American Economics Thread

[siegecrossbow]

If you look at BLS's employment situation report for December 2023 (released Jan 5 2024):
1. No. of people working part-time for economic reasons (i.e. employers reduced their hours / can't find full-time jobs), +333,000 ytd (+8%)

2. Not in labor force who currently want a job, +514,000 ytd (+9%) but not included as unemployed because "[..] they were not actively looking for work during the 4 weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job. "

3. Marginally attached to the labor force aka discouraged workers, +306,000 ytd (+19%)

4. Basically only government/government-adjacent sectors got jobs

Sector	Monthly Job Increase 2023	Monthly Job Increase 2022	2023-2022 Delta
Government	+56,000	+23,000	+33,000
Healthcare	+55,000	+46,000	+9,000
Social Assistance	+22,000	+19,000	+3,000
Construction	+16,000	+22,000	-6,000
Leisure and Hospitality	+39,000	+88,000	-49,000
Professional and business services	+22,000	+41,000	-19,000

Some like transportation and warehousing have been in decline the whole of 2023 and half of 2022.

And of course, BLS has "changed little" for a lot of these figures. 30-50% difference in numbers YTD certainly is "little".

Yeah I would know. One of my ex colleagues with 20 years of experience got laid off around a year ago and after going through 700 job apps with 15 final rounds he got so fed up with the process that he gave up on software dev and got a bus driver’s license to make ends meet. I bet that showed up on the job report.

 

[Staedler]

Yeah I would know. One of my ex colleagues with 20 years of experience got laid off around a year ago and after going through 700 job apps with 15 final rounds he got so fed up with the process that he gave up on software dev and got a bus driver’s license to make ends meet. I bet that showed up on the job report.

Shit like that is why I'm glad I left the country when I started hearing about hiring freezes outside of SV companies.

 

[luminary]

View attachment 123616
Is the US stock market one huge scam?

Magnificent Seven (AI hype) went up: everything else (the entire economy) went down.

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Gillian Tett, FT. The deck: “Ownership of equities suggests that US democratic shareholder capitalism is more myth than reality.”



It's fake growth though. Turns out Silicon Valley isn't hiring, only enriching the existing rich:

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The Register. So much for “Learn to code.”


Guess all the IT got outsourced.

 

[luminary]

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Apricitas Economics. Handy chart:

 

[paiemon]

Yeah I would know. One of my ex colleagues with 20 years of experience got laid off around a year ago and after going through 700 job apps with 15 final rounds he got so fed up with the process that he gave up on software dev and got a bus driver’s license to make ends meet. I bet that showed up on the job report.

Damn that's rough, I do agree the labor market is tough, especially in the professionals market, be it tech or otherwise. I had a startup try to offer me 120k for a director role (lol) when the going rate for a director level is closer to 200k at established companies if not higher. Now granted a startup is expected to pay less combined due to equity options/grants equity options but not at 60% of the expected rate.

 

[Randomuser]

Is GDP an outdated metric? Americans boast everything is going fine since GDP is still so high and so is the stock market but it sure doesn't feel like it in real life. I'm told health insurance alone makes a huge chunk of it.

GDP per Capita makes even less sense. Somehow Ireland is the second richest place on earth where everyone has gold.

 

[Serb]

Quick summary (100k per citizen debt left out):

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1744770614030680376

Is GDP an outdated metric? Americans boast everything is going fine since GDP is still so high and so is the stock market but it sure doesn't feel like it in real life. I'm told health insurance alone makes a huge chunk of it.

GDP per Capita makes even less sense. Somehow Ireland is the second richest place on earth where everyone has gold.

I explained this here bro #6,018

 

[BlackWindMnt]

Magnificent Seven (AI hype) went up: everything else (the entire economy) went down.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Gillian Tett, FT. The deck: “Ownership of equities suggests that US democratic shareholder capitalism is more myth than reality.”



It's fake growth though. Turns out Silicon Valley isn't hiring, only enriching the existing rich:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

The Register. So much for “Learn to code.”


Guess all the IT got outsourced.

What i can gather from the article its mostly data input jobs, operations and customer service that were cut but SWE jobs are still in demand. So the non STEM based IT jobs are being displaced by "AI" and the STEM based jobs are still in demand.

Also in this low interest era a lot of big tech company just hired talent to babysit just to prevent others from hiring the talent and exploiting said talent to the maximum. So a lot of fat is being cut from that low interest era.

 

[siegecrossbow]

What i can gather from the article its mostly data input jobs, operations and customer service that were cut but SWE jobs are still in demand. So the non STEM based IT jobs are being displaced by "AI" and the STEM based jobs are still in demand.

Also in this low interest era a lot of big tech company just hired talent to babysit just to prevent others from hiring the talent and exploiting said talent to the maximum. So a lot of fat is being cut from that low interest era.

Except SWE jobs are hard to come by as well. Companies now have senior devs doing junior dev work and good luck breaking into the field if you are a CS new grad.

 

[BlackWindMnt]

Except SWE jobs are hard to come by as well. Companies now have senior devs doing junior dev work and good luck breaking into the field if you are a CS new grad.

True for newly grad CS students its hard especially after big tech lay off a lot of senior talent on the market right now.
Didn't take that into account.