american workers, the deportation of illegal immigrants will increase wages due to the decreased supply of workers, which could offset it.

Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

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