Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?
(economist.com)287 points by harambae 3 days ago
287 points by harambae 3 days 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.
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
>you would easily make any salary you could name for them tenfold.
>I at at a Home Depot like 10 times a week
And yet you still go to Home Depot, so from their perspective it's not an existential issue. Probably the biggest thing companies have learned recently is that they don't need 99.99% uptime, people will accept degraded performance because "that's just how technology works".
~~~Problems on purpose because they don't spend the time to fix it IE not going to hire anyone to fix shit because they still make billions this broken way~~~~
I wonder if it has anything to do with all of the 10-200% taxes we've levied on random things.
By "200% tax" surely you're talking about the fact that my boss just paid (as he was compelled by law to) a licensed plumber a 3-digit sum to tee the coffee machine into the water line for the fridge ice maker...
Construction, trades, and basically physical-world stuff that AI cannot do are still hiring.
People will roll out the trades whenever employment is mentioned, but do you have tradies in your family? Do you have friends who are tradies? It's not easy to get in, it takes a long time to make journeyman, and work can have seriously spotty periods no matter who you are. Fact of the matter is, it's not really an alternative to anything except other types of bluecollar work.
The problem is, for construction, trades and what remains of agriculture the competition is brutal. It's a low-skill job in terms of prior required education which means there is a looooot of people without degrees flooding into that market already, and then comes immigration that's further driving the wages down because (again) it's work that doesn't require much education or language skills.
I've done a stint in construction (I think y'all call it "civil engineering", aka digging trenches and moving soil) myself, it was rare to find Germans - most of my colleagues came from Eastern Europe.
Believe it or not, I've been in construction/remodeling for 35 years. We currently have 3 home remodels going on at the moment with more down the road. I've never experienced a slow down. Even during COVID.
I'm not your typical HN member I don't think. I've been a computer nerd since I was 14 years old. I come here to stimulate my inner nerd.
I'd posit a potential reason that these fields are currently hiring is a combination of that it destroys your body without recourse and many of these positions require certifications that take a long time to achieve (either through apprenticeships or training programs). You will also generally not get any kind of meaningful benefits from these jobs, and your body will disintigreate before your very eyes as you work yourself to bone for a pittance. The compensation for these roles is poor in comparison to white collar work despite the perceived demand for them, there is no safety net in many cases (401k, pension, reasonable health insurance, etc. outside of union shops, which are rare outside of say welders and pipefitters (and getting rarer every day!)).
And frankly the work is miserable. I've crawled through suspended ductwork to run conduit and wiring in antifreeze recycling plants that were filled with god-knows-what reagents covering everything in dust thick enough to paint a clown. PPE be damned, my skin burned for days. It was hot, loud, cramped, wet with chemicals, uncomfortable, dangerous, and unpleasant. These jobsites are the bread and butter of blue collar anything; awful and dangerous conditions outside of your control, but required by your contract because not doing it means not getting paid.
Sure, an agent isn't going to be replacing the poor bastard who has to do that, but is our only response the the deliberate and systematic murder of the white collar job market "you can suffer for less money so you'll be fine"? That's a pathetic whimpering way to just accept the very loud and public murder of class mobility.
> there is no safety net in many cases (401k, pension, reasonable health insurance, etc. outside of union shops
Residential construction is the absolute bottom of the barrel. It is trades equivalent of webdev monkeys flinging javascript poo at the web. You get benefits by not sucking and getting out of residential and into something else.
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.
>No Jira
If I was trying to attract intelligent applicants looking for work outside of software engineering, that would be in the headline.
What about also excluding "Scrum Masters" and then "Fibonacci Numbers" and two week "sprints"?
Just dropping by to say how much I passionately hate documentation that uses fib() as an example.
Tried that here in EU - no chance so far: Even things I could do easily like office administration/management or whatever projectmanagement - no luck.
It’s a 1 hour application online.
Fingerprints, background checks, references, and drug testing.
It’s the CIA. But good benefits.
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.
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.
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
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.
I can hire you if you decent and don’t expect high salary ports-spatial5c@icloud.com
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.
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.
Yep, they are 100% doing that and it’s working. The people only applying selectively are being drowned out.
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.
There was talk of it. I believe the H.I.R.E. Act that’s been proposed is supposed to add a 25% fee to outsourcing overseas.
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
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.
> 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.)
>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.
> Isn't that part of the cause?
Probably not significantly, IMO.
> It sucks up so much investment, there's nothing left for anything else.
Tariff-inflated input costs combined with weak consumer demand are the reason the rest of the economy is slow, and the reason there aren’t places woth strong and near-term upsides for investment dollars to go. AI being the only thing attracting investment is the effect, not the cause.
My sense is that AI is the one area where boards cannot justify cutting back on investment. If there were no AI boom the rest of the economy would still be getting hammered.
There is still a lot of tech investment, deal making, and hiring going on. It has just left the USA.
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.
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.
>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.
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).
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?
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.)
bf related, I bought: 1) trail mix 2) licorice 3) books on diy house / carpentry
not bf related but happened this week: 1) cv axles for my car ~500 and will install myself
i am employed and just make it into 6 figures $110k, which apparently is poverty level now if you have a few dependents. i consider myself fortunate.
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...
Haha, Black Friday sets record by being the worst discounts ever.
Last report I saw said US population was set to drop this year - first time in 250 years. With our demographic boomer bubble, continually dropping fertility, and anti-immigration stance, the trend is likely to continue.
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.
Yup, only the rich are powering this economy now. That bodes poorly for the country’s stability long term.
can also look at it as an opportunity to gather friends and start a small drywall company. Those are in demand, for example. The rich are building more buildings than ever. If you live in the bay area, you can very well see 300k / year if you keep yourself busy.
> What was the historical trend?
No, it is not normal for 10% of the coountry to power half the spending. Just think about that statistic for a second. Spending includes groceries, services, and other continual needs. A few private jets can't outspend millions of people buying food.
But here's your chart: https://preview.redd.it/2pcvmm0u3jpf1.png?width=798&auto=web...
>No, it is not normal for 10% of the coountry to power half the spending.
Yet, if you look at your chart, it was 40% in 1989s and have been slowly edging up. While 40% is a smaller number than 50%, you can make the same argument about 40% not being "normal", yet society has been chugging along just fine.
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.
The only things I bought on Black Friday were things I would normally have bought but just waited a few weeks/months to get.
Same among people I know. My MIL needed to replace some kitchen appliances and waited for BF sales.
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.
Wealthy people love feeling like they are getting a deal.
I would not expect wealthy people to be more price sensitive over all.
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.
It may, a bit. If the 401k is in the stock market, and the stock market is down, their total visible money is down. That tends to decrease enthusiasm for spending.
Shouldn’t every year be a record considering population growth and inflation?
Ya, when I ask Gemini:
While there isn't a definitive inflation-adjusted per-capita number for 2025, recent data indicates that overall sales growth was outpaced by inflation, meaning consumers likely bought fewer items. Total Black Friday spending was up, but the average number of items purchased declined. For instance, Salesforce reported total spending was up 3% but order volume was down 2%, with average selling prices climbing 7%.
...
Per-capita sales: The increase in spending is largely driven by higher prices, meaning the actual volume of goods purchased per person likely decreased compared to the previous year, even with higher total spending, says The New York Times.
The rise in Black Friday sales is misleading because the sales reflect inflation rather than increased consumer demand.
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!
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)
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.
As a marketing term yes but the Bloomberg analysis is only looking at the actual single day following Thanksgiving.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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. .
Pop growth of ca .5 pct and inflation delivered said record
I didn't buy shit on purpose this weekend, like every year and like most weekends. Some people do that. I wish more would.
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!
.
Also, shocking to see no mention of the investment thesis, let alone critique of it.
Thanks for the link.
What do you mean by the "investment thesis"? Would you clarify?
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.
I’m not sure I follow. So, are you saying that wealth will become completely concentrated at the top and the rest of us are obsolete, out of work and broke?
That seems unlikely. What is the point of an economy if there is no one who is actually able to consume?
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)
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.
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.
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.
No. Impressive candidates are applying to jobs that pay somewhat reasonably, even if it's below what they expect. If candidates who are desperate are still completely skipping over a company, that says something about that company.
If you're a stellar applicant, you can still get ghosted by simply having your CV at the bottom on the pile.
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.
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.
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
In which part of the world are you seeing this? In the bay area?
Seems like those are the only hubs kind of hiring. The few recruiter messages I get these day seem to be from there (despite saying I'm not inerested in re-locating).
And even those are way down. Los Angles simply seems dead from my experience the last 2 years.
Not just. I know some average joes that landed at Google, Meta, and DoorDash recently
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.
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.
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.
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.
>I’m not sure why that is and I don’t want to start a political debate
I'm late to the party and am willing. It's becsuse we cut taxes a lot during GOP terms but no one has the balls to raise taxes back up. Thars pretty much the one bit of respect I have for HW Bush despite it being the nail in the coffin for re-election. But for the most part, GOP appeals to business, and the easiest talking point is to make them pay less taxes (though this line has blurred since Citizen's United).
That's really the gist of it. Politicians (on both sides of the aisle) need to know when to raise taxes in good times and not coast on the benefits. That way tax cuts can happen as relief in harder times. Instead we're headed to hard times and nearing default levels in the US debt. In other words: we're cooked.
Things do tend to get better, but the time scale can vary. It's hard to tell whether we're deep into a recession, or we're just starting to walk into a depression. You never really know which it is in the first year.
> Since 1953 10 out of 11 recessions happened when republicans held power
I used to think this was because the party that represents the ruling class didn't know what they were doing.
Now I think these economic collapses and ensuing fire sales are not accidents, they know exactly what they're doing.
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.
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.
> 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
>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.
The phenomenon is pretty recent so there won't truly be any studies on it in a while. But look up "Jobless Boom". Here's a piece of what I'm talking about:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jobless-boom-ai-economy-labor-m...
>For much of 2025, the job market was described by economists as "no hire, no fire," meaning an environment where workers could count on job security even as hiring around the U.S. cooled. But conditions have changed, and the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate in both September and October, citing increasing risks to employment growth and with Fed Chair Jerome Powell noting that policymakers are closely watching layoff announcements by big employers.
personally, I think the AI efficiencies are a smokescreen, but the point of how this job contraction is forcing he fed's hands is hard to ignore after some 2 years of holding rates steady.
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.
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.
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.
730,000 H-1B holders within the U.S. Can we just cancel this program please?
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...
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.
Not everyone wants to relocate to rural hospital areas (where they're often most in demand as a fraction of the total workers). The wages are often tied to what insurance (and medicare) can reimburse and that rate isn't necessarily going up fast enough to properly staff hospitals.
Bigger ones in the cities with more expensive procedures can afford it better. The smaller hospitals an hour or two drive away from a city are the ones that are hurting the most.
https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/11/14/how-trumps-100k...
> Frederick Health Hospital in rural Frederick County, Maryland, is ground zero for the hurdles the new fee has created. The hospital is the only emergency room in a county that’s approximately 650 square miles in size. Patients would have to drive as far as 50 miles to get to another facility.
> “We see about 70,000 to 80,000 emergency department visits — one of the busiest emergency departments in the state,” said Jamie White, chief nursing officer at Frederick Health.
> Not only is her hospital one of the busiest in the state, it’s also chronically short-staffed. White said it can’t compete with salaries at hospitals in urban areas or with jobs that allow for more work-life-balance.
Wage suppression? Maybe. But it's not "raise wages" that is an option - its "close the hospital".
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
The position of "Can we just cancel this program please?" I take to mean all of the H-1B visas. This is a position that I've often seen echoed by people who haven't considered the other positions that use this program and instead see it dominated by technology.
... And it is dominated by technology. And you can see that in the charts and tables of "Top H-1B employers by visa approval" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Top_H-1B_employers_b... and how it changed from 2006 to 2017. Everyone I know who is on a H-1B or H-4 visa is affiliated with a technology job.
There's also a loophole that if one's spouse is approved under a H-1B visa and they're under an H-4 visa, they can also work in a H-1B visa field.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa
Work Authorization
H-1B holder: Allowed to work for sponsoring employer
H-4 dependents: Eligible if H-1B spouse has approved I-140 immigrant petition or H-1B status beyond 6 years under AC21
So, spitballing the idea... the H-1T visa would be for all STEM positions. This does not extend to a spouse (the spouse would need their own approval). This visa would be for all professions classified as 15-xxxx, 17-xxxx, and 19-xxxx by the BLS ( https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes_stru.htm ). That is, if your job is 15-1234 and you are a foreign worker, you must have an H-1T (or O-1) visa. The H-1T visa would have a different cap that is independent from the H-1B visa lottery and instead of a lottery it is done by auction. There is a 10% of salary fee paid with a minimum of $10,000 that is to be paid into the SMART scholarship and S-STEM programs. Applicants under this program may not be paid less than the median wage as determined for that profession ( https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes151251.htm ) regardless of skill level for the location where the employee is based. Companies with more than 10% H-1T visa employees may not apply for new H-1T visas if their employees are not compensated for 2000 hours of work or PTO a year (prorated for hire and termination dates - no more than 50 hours a week may be counted for an employee). Positions to be filled by a H-1T visa must first be advertised and open for 30 days on usajobs.gov (expanding the scope of the site) before applications from foreign nationals or other H-1T visa holders may apply to it. Random audits may be done for any position listed and filled by a H-1T visa holder to ensure that the position matches the job listing (with punitive fines per infraction).
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My goal with those spitballs is do decouple the H-1T and H-1B visas which largely work outside of tech. It clearly establishes who can work in that field. It tries to close loopholes (though I'm sure that there are some in there that I've missed) and tries to make sure that consultancies aren't trying to make a deep bench of people they pay part time or not at all. It's attempting to make sure that people are being compensated at market rates based on real data rather than more nebulous titles.
Could you elaborate on how wages of native French speaking language teachers are being suppressed? Or that nurses in North Dakota are not getting jobs because the hospital is going through the process of hiring a qualified nurse under the H-1B program?
I'm not saying that the teachers or nurses are not underpaid - they should be paid more, but the ability for the organization to pay them more is often constrained by other factors (teacher salaries for public schools, medicare reimbursement rates for hospitals).
Saying "no, we shouldn't hire them" doesn't mean that a qualified American teacher will show up or new nurses will go to Fargo to get a job. Rather, foreign language programs in schools will be discontinued and hospitals in rural areas will close (being unable to meet the required nurse to patient ratios).
There are problems with the system. People on HN often forget that there are a lot of other professions outside of technology that make use of the H-1B when there is a genuine need.
Unfortunately technology - and especially technology consultancies - have flooded the application process for the H-1B visas to the point where H-1B has become synonymous with Indian programmer working at a WITCH company.
> Public Law 114–113, part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, imposed a fee of $4,000 on H-1B petitions [edit: for H-1B dependent employers] and $4,500 on L-1A and L-1B petitions. The additional H-1B fees would apply to all petitions postmarked on or after December 18, 2015, and until September 30, 2025.
This apparently has expired. The proclamation "Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers" is of dubious footing.
You know what would have been good with the budget bill (the previous Consolidated Appropriations Act was a budget bill signed by Obama)? Quadrupling the application fee for H-1B dependent employers and hiring auditors to make sure that the applicants are properly qualified, that there is a position open (not just a position on the bench at a consultancy) for the applicant to fill, that the position to be filled was attempted to be filled by a and that the employer is making full use of their existing employees (e.g. no one on the bench).
This is something that is (was) there and can be regulated and audited and catch the problematic employers - not French teachers and nurses.
Bettridge’s Law of Bettridge’s Law: there will always be someone in the comments section mentioning Bettridge’s Law.
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”
I'm not seeing how this article is clickbait of any kind. Betteridge's Law really only works for articles that manufacture a provocative question out of nowhere to attract readership, and then have to sheepishly back down in the article body because obviously it's not true. But this article is formulated as a question because it has genuine speculation about the future that nobody is quite sure about. It has points for both sides of the argument. There's no Yes/No answer here. How else would you format the title of such an article?
Did you read the article?
The author admits that the answer to his own question is no. Which, again, affirms Betteridge’s Law.
> A more plausible explanation for the present weak patch, and for companies’ reluctance to hire, is Trumpian uncertainty. That is now beginning to ease. The chaos of Mr Trump’s tariff roll-out seems to be receding. Deportations and changes to visa rules will remain disruptive, but businesses are starting to adapt. Although 2026 is unlikely to be a year of calm and clarity for America, it may well be a bit less frenzied. That would boost the labour market. American workers’ decade-long hot streak may have longer to run.
To paraphrase his conclusion: no. Things are soft, but in general, probably fine for 2026.
This is what I am saying - I’m sick of seeing sensational, clickbait, disaster-porn headlines, especially when the author timidly backs off and plays both sides once they have your attention. It’s such a lack of journalistic integrity.
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.
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.
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.
>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?"
no choice we simply looked at hours worked via remote tracking.
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.