Unprecedented 'Jobless Boom' Tests Limits of US Economic Expansion

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-02-18/us-economy-expansion-forecast-even-with-weak-jobs-data

by toomuchtodo • 5 months ago

68 100 5 months ago

bloomberg.com

toomuchtodo6• 5 months ago

https://archive.today/ZU7Wt

pcthrowaway• 5 months ago

Archive.today (and all of its mirrors) have been unusable for me over the last week or so.

Prior to that it was incredibly unreliable; but I've only had success using it once (trying all mirrors) in the last couple of weeks.

Does anyone have recommendations for alternatives?

couatli• 5 months ago

I don't have a direct answer but I hope this will help anyway.

I have found that https://archive.today/, https://archive.is/ and https://archive.ph/ don't resolve correctly when using quad9 or cloudflare dns servers. To work around that I use other dns servers for their name resolution. Maybe you're experiencing a similar issue?

jmclnx• 5 months ago

All well and good if you are employed, well off and rich. But if AI starts eliminating jobs, even being rich may not help you in the coming crash. Why a crash ? Most people will not be able to buy anything other than a bit of food and pay their rent, if they are lucky.

I doubt we will see most of these impacts for 10 to 20 years. I wonder if this is a reason Trump wants low interest rates ? With low rates the rich can borrow at a low fixed rate and purchase items like Gold and Land. Then when rates have to raise, more $ for them.

oytis4• 5 months ago

That's if AI goes full singularity. Barring this scenario, it might be the end of while collar dream and social mobility in general, but not nessarily the catastrophic "nobody buys anything" change

dd8601fn• 5 months ago

I don’t see 70 million Americans transitioning from white collar “knowledge worker” to plumbers and electricians in the 18 months the hype men are quoting. Many don’t even have the physical capabilities for it.

maxerickson3• 5 months ago

It doesn't make sense. If there is a collapse in demand, prices will follow.

It's also reasonable to expect prices to go down if there is a productivity boom.

munificent• 5 months ago

That expectation only holds together if you think of consumers as a single monolithic cohort. But prices can stay high and price out most consumers as long as there is a minority of rich ones still able to afford it:

https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/bifurcated-how-the-...

estimator7292• 5 months ago

It's only reasonable if you ignore literally everything that capitalism has done in the last 50 years.

Prices can only go up because to do otherwise harms shareholder value. None of the COVID inflation prices have come back down even though supply recovered. Prices continue going up.

lazystar• 5 months ago

I doubt we will see most of these impacts for 10 to 20 years

Have you been to Seattle lately?

usrnm2• 5 months ago

I was in Seattle around 8 years ago. If I go tomorrow, will I notice any real difference?

monero-xmr• 5 months ago

I truly believe the goal is to bring blue cities back to the 70s through 90s. Dangerous, gritty, dilapidated, horrible schools, corrupt government. But it will be cheap to rent and artsy 20 year olds / older homosexuals without children will enjoy it

iseletsk• 5 months ago

What article is not mentioning is this, for the US:

Private sector: + 687,000

Government sector: – 319,000

Total: + 181,000

---

The government sector doesn't produce virtually anything that counts toward GDP, so GDP growth relates not to 181k of total employment growth but to 687k of private-sector growth. So, no, this is not about eliminating jobs and a few people getting rich. It is about statistcs, and lying to force the agenda.

ceejayoz6• 5 months ago

The government sector doesn't produce virtually anything that counts toward GDP…

By a very narrow, technically-correct view, sure.

Preventing, say, people starving to death, dying of preventable disease, unchecked fraud, invasions by other countries, etc. probably helps GDP a bit.

ne0flex• 5 months ago

I'd also argue that some services provided by the gov't help towards GDP. An example being the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and them helping to recoup funds from scams and returning the money to victims who would then spend their money and increase the "Consumption" in GDP.

oytis4• 5 months ago

The government sector doesn't produce virtually anything that counts toward GDP,

This sounds very wrong?

ceejayoz6• 5 months ago

It's largely correct in the "everyone who died in 2025 consumed significant quantities of the dangerous chemical dihydrogen monoxide" sense.

wat10000• 5 months ago

I'm very skeptical of the idea that somebody working on, say, nuclear security "doesn't produce virtually anything," while a privately-employed rent-a-cop counts as productive GDP growth.

Even if we take your premise as given, isn't ~700,000 a pretty terrible number? Last year's headlines were, 2024 job growth was much lower than previously estimated, at only 1.5 million. 2023 was 2.7 million. Even if we put that down to pandemic recovery, typical pre-pandemic numbers were around 2 million outside of recessions.

catigula3• 5 months ago

This probably goes hard if you work at a SaaS company that monetizes interest on micro-loans or something.

scottious• 5 months ago

This feels like such a weird non-sequiter argument, but I can't exactly put my finger on it. This comment seems to be asserting (1) government jobs don't produce value and (2) GDP is the only thing that matters.

I'm ignoring the fact that I don't actually know how government sector jobs contribute to or affect GDP.

Seems like by this logic, why not just cut ALL government jobs? Obviously that's a terrible idea...

woodpanel• 5 months ago

Honest question, as

a) the AI narrative is annoying if not intellectually dishonest as so much money is invested in it

b) this requires a trigger warning

But if we are counting no. of payrolls: might this statistic hide the effect which mass scale deportations had?

Note: not an US citizen

toomuchtodo6• 5 months ago

~400k documented/authorized workers leave the US labor market through death (55+) or retirement (Boomers, ~4M/year still retiring) every month. Immigration is down, and net migration was likely close to zero or negative in 2025. Unemployment is relatively low, but there is robust evidence of widespread underemployment and it taking 6-12 months for the unemployed to find jobs. My analysis is that companies are reaching for historical ZIRP era returns in a macro with higher rates (which will likely remain higher with the neutral rate closer to 2.5-3%) through "cost efficiency" whenever possible, by offshoring, nearshoring, and avoiding hiring as long as their systems and processes continue to function "good enough."

Deportations have pushed wages up in some examples (Texas healthcare industry) due to employers having to hire authorized workers to replace undocumented workers who would work for lower wages, but I have not seen broad data on this topic, citations welcome.

The economic metrics are masking a brutal worker economy, being held up by labor shortages (but shortages not yet sufficient to improve labor power), AI capital investment, and healthcare jobs (which will remain durable and in demand due to a rapidly aging US population) is my thesis.

rogerkirkness• 5 months ago

In terms of just the US part of what's going on, this sounds very accurate.

kojacklives3• 5 months ago

I don't really think retiring boomers play the same role in the economy. I think a ~3 million immigrant gap is pretty significant: https://theworlddata.com/net-migration-statistics-in-us/

because the jobs they do enable a lot of BS jobs, go unfilled and actually need to be filled to create other job growth while someone in the labor market for a long time is likely in a comfortable job that will be realized to be unnecessary and already replaced by disruption from newer lower pay equivalents.

(Also GDP is in USD which means it is down 30% in many senses.)

darth_avocado4• 5 months ago

but there is robust evidence of widespread underemployment and it taking 6-12 months for the unemployed to find jobs

A really ignored aspect of this is that gig work is pretty prevalent once someone loses a stable job. This masks the unemployment with underemployment. There were headlines a while back about booming small business registrations as a sign of a booming economy. Turns out it was just a bunch of people registering businesses so that they can DoorDash

cudgy2• 5 months ago

Deportations are down from my understanding. Most people think deportations are up due to the “shock and awe” ice operations. The current administration, as with prior administrations, has no intentions of actually reducing the amount of cheap labor whether they are undocumented or not.

The main impact is from fewer workers entering the country clandestinely from Mexico due to the current administration’s enforcement of the border and the general impression of immigrants being treated poorly by administration. Illegal border crossings are now at a 50 year low.

FrustratedMonky3• 5 months ago

What will the economy consist of when there are no more paychecks? Thus nobody buying anything.

We'll gain so much efficiency that the economy will evaporate.

The markets can't survive on capital alone.

LOL. Like a diet focusing on a single macro. When all that is left is capital, then that is an unhealthy diet.

butterbomb2• 5 months ago

What will the economy consist of when there are no more paychecks?

I’m suspecting something like Soylent Green, but perhaps with more proactive action taken to free up resources by removal of masses who are no longer producing enough value to justify their expenses.

Following up, I believe eventually it will all be replaced by something much more resembling feudal power. Where bound servants provide service labor in exchange for protection/survival. Something like fuedalism but without the agricultural focus of manorialism.

Henchman212• 5 months ago

but perhaps with more proactive action taken to free up resources by removal of masses who are no longer producing enough value to justify their expenses.

How bout we remove the heads of the wealthy and hoist them on petards outside their former dwellings instead? We don't need to justify the removal of these cancerous lumps of flesh we call "the elite". We don't need them. THEY NEED US.

catigula3• 5 months ago

The problem is that it seems like wealthy people (capital owners) might be able to sustain the economy between themselves, which is basically what we're seeing.

citrin_ru2• 5 months ago

Looks like this is their plan but it's too early to say if it's a good plan.

citrin_ru2• 5 months ago

On one hand richest top 1% own 30% of the total US wealth (and services/goods for the rich is a booming sector) but on other hand their wealth depends on a fully functioning economy. If 99% of population will be excluded form the economy top 1% will not be able to keep their current wealth either (even if they still be comparatively better off).

xhrpost• 5 months ago

I don't see how the rich don't understand this. Guess they just think it won't happen to them and they'll be smart enough to cash out of America and go elsewhere before everyone else looses.

xg152• 5 months ago

I worry that some fraction of those 1%ers have the hope that this is where AI will lead to in the end: You don't need the 99% if they can actually be replaced with robots.

Or, if that doesn't work (because the robots are too dumb), you can at least split off the economy into a "poor" and a "rich" part that are mostly disconnected from each other.

darth_avocado4• 5 months ago

What will the economy consist of when there are no more paychecks?

I joked with my manager when we were having a conversation about everyone being asked to use more AI, as an obvious precursor to keeping fewer employees to do the same amount of work: the end state of AI will be an AI manager having career conversations with the AI employee, discussing raises and bonuses.

techjamie• 5 months ago

The ironic part really is that the average middle management job is probably among the more simple jobs you can automate away with AI at scale. Tell it your metrics, your targets, and other relevant info, and it can feed directions down to employees at scale.

cortesoft• 5 months ago

What will the economy consist of when there are no more paychecks? Thus nobody buying anything.

It could be possible to have high GDP with low paychecks… it basically means the entire economy mostly consists of the wealthy few buying and selling things to each other. It is easy to see how that could happen if more things become automated.

You could imagine a world where there are only two people who own anything, and the entire economic productivity is generated by robots owned by those two people creating things and selling them to the other person, who uses those things for their robots to work with. You could produce tons and tons of things with no workers, and the GDP would keep growing.

Of course, the high GDP doesn’t mean everyone is fed and sheltered. Having a functioning and growing economic market is required for capitalism to serve its purpose of providing for the citizens, but it isn’t the ONLY requirement. If the form capitalism takes as we move into the future is one that stops providing for enough of its citizens, it won’t be able to sustain itself. I think there are things we can do to shift our capitalism to do a better job of providing for everyone, but there are a lot of forces fighting against that.

Terr_2• 5 months ago

It could be possible to have high GDP with low paychecks… it basically means the entire economy mostly consists of the wealthy few buying and selling things to each other.

A similar thing happens when people talk about "total debt" in an economy. I like to bring up the scenario of 3 people trading a shiny rock around in a circle. Each time seller doubles the price and agrees to defer payment.

In this way, three kids can spend recess at school running the nation's average household debt to near-infinity! There are a few flavors of GDP calculation, but I expect it could yield some similarly odd results.

In both cases, the map is not the territory, and the metric is indirect/imperfect.

nine_k2• 5 months ago

Capitalism works due to the "free market" which maps a large number of producers to a large number of consumers in an efficient way. When the market ceases to be sufficiently free, capitalism starts to falter. It may be regulation, it may be monopoly, it may be monopsony, it may be dysfunction of the judiciary system that fails to protect property rights, etc.

A system of only two parties trading the entire economic output of a country would be utterly un-capitalist, more like two kings trading in products of their kingdoms. No doubt that any social institutes would have been subjugated by these two parties.

water-data-dude• 5 months ago

That's the setting for The Electric Church, by Jeff Somers. There's a very small capital class who own all the automated manufacturing plants, etc., and they live in obscene grandeur. Then there's the rest of the world which is basically a slum, brutally oppressed by the police force to keep them from rising up. The population gets everything they need to survive, but it's all fairly shitty - the technology for a post scarcity society exists in the setting, it's just hoarded by the most obscenely wealthy.

Pretty decent sci-fi, just pretend he didn't write any sequels tho.

burnt-resistor2• 5 months ago

Power law distribution that becomes even more exaggerated. Billions and billions of poor people in borderline favelas spending every dime on food, housing, security, and distractions from misery. The Middle Ages all over again but with more technology and a few individuals relatively richer than Mansa Musa. When the food/water runs out on one or more continents from a precarious supply chain, expect massive, desperate migrations that haven't been seen in history perhaps. Perhaps rhyming with the Late Bronze Age collapse.

munk-a• 5 months ago

Job sector growth (after revisions down) has been almost entirely within the healthcare industry which is quite unsustainable. We can't all get rich being a middle man between the doctor and our neighbors. Outside of that sector we're seeing economy-wide shrinkage and stagnant wage growth with a decrease in real wages relative to inflation.

This is a recession - it will be a full-on depression if we get a doveish Fed chair... it might be one anyways, we'll need extremely adroit action to recover into a healthy economic state.

But hey, DOW go up and that's all we care about, right?

alephnerd6• 5 months ago

I mean, even ignoring the recent GenAI narrative, vast portions of the economy have already been significantly automated for decades.

Additive Manufacturing, industrial robotics, the Internet, and the proliferation of computers had already made large portions of manufacturing and low skill white collar jobs redundant by the mid-2010s.

Furthermore, the brutal reality is most businesses can generate revenue growth just by concentrating on the 90th percentile and above of households [0], (edit: or at best the 70th percentile of households of income [1]).

For example, despite all the love Costco gets on HN - the reality is it only targets customers within the top 50% of households by income [2]. You may delude yourself into thinking that you are a thrifty underdog when you shop at Costco, but the reality is most Americans cannot and will never be able to afford Costco, and Costco doesn't want or need their business.

A K-Shape Economy is actually the historical norm.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-share-of-the-top-1...

[1] https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-costco-sams-club-shopper...

xg152• 5 months ago

This is my suspicion. I imagine, if you don't care about the majority of the population, you might as well reduce the economy to circular transactions between corporations and between 1%ers and the businesses catering to them.

smogcutter• 5 months ago

Additive Manufacturing, industrial robotics, the Internet, and the proliferation of computers had already made large portions of manufacturing and low skill white collar jobs redundant by the mid-2010s.

I think a much more realistic explanation than robotics and 3d printing is the outsourcing of the social and environmental costs of industrialization to countries willing to bear it, like China, Vietnam and Mexico.

Containerized shipping, email, and computerized logistics have made globalization efficient, and therefore inevitable.

xnx• 5 months ago

We can't all get rich being a middle man between the doctor and our neighbors

I'm not familiar with the healthcare sector. Is this where the job growth is?

The country is getting older and I expect there would be a lot of demand for non-AI-replaceable nurses and elder care. Many of those workers have also been deported or scared out of the country.

toomuchtodo6• 5 months ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1r21tdv/oc...

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/january-jobs-report-unemplo... | https://archive.today/9gdEO

Healthcare job increases should not be unexpected as the country ages, deaths outnumber births in 21 states (as of this comment), the demand for care will only grow over time.

https://usafacts.org/articles/america-is-getting-older-which...

As of 2024, 18% (61.2 million) of Americans are 65 or older, according to Census Bureau data. The national population over the age of 65 has more than doubled since 1980, with three-quarters of that growth occurring in the 21st century. The 65 and older group grew by more than 26.2 million people, a 74.6% increase, during that time.

https://www.prb.org/resources/fact-sheet-aging-in-the-united...

The number of Americans ages 65 and older is projected to increase from 58 million in 2022 to 82 million by 2050 (a 42% increase), and the 65-and-older age group’s share of the total population is projected to rise from 17% to 23%. The U.S population is older today than it has ever been. Between 1980 and 2022, the median age of the population increased from 30.0 to 38.9, but one-third (17) of states in the country had a median age above 40 in 2022, with Maine (44.8) and New Hampshire (43.3) at the top of the list.

It is very unlikely the work done by CNAs, RNs, physical therapists, and others providing this population care can or will be automated.

jmye• 5 months ago

I'm not familiar with the healthcare sector. Is this where the job growth is?

Real world, less so; HN-focused areas, absolutely. Nearly every mediocre, tech-focused healthcare start up is just a money siphon, no matter how many times their founders talk about “disruption”.

In actual healthcare, there are massive nursing shortages, and lots of need for people doing actual, hard, brick-and-mortar work.

thalpr• 5 months ago

The Trump clan literally does not care. The most pressing issues are to further legalize crypto so that the whales (including Trump's World Liberty Fund) have an exit. So there is a family/industry crypto conference at Mar a Lago while the economy is crashing:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/goldman-nasdaq-ceos-headlin...

astrange• 5 months ago

There does not appear to be a recession.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMREALTIME

Forgeties79• 5 months ago

I think it’s fair to say we are in a strange economic environment and no one can clearly say what the situation is.

biophysboy• 5 months ago

To be fair, the healthcare employment flows are small (1.6M) compared to the total employment stock (160M+ people). And you would expect the healthcare labor supply to increase to match the bulge created by the baby boom. I don't think this means we will all be a healthcare middle man though; it assumes this large flow is permanent, and overstates the fraction of the labor stock.

tonyedgecombe• 5 months ago

Job sector growth (after revisions down) has been almost entirely within the healthcare industry which is quite unsustainable.

Someone has to wipe our Boomer arses. An aging population means more healthcare and less of everything else.

alephnerd6• 5 months ago

Someone has to wipe our Boomer arses. An aging population means more healthcare and less of everything else

And a much more intense shift to financialization.

Pension funds tends to target an IRR of around 20-30%, and it is they that are the biggest pools of capital that funds invest.

You ain't hitting that amount of IRR without an extreme degree of financial ruthlessness.

burnt-resistor2• 5 months ago

Because it's a funny money financialization bubble that seeks to perpetuate irrational exuberance as long as possible without regards to fundamentals or externalities.

ZeroCool2u• 5 months ago

Gift link for folks: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-02-18/us-econom...

josefritzishere• 5 months ago

The economic condition strains even the jargon of economists. Is the economy booming if unemployment is booming? What does it even mean? Is the economy really booming or is it really just inflation? I feel like they need to be more specific as to what they mean. Or as was said elsewhere here "But hey, DOW go up."

jmaestrooper• 5 months ago

Forecasters expect Friday’s report on gross domestic product to show the economy expanded 2.7% in 2025, a solid pace by any standard for a developed country.

I would be very curious to see if any circular deals aka funny money have been factored in there.

Also, despite literal hundreds of billions presumably invested in data centers where's all the construction, energy, communication, and other infrastructure build activity?

The latest monthly jobs report published on Feb. 11 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed job growth was weaker in 2025 than initially reported, but it also showed hiring picked up in January.

The 2025 numbers were revised down (by the largest number in history - again), and no changes have been made to the methodology/models, which means that January data will be revised, too, so nothing shows that "hiring picked up"

Unprecedented 'Jobless Boom' Tests Limits of US Economic Expansion

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