[AlBugdy]

Can anyone provide historical data for "job busts" or other types of declines in tech employment, massive layoffs or hire freezes? I seem to read about something like this every few years. Would like some data to see if this trend is stronger than the previous ones or not.

[jcranmer]

Here's some historical data for employment in category NAICS 5415: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPUMN5415W200000000. Which, NAICS 5415 definitely isn't a complete picture of tech employment, but it should give rough correlation I would hope.

[ethan_smith]

The big ones: dot-com bust (2001-2003) saw ~560k tech jobs lost per BLS, took until roughly 2007 to recover. 2008 financial crisis hit tech less hard but still significant layoffs. Then 2022-2023 saw ~260k+ layoffs tracked by layoffs.fyi, mostly at companies that had massively overhired during the ZIRP/COVID era. The current cycle feels like a continuation of that 2022-2023 correction more than a new event - hiring never really bounced back the way it did after previous downturns.

[mr_00ff00]

Layoffs.fyi maybe? Not sure if that’s the data you are asking for

[menzoic]

I just put your question into GPT-5 Pro