[dangus]

You have to get your head out of the tech industry to see the forest for the trees. Other industries have high demand, such as healthcare and hospitality.

Unemployment is at 4% for the most consecutive months since the 1950s.

“The economy is dying” is hyperbole.

[thr0way120]

I have never seen so many people in my linkedin feed who are begging for work after being unemployed for a year EVER

[kypro]

Both things are probably true.

The economy seems to be doing fairly well –– at least it was in 2023. Even tech is mostly fine, apart from the deeply unprofitable startups. The tech job market on the other hand seems to be suffering from several headwinds at once...

You have pandemic reopening slowing demand for a lot of tech companies and causing them to cut back on hiring. High interest rates are reducing valuations of unprofitable tech companies which has resulted in a slowdown in startup investment. Where capital is available it's largely going to small AI startups who are spending 90% of their capital on compute rather than tech talent. Finally, you have the largest tech companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon cutting jobs which has led to the market becoming flooded with extremely talented tech workers at a time when tech graduates entering the job market are at all time highs.

When you have very few companies hiring and lots of companies cutting jobs at a time when lots of new workers are entering the market the average tech worker isn't going to have an easy time finding a job. I've seen a lot of pleads for work on Linkedin too. I'm getting texts regularly now from ex-employees seeking working after being out of work for months. I don't quite understand how some people are still in denial at this point.

[dangus]

Big question, do you know those people?

LinkedIn algorithmically shows you posts that get a lot of engagement. It’s not a scientific way of gauging the economy one way or another.

[thr0way120]

This is a good argument because those posts get a lot of interaction

[itsoktocry]

But this is anecdata. Exactly the kind of thing that can steer you wrong.

[thr0way120]

In my life experience, anecdotal data always signals trends weeks, months, years before the experts catch on.

I have never seen it otherwise. Whenever I talk to a range of people, they all tell me X is happening to them more often, the media take another 6+ months to report on it.

[uptownfunk]

Same, it’s really bad out there.

[atonse]

I don’t dispute the 4% figure but isn’t that based on the % that claim unemployment? Like if you stop claiming it cuz you gave up you’re no longer counted right?

I remember reading something like that which made me question what that metric really means.

[greenhexagon]

"People are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work" from https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed

So if someone is retired, a student, a full-time parent, etc then they don't count as "unemployed" despite not working a paid job. If someone lost their job and wants a new one, and at least once every 4 weeks they check a job website or whatever, they'd still be counted.

[aprdm]

How are they counted ? I don’t assume the government has metrics on clicks per person on website’s looking for job section with a timestamp

[itsoktocry]

Read the methodology, it's all there.

[dangus]

This claim always comes up as a supposed flaw, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s the same metric over time. If you look at the unemployment rate now compared the past it’s very good.

Also, wages have been increasing faster than inflation since last January. I don’t think that would be happening if there was a labor surplus.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-i...

[thr0way120]

Read this post by a Google Data Scientist who has been unemployed for a year (!) https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7154741...

This is not normal, or what we had seen at all the last ten years.

We are hitting a brick wall.

[dangus]

Again, that’s an anecdote. That’s one person. It doesn’t tell us anything. Google has a medium sized city’s worth of employees and former employees.

And talk about choosing a bad example:

This guy’s story makes it clear that it is his personal path to not prioritize immediate re-employment. It says right there he got a big Google severance, doesn’t spend a lot of money, and is taking his time and finishing university and traveling. He’s also trying to change career paths. He wasn’t a data scientist at Google, he wants to change over to doing dats science, so he’s seeing internships.

He legitimately doesn’t even count as unemployed. He’s a student and doesn’t even want to start working until August.

[carlosjobim]

> Other industries have high demand, such as healthcare and hospitality.

If there was high demand in those sectors, then surely the salaries would have increased? Isn't it called the law of demand and supply?

[dangus]

The salaries are increasing faster than inflation since January of last year.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-i...

[carlosjobim]

Those numbers are bogus, sorry. The largest expense for any worker is having a place to live, and you just can't do that with hospitality sector wages.

[dangus]

If you think the numbers are bogus, send me some data that you think is correct.

And to be clear, I’m not making the claim that people are better off than they were in 2018 or 2019. I’m simply pointing out a few key ways in which perception is lagging reality.

[carlosjobim]

Like I wrote in the comment above, it's a never ending discussion, and there are no numbers that people will agree on. So I urge you to look at the cost of living of yourself and people around you, as well as the salaries. A 2024 dollar or euro is maybe worth 50c of a 2020 dollar or euro. The cost of a house has in many places increased by $100 000 during that time, but have the yearly salaries of hospitality workers increased with $25 000?

There is no high demand for hospitality workers. If there was a high demand, then you'd see software engineers quitting their jobs to go work in restaurants and hotels.

[jprete]

Your comment isn't a counterargument - it's changing the subject to a different (although related) argument.

[carlosjobim]

Agreeing on reliable inflation numbers is a never-ending conversation, but if somebody still believes any official numbers, I think it's fair to simply call those numbers bogus. Saying there is high demand for hospitality sector workers is not true, because they are still the lowest paid workers and would need a huge percentage salary growth before anybody could say there is high demand for them.

If companies were saying there was a huge demand for software engineers and that they were desperate for workers, and then offering $12 per hour salaries, people would laugh. But do and say the same in the hospitality sector, and people somehow take you serious.