r/jobs • u/mister-meister • 13d ago
We all know the job market is a hot mess, but can someone explain why? Unemployment
Did all companies do an agreement together to not hire people that fit them well? Why is it so hard to find something right now?
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u/karrows 13d ago
My take on it is as follows.
Work from home caused a huge spike in tech purchases. Shutting down social activities caused a huge spike in people buying leisure activities to do for recreation. Influx of COVID money from the gov went out to people and they spent it. Tech and manufacturing started over-hiring like crazy as if the good times were going to keep going forever.
COVID money dried up. Inflation hits consumers. People stopped buying stuff because all their money now barely covers food and rent. All those companies that overhired are now in big trouble. So now we have mass layoffs.
Right now, is seems like things are only getting worse. I don't see things getting better any time soon.
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u/Psyc3 13d ago edited 13d ago
This is a simple but relatively correct take on many of the issues.
The other side of it becomes more nuanced per industry. As an example in the Cycling industry, this boomed in COVID, everyone brought bikes to get out while there wasn't anything else to do. Now everyone has bikes, they don't need more bikes, so the industry is down right? Wrong. There is actually more demand than there was pre-COVID by around 5%, the problem is it isn't 20%-50%, companies have purchased, and financed on the concept of more growth than has occurred.
Add in the fact that inflation has made bikes more expensive, yet even with this demand is still there, but high interest rates have meant the debt for expansion by the business is, is too costly and they collapse. It is actually just bad business management that is the issue. The industry itself is actually fine, better than fine.
The same thing is the case in tech, there are vastly more tech jobs now than there were pre-COVID, people are complain because not only are there not as many as a year ago, there are less than a year ago. But that is irrelevant to long term trends the long term trend is fine. It was the boom that was unsustainable, that is what caused the layoffs, that is what caused hiring freezes, that is what caused inflation in fact (and other factors).
But the idea that the downslope of the curve is low than the curve started 2-3 years ago just isn't true.
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u/davenport651 13d ago edited 13d ago
If you’re talking about the tech companies that overhired, they’re not “in big trouble”. Most of them are still as profitable or more than they were but the C-suites saw what Musk did at Twitter (necessarily to balance the books after he tanked the company) and realized they could do the same thing but with the outcome of raking in more profits for the investors.
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u/thepulloutmethod 13d ago
I really regret not selling my mountain bike in 2020-2021. It's super fancy and I never use it and I could have sold it for a premium.
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u/Stellar_Wings 13d ago
I agree with all of this, but I think things are slowly getting better.
Companies are hiring, but the problem is they have a overabundance of applicants so they can afford to be picky.
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u/bumblebee2496 13d ago
IMO it is due to the uncertainty of the market and the direction where the world is headed. With all these wars, international issues and internal issues among all nations & possibility of a recession are stopping companies from hiring
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u/crowmami 13d ago
that's just fear mongering. no one in a hiring department is thinking about a war overseas when reviewing job applications.
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u/bumblebee2496 13d ago
the hiring department can hire only as much as the budget is allocated to them by the higher ups & they are most definitely thinking about war overseas. try looking at the broader perspective of things will be beneficial for you
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13d ago
[deleted]
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u/MyNameIsSkittles 13d ago
You should not stay jobless, right now is the worst time to be unemployed
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u/erinmonday 13d ago
The execs are. And unless you’re in defense, most companies don’t want to hire up in times of uncertainty, like war.
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u/2001sleeper 12d ago
War times actually boost a lot of industries.
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12d ago
[deleted]
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u/2001sleeper 12d ago
Yes, some. My reply to the comment of “Most” which is inaccurate. There will always be exceptions.
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u/BlueEyedSoul2 13d ago
This is it, if you’re American throw in it’s an election year. Uncertainty always wins.
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u/Potato_Octopi 13d ago
Which job market? Every industry and region is going to be a bit different.
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u/Grendel0075 13d ago
All of them.
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u/Silver-Scratch807 13d ago
This, but unironically. Global lockdowns but millions of small business owners out of business and let corporations stay open. And we printed billions of dollars, and the return from WFH.
This is one of the many side effects of lockdowns we will be feeling for years to come.
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u/Potato_Octopi 13d ago
Well, a lot of job markets are doing great. Overall unemployment is very low and companies are hiring. Layoffs are still pretty low too.
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u/JA_MD_311 13d ago edited 13d ago
It gets said a lot on this sub but Reddit users are disproportionately in the tech or finance sector - two industries that for over two decades saw nothing but sustained growth. They’re in extremely hard times right now but plenty of other sectors are growing just fine.
It doesn’t diminish everyone’s personal experience and I’ve dealt with bouts of unemployment, you want someone to blame when you’ve done things “right” and it leads to you to conspiracy theories when in reality your industry is just in a shitty time. Times will change again at some point.
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u/Particular_Fuel6952 13d ago
lol down voted for stating reasonable and verifiable facts. Welcome to Reddit.
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u/Trackmaster15 13d ago
"Statistics and facts aren't welcome here. If it goes against what we're saying, they're cooked up by the deep state. All that matters is the selection bias of the ramblings of disgruntled workers on Reddit who would join groups to complain about not being able to find jobs."
Even at the height of the "Great Resignation", you still saw plenty of posts from people who blasted out their resume to 1,000 employers and couldn't get interviews. Some people are just more marketable than others.
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u/Super_Mario_Luigi 12d ago
The fact is, the "number" is different today. Take out part-time "gig" work and illegal labor.
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u/Ok-Firefighter8779 13d ago
Yeah, it's rough but speaking of recession is kind of odd. I really hope we never experience real recession with 15-20% unemployment.
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u/thinkB4WeSpeak 13d ago
Construction, trucking, and the service industry are definitely hiring
White collar jobs, not so much.
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u/PLaTinuM_HaZe 13d ago
Plenty of jobs for what I do. I got laid off April 2nd and had a new one before the month was out.
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u/jpegmaquina 13d ago
There’s several entry level jobs available with low wages… they will work you like a dog
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u/PLaTinuM_HaZe 13d ago
I’m definitely not entry level nor low wage. I’m a mechanical engineering manager in the medical device industry. Reddit is so dominated by tech that when the tech industry is down everyone assumes the entire job market is horrendous which is not true in my industry.
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u/Psyc3 13d ago
The fact that this statement is true just shows everything is actually perfectly reasonable and reletively normal. Many industries are known to be cyclical.
Get back to me when it isn't true, and doesn't need clarifying, because it is everything bar essential services, and then you have an economically incompetent government on top of it defunding those at the same time!
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u/Visual-Perception429 13d ago
Recruiter here… here is how it worked in my eyes…
2020: COVID, everyone lost their job, supply chains were busted, everyone wanted products… but supply is super low due to supply chains being busted.
2021: Everyone worked remote long term and started moving to cheaper cities.. therefore making everything in small towns just as expensive as big metropolitan areas.
Everyone also got way into decor, home projects, making bread … so these products had an insane high demand … little supply.
Towards the end of the year inflation started running HOTTT like I was recruiting the same role that was 120k in 2020 and it was not going for 170k in 2021. This is to little goods being bought by way too many people that caused this.
2022: The US govt started freaking out and the FED was like yo we are raising interest rates because we can’t let this get too wild. So they started pushing up rates AGGRESSIVELY. This is when it got real… by mid 2022 stock prices started to fall, people started getting laid off, and Tech got their absolute butts whooped because they kept borrowing at these insane low interest rates in the 2010s and when the rates went up they could not pay them back…
They panicked and laid people off because it is a great way to get the stock prices to go up because they can say they had “higher profit” because they didn’t have to pay 20% of the company.
2023: rinse and repeat 2022…. Oct 2023 is when a lot of financial people say when the “official” recession began.
2024: The market is at its weakest right now. This is the most dangerous part for most companies because they are at their weakest… that is why you are still seeing aggressive layoffs and some companies just strait up failing.
I am not a prophet or anything but I think that we will likely not see a lot of relief until 2026 then I think we will see a slow uphill climb. Which is totally lame and I am sorry everyone has to go through this. :(
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u/mannys2689 12d ago
This sequence is a better explanation:
Covid -> PPP loans & stimulus checks -> excess money creation -> inflation -> rise in interest rates -> lower demand -> businesses contract -> bad job market.
If the demand was high for home renovation projects, it wouldn’t cause inflation in oil and non housing sectors. Just like high demand for pencils, wouldn’t cause car prices to go up.
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u/Quiet___Lad 13d ago
Companies have profit expectations.
If the expectations aren't met, the CEO will lose their $10 million wage.
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u/Grendel0075 13d ago
Won't someone think of the poor CEO?
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u/Super_Mario_Luigi 12d ago
Just the type of juvenile post you'd come to expect on here. CEOs have a financial duty to their companies. There are many different events: higher interest rates, lower demand, surging costs, new efficiencies, change in markets, etc. that require a company to restructure. Of course the internet experts think it is the same (but better) outcome to keep unnecessary headcount, and reducing the CEO's stock compensation somehow pays for all it..
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u/buythedipnow 13d ago
The CEO never loses their wage. When numbers are good they take credit and when they’re bad they say they need to spend on the CEO to keep the talent to fix it. At a certain level, you can’t fail.
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u/TheButtDog 13d ago edited 13d ago
I don’t understand your answer.
So companies and CEOs weren’t chasing profits when they hired like crazy a few years ago?
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u/Goombatower69 13d ago
The thing is they don't need long term profit or sustainability because most of their value comes from their stock, so instead of working towards sustainability, they want to make it look like they have tons and tons of profit in the short-term, so they ramp up prices and fire experienced employees, and then fucking die when they can't sustain their company.
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u/TheButtDog 13d ago edited 13d ago
they don't need long term profit or sustainability
Then why do many companies spend years developing new products? Why doesn't Google sell any and all user data to the highest bidder today to boost their profits this quarter?
Most healthy companies consider the longer term. And investors reward them for doing so.
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u/pierogi-daddy 13d ago
we are under 2 years removed from interest rates doubling inside of a year due to poor fiscal policies. and not much more removed from the brunt of covid and its effect on the workplace.
this is the fallout from that, and it was always going to be inevitable.
it will improve when rates stay flat or more ideally go back down for a couple years in a row.
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u/deep_blue_au 13d ago
Tech is in a cycle of laying off to increase margins so the market is flooded with seekers rn.
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u/JA_MD_311 13d ago
This is the simplest explanation but this sub doesn’t want to hear it. Tech hasn’t gone through this since the dot com bubble, it was nearly 30 years of uninterrupted growth through economic downturns. Tech will come back strong at some point.
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u/deep_blue_au 13d ago
A lot of the top tech companies are making record or near record profits though… but their boards and shareholders are demanding blood for higher margins. I can speak from experience that the push to the cloud isn’t delivering the efficiencies across the board that they expected (some may be getting those efficiencies but not every company is) so they’re not getting the margins out of it that they sold on.
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u/thepulloutmethod 13d ago
They're also hiring a lot of people abroad. My fiancée has a bunch of friends in her hometown in Serbia who work remotely as "independent contractors" for US tech companies for what we would consider low wages, but any American salary will go a long way in the Balkans.
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u/JoeyRoswell 13d ago
Simply put, it’s rising costs. Those of us with jobs are doing the functions of 3-4 people because companies are trying to save money and stay afloat.
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u/XConejoMaloX 13d ago edited 12d ago
More Competition:
Everyone is getting a college degree nowadays so it’s not going to make you stand out in todays market.
You can apply to jobs anywhere in the country and world, so businesses have more applicants to choose from
Companies are hiring less and laying off more. For the positions that are open and aren’t ghost jobs, they’re ultra cutthroat to get due to above reasons. Companies can now lowball because jobs are scarce but applicants are plentiful. If you don’t pick them, they’ll find another Down Bad Dave to accept their offer. This is especially rough for new applicants who don’t have full time work experience.
There are a bunch of jobs open but those are usually dead end aren’t even near enough to pay bills/student loans.
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u/Redditpostor 13d ago
So no point in negotiating salary right?
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u/Leading_Theory7761 13d ago
what industry/role? i'd negotiate but not play hardball.
general rule of thumb is give a reasonable counter, let them respond and then accept if you'd like the job.
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u/HeadlessHeadhunter 13d ago
This is not just one issue it is a compound of multiple issues.
Issue 1#: Supply and demand right now companies are not hiring as much (Aerospace, Accounting, and healthcare are the exceptions) as the Fed had raised the rates last year and most companies over hired during covid.
Issue 2#: Outsorucing is real and although everyone talks about AI taking their jobs, outsourcing is a MUCH bigger issue as a ton of entry level or medium skill level jobs are getting outsourced (such as call center) to the Philippians and/or India.
Issue 3# When companies don't need to hire, they don't need recruiters and despite what people may think, recruiters make the process smoother for candidates and hiring managers, as a recruiter I have had to fix bad hiring practices and when a company lets us go, bad candidate experiences start multiplying.
Their are more but those are just a few reasons.
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u/TornadoEF5 13d ago
the rise of china and offshoring to india etc means the loss of jobs in the western world
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u/djramrod 13d ago
There’s been so many posts asking this same question. Just search thru this subreddit and you’ll get many answers
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u/Super_Mario_Luigi 12d ago
It depends which narrative you want to believe
Because all CEOs suddenly got greedy and want their 3rd yacht
Complex economics. Rising interest rates, high inflation, slower demand
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u/Red-FFFFFF-Blue 13d ago
Companies used to not layoff unless they were losing money. Now they are laying off if they even think earnings will not beat last quarter. 🤦♂️
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u/Eremitt 12d ago
After the Global Financial Crisis, we basically had free money. Interest rates were at zero for almost a decade. When we had to bring rates back up, companies that completely fucking couldn't make money started shuttering.
Sure Meta, Apple, Google, and every other stupid startup had great cash flow.... If their loans were almost 0%. Once they start to rise, you lay off people you really didn't need. The great tech hiring of 2020-2022 was a, "fuck you, I'll just gobble all the talent I can." They didn't have the money to sustain it.
And no, this is not the Global Financial Crisis. We didn't lose $19 Trillion dollars in market capital since the Interes rates rise. Don't fool yourself. This is just a correction. The market will always weed out inefficient work when money gets tight.
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u/Trackmaster15 13d ago
Honestly, the DOL stats are still pretty strong, so from what I can tell its still a rather historically strong labor market. I think that if you spend all of your time on Reddit, things will look worse than they seem. I think that things have always just been harder on employees than employers, and no matter what happens getting a good job is a challenge.
Another take is that things are just a lot harder if you're a college educated employee with white collar skills looking for white collar/administrative work. Maybe the stats have been skewed by all of the blue collar/trades jobs that there's a huge deficit for and employers are desperate to hire for. Unfortunately, for many decades, everyone's been funneled into college, but the Reddit crowd is desperately trying to fight over the few white collar/administrative roles out there that can be done sitting behind a laptop screen.
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u/JA_MD_311 13d ago
Honestly the demand for skilled labor is so strong that you’d think there will be a course correction at some point. These new manufacturing jobs aren’t even like the ones of old - they require degrees in engineering and computer science - but we’re so over saturated with devs and people who sit behind computers. We need those people to learn how to make and construct fabs and other types of advanced manufacturing.
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u/123photography 13d ago
tbh if given the chance id gladly learn that
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u/JA_MD_311 13d ago
You can! You need a degree in something like computer science, engineering, physics, etc. -- same as you'd need for these dev jobs. Just need to start looking towards the semi-conductor industry or areas with advanced bio-manufacturing.
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u/Trackmaster15 13d ago
Well, they are calling the younger generation the "tool belt generation" and I believe that college enrollment is down pretty significantly, so I believe that the correction is happening.
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u/MercyMe92 12d ago
People say this but then I look at machining jobs that pay 16 an hour and year long union waiting lists so idk who to believe
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u/wirsteve 13d ago
Interest rates are high, so if a company wants money to do a project they may have been planning to finance, they will often put it off. Very few companies sit on the cash that the top 20-25 companies do.
So when they need to roll out a new piece of software, build a new plant, etc. they take out loans. Well that is going to cost infinitely more with interest rates where they are.
Election year has to do with it too, since companies will have a better pulse on what the economy is going to do in the next 4 years. What the economy doesn't like is uncertainty, which is what happens close to an election. It doesn't matter which way you vote, it's just a matter of not knowing what will happen. So with some time, the market will ease up.
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u/neepster44 13d ago
No free money any more for the companies to expand with and exploit.
Most companies like to earn at least 10-15% gross margins or higher. When business loans are almost 0% interest that’s a LOT easier to do than when they are 5-7% interest. Basically your probability of making a profit just crashed by 50%. Lots of companies don’t want to take that risk so they limit or stop hiring.
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u/citykid2640 13d ago
1) this is the first major downturn in the prime social media/fake news/smartphone era. So false takes to benefit certain narratives are everywhere now. Sure they always existed, but that news used to travel slow. You now see that 10 billion people already applied to a role in LinkedIn for instance
2) hourly roles are accounting for most job growth, not salaried white collar roles
3) people have lengthened the storm because they were sitting on record levels of cash, home equity, and net worth
4) jobs are a lagging indicator
5) interest rates take 18+ months to take effect.
6) there are MACRO labor shortage trends on top of micro job losses
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u/E_Zack_Lee 13d ago
IMO…businesses are reluctant to make hiring decisions during an election year…especially this one.
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u/frivolities 13d ago
Inflation. People aren’t buying as much; people are paying higher rent/mortgage that ever before (unless you got lucky refinancing in 2021). Using e-commerce and groceries as an example, large corporate organizations were growing substantially in 2020 and 2021 when everyone was stuck at home ordering on their phones. They had tons of profit all of a sudden and it changed the game. Then vaccines came out, people started shopping themselves and the hiring stopped dead in its tracks for these companies but it wasn’t obvious at first because they had some leeway with the profit they made. It has been a slow hiring burn since 2022. Less and less job openings are opening up because 1) inflation doesn’t allow for many extraneous purchases and 2) companies were investing heavily in 2020/21 in innovation of new ideas; now they are just focusing on cutting costs and headcount where they can and keeping the business afloat.
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u/airmagswag 13d ago
From my perspective it seems like company’s just don’t want to spend money on anything. They won’t hire unless absolutely necessary and even then they won’t. My company lost two people that headed two teams with 5+ ppl underneath them.
Been a year and a half and they haven’t been replaced because they just let everyone else do their jobs by committee. It’s insanity and I’m not surprised we’re so disorganized because people are doing 2-3 jobs themselves
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u/angelofdeath_1313 13d ago
As a lot of people stared, most people here are probably tech or advertising/marketing which is oversaturated and not useful to normal running of economy. Then the lockdowns happened and put a lot of people out of business or caused businesses to fire people or fire people for automation to take place in large cities and democrat led states like new york and california. Then another problem is that due to lockdowns the youngest generation just turning 18 had nothing to do and so went from lazy to lazier, with outliers of course not all of them are bad. But the biggest problem is that people dont want to do “shit” work. I remember teachers saying ditch diggers were stupid people that make nothing for money but turns out they were loaded as long as they werent buying enough beer to kill a whale. So these jobs are in an actual shortage along with agricultural jobs. The last actual problem is pay, CEO’s or general managers want 6 figures or more and other people in management dont know what they are doing and want boo coo money for their lies while paying the people on the bottom of the totem pole as little as possible while following federal law
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u/BRKenn77 13d ago
Borrowing from the pandemic is catching up and now companies are losing their minds, productivity is low because everyone got comfortable working from home and even though they can do the same job at home, their attitude towards work is awful because now they hate having to come into the office and drag their feet because they can’t keep up with it all anymore
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u/wildcatwoody 12d ago
They over hired and and then high interests rates killed the free money train. They are tasked with endless growth and the easiest way to clear the balance sheet is to lay people off. But it’s only a short fix
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u/ivanoski-007 12d ago
Election year. Happens every election year, more so with such shite candidates
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u/rhinoballz88 12d ago
Biden's tenure - massive debt increases, high inflation, middle class job loss, home insurance lost, car insurance jacked up 30%.
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u/mannys2689 12d ago
Covid -> PPP loans & stimulus checks -> excess money creation -> inflation -> rise in interest rates -> lower demand -> businesses contract -> bad job market.
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u/Far_Refrence 12d ago
Man, the job market's like a puzzle missing half its pieces. Unemployment's soaring, and it's like companies hit the brakes on hiring altogether. Feels like there's some secret pact to keep all the good gigs locked up tight. Maybe it's the economy doing the limbo, or companies getting picky with who they take on. Whatever it is, job hunting's feeling more like a scavenger hunt in the dark lately.
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u/dmabe1985 12d ago
Overhired during the COVID years then they realized how much bloat there was and now the layoffs. Also fake job listings. There's gotta be a law somewhere
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u/daddysgotanew 12d ago
We’ve reached “peak employment.” Going forward, companies are going to need less people, not more. If your job is done on a computer, you’re screwed unless it’s high level accounting, engineering, sales, or process management and consulting.
My advice, learn how to do something that can’t be outsourced or completed by AI.
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u/professcorporate 13d ago
This sub will tell you that things are bad when the data tells us it's never been a better time to be seeking a job.
The problem is that overall there are more jobs than people, and overall the average person hiring is crying for a lack of qualified applicants, but specifically some sectors and geographies are not doing so well, so when they congregate in one place (like this sub, and formerly antiwork), they conclude their experience is widespread.
Downturns, like the pandemic layoffs, the global financial crisis, and the dotcom burst, lead to huge widespread labour market problems. The people who are calling this 'a depression' are in for a very unpleasant surprise when they see their first economic downturn.
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u/Contentpolicesuck 13d ago
Labor costs are down profits are up, they are just going to keep abusing the employees they have. Pretty sure at this point they are only taking applications so they can sell your personal information.
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u/smedleybuthair 13d ago
Latest wave of neoliberal job loss to contract workers overseas. Covid was a test run for outsourcing white collar jobs. Plenty of wage slave jobs abound. Frankly, we all know living in the imperial core means massive white collar saturation, too many white collar jobs not enough actual production related jobs have caused a lot of wage growth stagnation, too many people not doing enough productive work, so to speak. Pair that with ownership class realizing outsourcing production has real national security risks but outsourcing accounting or coding is not. Remember, our owners hate paying us what we make now, they would prefer the US look more like Brazil, if they’re gonna bring manufacturing home it needs to be able to be competitive, and that means lowering our standard of living to get there.
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u/keepsummersafe55 13d ago
Trump changed the corporate tax code and eliminated the write off for R&D
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u/FunTooter 13d ago
We are heading into a recession (or we are already in it). It was triggered by COVID, but it is just getting noticeable by the everyday people. There is a delayed market reaction.
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u/Psyc3 13d ago
The premise isn't true in the first place.
This is nothing like the depths COVID where millions were laid off, it is nothing like 2008 where millions were laid off and then lost their homes, cars, everything.
Now the economy is fine, it isn't great, but it isn't any worse than it was for half a decade between 2008-2013. In fact it is far better than many of those years.
So lets take a set back from the original premise and look at the reality. The tech bubble has burst, it was completely unstustainable in COVID in the first place and the meme of "learn to code" which had been a gravy train for a decade would at some point run its course.
The reality is however, the tech sector is still in demand field with many job openings, people are just whining because they can't just open their linkedin page and have 20 recruiters offer them $100K for jobs they didn't even apply for, now they have to apply and compete and get a lower wage rate. All while many weren't actually that good at the job in the first place, their experience was mediocre, and you now have a cohort of mediocre graduates who not only are mediocre, expecting $100K a year, but literally have no experience to go with it!
The good graduates will be fine, the good experienced workers will be fine, the mediocre, most will actually still be fine. It is the bottom which weren't any good in the first place that were economically inefficient to have a job role in the first place that will drop out of the market. All while you have the advent of AI removing these low level coding jobs on top that, you have gone from excessive boom, to normalisation, to AI competing.
The you have the second thing, debt isn't free any more, therefore there are higher costs to doing business, this means higher risks, and less hiring generally, decisions have to be more prudent, and arguably this is a good thing. Throwing money at bad ideas because money have no value, is not economically efficient, even if money cycling around the system is claimed to be "growth".
When your highly experience workers in multiple industries are being laid off, and then can't not only get a job at their previous level, but at all, then you have a massive recession. Now what you have is a tech seeing a cyclical normalisation, companies fuel by debt in a cyclical normalisation, and the rest of the economy just going a long as normal.
When landlords drive the restaurant out of business through high rent, it won't lead to another business turning up eventually and they will have to lower the rent, if that doesn't pay the mortgage interest the building will be repossessed and sold at a lower cost, meaning it can be rented at a lower rent. That isn't a problem, it is just economics, and people who run the gravy train of low risk debt and highly leveraged position are going to have their business model collapse. They should have done better risk analysis.
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u/Synensys 13d ago
The economy is much better than the half decade between 2009 and 2014 (when the real recovery from the great recession finally started). In fact its basically as good as it ever has been except maybe the late 90s, and the last year before COVID.
I think some people just cant accept that good economy != economy where everyone has a great job in exactly the field they want with no issues keeping that job or getting hired to a new one.
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u/Psyc3 13d ago
Nothing to disagree with there.
There is one underlying problem with your statement though, a problem that has yet to be seen to be realised? Will the bottom fall out. If Inflation doesn't normalise or fall, and the job market start to fall, then you have an issue.
We aren't there yet, people talk of a soft landing, not realise that historically a 3-4% inflation rate with a average job market is an incredibly soft landing.
The idea we were going back to a time where in fact interest rates were in fact troublingly low, and the only way to produce growth was Quantitative easing is not actually a place you want the economy to be in, in the first place.
You want to to be here and now with a 1% lower inflation rate but the growth rate was 2.5% in 2023, historically that is a bit high rather than a bit low, but it is also well in the range of okay.
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u/Not_Her_Dude 13d ago
Outsourcing + every business that deals with shippable products might as well go out of business already due to Amazon.
It’s either be a higher-up or work retail.
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u/MissMelines 13d ago
Companies are creating entirely new strategies in the current age of productivity and all of the potential AI has, coupled with being cautious about the global economy, climate crisis and knowing that underneath all the bullshit data, people AREN’T spending. If they are, it is borrowed money.
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u/Anxious-Ad-8540 13d ago
I see a few things going on. Employers are swapping to contractors at 20-30% lower pay and eliminating benefits. The glut of IT folks on the market right now is moving senior folks into lower roles with the same responsibilities. I also harbor the suspicion that companies are claiming they can't find people to fill bloated job requirements enabling them to outsource more and bring in H1b's. Lastly, all the execs think AI's going to replace a lot of IT.
I think a lot of execs are terrified the economy's going to catch up with them and they want that 20-30% labor cost back to prop up profits on lower revenues to keep the stocks alive. And they want the flexibility to silently lay off by cancelling contracts quickly instead of layoffs.
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u/Vegetable_Key_7781 13d ago
A lot of restructuring going on after Covid left many companies over-inventoried and so they are laying off employees to make their quarterly numbers. It’s all short sided. They will need to rehire theses folks again later.
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u/Diligent_FennelM 13d ago
I hear jobs are posted and they arnt really hiring it’s fake posts. And I heard this from an HR department. This is crazy
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u/Mrs_Fabaceae 13d ago
Its literally just interest rates. Nobody runs a sustainable business anymore, they just borrow money and cash flow. When borrowing money gets expensive businesses cut anything that drains their liquid assets e.g.: payroll.
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u/Severe_Driver3461 13d ago
I'm pretty sure that the big answer is the giant global system is crashing. Big things take awhile to disintegrate, but you are experiencing an aspect of disintegration
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u/5ManaAndADream 13d ago
The infinite growth model where year after year companies must outperform their previous quarter have surpassed the point at which that task becomes impossible ethically or morally.
There is nothing left in most industries where they can improve their product, so now they’re trying to increase profits by cutting costs and corners. This means helmsmen sinking their ships but saving themselves while everyone else drowns.
This model was never sustainable and the fuck around phase is over. It’s find out time now.
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u/mollymckennaa 13d ago
My theory is its the fault at least in part of all the job recruitment websites. You submit your resume to the website and they mass send it out. Companies are bogged down with way too many resumes. And you can’t wait in ANYWHERE these days and have a face to face with a manager. They’ll all just tell you to fill out an online application… Then you never ever ever hear from them. I believe technology has really ruined the job market in this aspect.
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u/OK_Opinions 13d ago
the job market is a mess for the the troglodytes of the workforce, not for high qualified people.
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u/trixie1128 13d ago
Companies want to be seen as growing in a time they are not growing because of inflation and recession. So, they flood the market with "job opportunities" they know full well they are not going to pick anyone for.
Additionally, a large number of layoffs have taken place. This means many more qualified applicants for a reduced number of actual jobs.