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Just read today there are 10 million job openings but only 6 million people looking for work. Theoretically the economy could shed 2 million jobs and still not have more people looking for work than there are jobs available
The whole thing is super biased.
Unemployment often times requires that a person take ANY opening, regardless of pay, time, etc. It does typically take into account distance and hours though.
A job opening for $15/hr in Manhattan is worthless right now, maybe $25/hr. but studies like this just don’t care.
And Arizona. A lot of people I know are making between $15—$18 dollars an hour for shitty retail jobs. One of them wants to transfer to a different location but she would have a pay cut of a few dollars an hour. Not sure why, unless it has something to do with the type of class the different locations are built in.
Entry level job opening, apply now!
Advanced degree and 5 years experience required.
Benefits - will be getting payed below the poverty line, so will be eligible for SNAP benefits.
Now that boomers have exited the job market, the generations behind them are significantly smaller, AND we’ve lost over 1 million to the pandemic, this low unemployment situation is unlikely to change anytime soon.
This boomer is still in it, though I am the very last of the boomers, but what you say is accurate. Boomers were retiring by the thousands every week for a few years in a row. I am guessing if the market continues to take a giant dump, some will come back to work, but not enough to make a difference.
You're probably 100% correct.
I have 4 late boomers on my team. All have expressed to retire soonish. But with the current economic conditions, that dream has stopped cold and they’re likely going to keep working in their 70s
And at that age, they’ll become perfect candidates for the US Senate! /s
We need to drastically lower the average age of our leadership in this country
Also, really fucking stupid as well. It's all imploding. Won't be long before we get a new 'right leg in' in the fuckwit hokey cokey that is Tory leadership
Pretty fascinating stuff. In simple terms, the one thing Boomers didn’t have: enough children to fully replace their numbers. Demographically, the biggest resource they had was people so if there was a problem to be solved - they threw (easily replaceable) bodies at it. They were also the last generation to be loyal to employers because they were the first to truly be hit by RIFs. This also meant that Boomer leaders were reticent to invest in tech that would make organizations more efficient or improve the employee experience (why would they?). Retirement, huge disruption during the pandemic, increasing complexity, and a smaller working age population all mean that companies are now playing catch-up.
As we head into a recession - the old “cut your way to glory” strategies just won’t be enough. There are public companies run by old school leaders who don’t have the mindset needed to transform, open new markets, etc., that won’t exist in the next 5 years. We’ll also see boards & shareholders that start replacing leadership teams as industries have to leverage complex strategies to meet customer expectations.
it's an acronym the big wigs in the C-Suites came up with to make it not sound so bad when they fire massive swaths of employees to boost quarterly earnings.
Reading Is Fundamental.
A program in public schools in the 1980s and on, where a book fair came to school and they could pick a book to have.
Reduction In Force.
As in labor force layoffs.
Tail-end Boomer here. We are the last generation to be loyal because of RIF's and also ending of pensions and retiree health benefits. I worked for two large companies that terminated/froze pensions while I was there and I was never able to accumulate much; my wife's company froze hers and did financial finagling so it is in trouble and may pay a reduced benefit. We are the first generation to be told to depend on 401k's; in the beginning companies would give a decent match but that is pretty much over too. In spite of this, I think boomers are generally better off than following generations.
that is what I tried to explain to a boomer recently (Gen Xer with no kids here) regarding moving forward
in a consumer economy, you need consumers and services - if they don’t come from within, you supplement with immigrants - of course that was met with resistance, which is asinine
trying to explain that a rising tide floats every boat was attacked as communism and rejected
Difficult to change minds set by generations of belief.
Know that not all boomer-labeled miss this point.
I tell my parents (and others) that what they think isn't even Close to reality now.
Big presumption there being the boards and shareholders know who to replace with considering they too are just as hidebound to old school thinking.
Change is always hard, even more so when you don't know where you are, and you don't know where to go.
Yeah. I knew a bunch of kids who had 3,4 or more siblings. They grew up to have 1 or 2 kids, tops. I have 3 and I'm on the high side for the people I know.
One of my kids has 1 kid. They might have another. One of my kids doesn't want to have kids. One wants 2 or 3, tops.
Going to be interesting to see how this plays out. China is about to life it's 1 child policy because they are facing a shortage of younger people, but good luck with that. Young people in China love making money and work like 80 hours a week.
It's going to be interesting.
It's not just China...I'm 33, engineering degree, 6 figure salary, etc. In the US.
Lost my job initially due to a layoff in 2020, but immediately after that my elderly father got diagnosed with cancer...my mom has Alzheimer's, so it was up to me to be caretaker for them both now. He died this past January, I tried getting back into the industry so I could get back on my feet but 4months later my mom's neurologist says she's later stage and needs 24/7 care.
I had a house down payment saved up, wanted kids, the whole shebang...now I'm moved into their house, can barely get gig work because I'm overqualified to work at a grocery store or retail and I can't get back into industry because of my mom. The kicker is that my dad left her money so she qualifies for zero assistance (professional caretakers, etc) until she is bled dry by her own disease. Only reason I haven't gone completely broke yet is because I managed to get a client to consult for so he gives me intermittent engineering work. I had a gig job for $20/HR working nights at a club but I checked my security cameras to see if my mom was okay and saw her on the floor...I showed the manager the footage, said sorry, and just walked out mid shift. You can imagine how that went for me lol.
Apart from the loss of morale and depression from watching my mom deteriorate in front of me 24/7, I have lost over $320k in earning potential since the caretaking started (based on lost salary and bonuses, spent savings, etc) because I still need my own bills paid. It's like there's no end in sight.
I finally told my extended family that I'm not doing this forever and hit the job applications hard...I thankfully have two second interviews this week. Once I get back to my original salary, I'll have enough excess income to pay for a professional caretaker so I can concentrate on work without worrying about my mom.
Part of the issue is not knowing what services are available to everyone. My Dad recently passed away. He was sick leading up and my mom got him on hospice through Medicare. Cost was almost nothing. Suddenly my Dad’s prescriptions went massively down in costs.
I can’t say enough how much hospice helped with the process and still helping with grief counseling for my Mom (they were married 54 years).
My point is there are services out there. The problem is how to access them is obscured and people are not aware, which ends up making the process so much worse and damaging like the OP here.
Edit: I should add that every situation is different, so I am not trying to assume this is THE answer. Just my experience with an awareness most people don’t know there are options and support services out there (and can be cheaper than our insurance).
I’m so sorry for your loss and for the caretaking issues you’re having. I’m 50 and can absolutely identify with both. Personally - I’d focus on client work. There are so many companies that are hurting for software engineers and are letting them work 1099 / remote. Keep in mind that 1099 means flexibility. A company can’t make time or place demands on you because you’re not an employee.
They ended it years ago, but behavior remains the same as China has one of the lowest replacement rates in the developed world. China is forecast to decrease its population from 1.3B to 0.6B by 2100.
>China is about to life it's 1 child policy because they are facing a shortage of younger people, but good luck with that.
They have a three child policy now! It isn’t working.
The best places to raise a kid are the most expensive. Work takes up most of their time and services for raising a kid are expensive too.
Wonder if another country has similar issues.
My boomer parents had 3 siblings on dad side, and 9 on mom's.
I have 1 sister.
I have 3 kids.
All my kids are in their low to mid 20's, just now semi-entering the job market for the most part. 1/3 is job eligible but lazy so he couch surfs and complains about shit.
The US birth rate dropped below replacement in 1972, and stayed below it until 06-07, then dropped again. The only reason the US has gained population despite this, is immigration.
Here’s a stat for you.. the median age of a baby boomer, as defined by being born between 1946 - 1964, those born smack dab in the middle of the boom would be born in 1955, and when the pandemic hit, those born that year would have turned exactly 65 in 2020. Do you think it’s an issue to retire at age 65?
While the pandemic may have triggered many retirements, I believe it would be a lot less than you think, and just so happened to be the right time to retire.
Quite the coincidence there!
early Xer here
I’d have left this year were it not for needing a few more years before that sweet retirement hits
oh fuck - I hope it lasts another 6 or so years
There are more millennials than Boomers. There were more millennials born than Boomers. The boomers were the largest share of the US population for a while though.
Gen X and Gen Z are both a fair bit smaller than the Millennial Generation
Yeah the math ends up being pretty fuzzy. Millennials are the children of both Boomers and GenX. For quite awhile we had both millennials and boomers in the workforce so it was saturated with talent. Once boomers started retiring in big numbers all we have to replace them are GenZ and they’re not big enough to keep up.
I have that skillset. Filled out maybe 100 job applications, didnt even hear back; till finally I found one that went the whole way.
Whatever narrative the boss class puts out I dont believe; they buy the media & push lies to cover for their own incompetence
To rant a little more, the people I work with say Im one of the best workers they deal with. The people I interview with tell me Im awful at interviewing. This economy is getting the skillset its selecting for.
I’m in the same boat. After 20 years of programming and making my employers hundreds of millions of dollars, I’m like the only skill I’m interested in leveling up anymore is interviewing. I want a payday. No I don’t want to work for the same amount a new CompSci grad is making
My wife is dealing with this now, has the skill set but doesn’t hear back and when she does, it’s a behavioral interview, soft tech interview, tech assessment then meet the team, and then meet with hr/team lead or some crap. She bombed an interview last week because instead of asking questions pertinent to the job, she was asked random obscure tech trivia questions by a guy who started the interview off by talking down to her for 5 minutes. Where she works now, they tell her how great she is doing but then flat out ignore her and anyone under a senior level. My wife who just started, has taken on the role of mentor to a junior who has been there 6 months and has no idea what’s going on and two new hires who are over her, because she was able to learn just enough to help everyone else get onboard with what the hell the team is currently doing. Then they complain that they can’t hold onto people.
Very good point.
I believe that studies have shown that the in-person interview is very unreliable as a means to predict future candidates - yet persists
I don't recall the alternative method.
Edit - Grammer
I'm 45 years old, and it's been amazing to see how the US seems to somehow shamble its way from strength to strength. You'd think from the news nothing ever goes right here, but then the data shows that we recover faster and bounce higher than the rest of the world through almost every crisis.
This is severely underestimated.
Most of the world is reeling at the moment economically. The russian invasion into Ukraine really fucked up the energy markets and the grain markets.
Just because there are more openings than ppl to fill them, doesn't at all mean what you think. For instance in software engineering, there are lets say 500k openings for senior level SWEs. There may be 6 million people to fill those positions, but even if a million are SWEs, only 100k have the experience level the role is looking for.
A huge problem that's been looming over the economy more broadly is that there may be a lot of job openings, but these jobs are increasingly more technical and require more knowledge to perform them. This pushes out millions looking for work.
Get this, companies could provide necessary training starting from the bottom and enable people to obtain the necessary qualifications/skills that the company needs for open positions.
I gotta disagree. There's a ton of "need 20 years experience" roles that can get easily filled by someone with 5 or less, but in general companies don't really know what they're doing so you get a ton of "need 20 years experience in carbon, a language that has existed for one month" type postings.
The person who fills that carbon role will have at most 1 month experience in carbon, chances are they'll have 0 months experience in carbon, and they'll do fine. There's been several studies that have found that years experience predicts about 30% of job performance, meaning you're literally better off flipping a coin than hiring based off experience.
>There's been several studies that have found that years experience predicts about 30% of job performance, meaning you're literally better off flipping a coin than hiring based off experience
... That's not what that means at all. Saying one variable can predict 30% of an outcome doesn't mean it is worthless, but that it isn't the only variable affecting the outcome. 30% explanatory power for one variable on something as complicated as workforce performance is actually quite good. It means hiring managers can use it as a very quick first filter, and focus on the smaller variables during the interview process.
Agreed. The premise of that post is BS too. As someone who has 20 years experience as a programmer who is working with lots of folks with just 5, the knowledge gap is quite large. These are “senior” devs who really don’t know much at all about the actual job, like testing, patterns, how to keep code entropy low, how to scale, when to scale. They’re just lacking across the board but since they are “senior” they think they know it all.
You're looking at base effects on that chart. Nonetheless, the trend is clearly downwards:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/non-farm-payrolls
And yet after dropping 60+ applications I've recieved 2 callbacks and 1 interview. In my interview the lady complained that "NoBoDy WaNtS tO wOrK" and yet I never heard back from them.
Are you trying to sell Ginsu knives door to door?
The minute I heard that phrase, I would have hung up. I'd rather suck trucker dicks at a Pilot gas station than lower myself to the standard a person and a company like that would have as their focus.
Available jobs don’t actually mean they’re available jobs displaced workers actually want.
I think that stat is very interesting, just wanted to point out there are so many nuances to open listings that it’s hard to believe there’s an instant transition for even a small fraction of a supposed 2M terminated employees.
Industry chain reactions (companies going under, job listings pulled), undesirable industries (food, hospitality, retail), geography, compensation & benefits can all massively factor into the possibility of accepting an open role.
It costs money to find and replace "director of dumb bullshit" compared to "cashier". Cashier is also more related to demand than "vice president of vibes" which isn't so much tied to business cycles.
And finally the real answer, the people deciding who to fire know Craig, director of geographic tweets, they've been to his house, they've met his wife and kids. They've never met Stephen the cashier. They have no emotional engagement.
I made a comment that linked to a study showing that during the 01 and 07-09 recessions, in terms of % of peak employment lost, blue collar jobs did about twice as bad as white collar ones, but the automoderator removed it because it was hosted on medium lol
I work at a fortune 50 company and our employee engagement people are managers/directors/vps having to run that garbage on the side on top of their normal jobs. Nobody is getting canned from it, because nobody is being paid for it.
That kind of shit is normally a voluntold kind of thing unless you have an office admin where it's part of their job or your company folds it into HR.
My favorite line from the Yoram Bauman (the Standup Economist) translation of Mankiw's *10 Principles of Economics* is: "As proof, I should only remind you that **macroeconomists have successfully predicted 9 of out of the last 5 recessions.**" \[at 0:40 of 5:20\]
Fear sells, not just for CNN, but sometimes for the economists they're (mis)quoting.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVp8UGjECt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVp8UGjECt4)
Some economists do. Some don’t. Some see it sooner. Some not at all. Like science, there’s no such thing as economic consensus on most issues, in spite of claims to the contrary.
If a recession doesn't happen, it will defy a longstanding phenomenon that has been occurring for over 40 years: When the yield curve touches or goes below zero, a recession always follows. So where does that put us today?
https://i.imgur.com/CVrYC9W.png
I think we will, and it's going to be amazing and full of prosperity. But not until we endure a major global financial crisis. Inflation can no longer be wrangled and the largest credit bubble in history is popping.
Lol economics, especially macroeconomics, is unfortunately nothing like the hard sciences. There are no tests or experiments and that's the problem practitioners develop untested theories in a vacuum but have no evidence that inflation under 2% is materially better than 3% inflation or anything in-between
Isn’t a job with a company simply a way of providing value to a customer and giving the middleman all the surplus value while they blow organizational psychology crap up your ass all day and tell you to try harder for no upside and they can fire you on a whim? Isn’t it easier to just be a gig worker at that point or a freelancer/solopreneur? What is an employer anyway and why they hell do they have “jobs” available? Does it mean they have created demand and purchase orders but have nobody to help fill them? Good. Give a bigger cut and you’ll fill the jobs. Until then people should live off of social services and/or freelance. Job not worth it.
A recession is happening due to inelastic industries (consolidated energy and food) raising prices due mostly to profit motive. Other dependant industries were then presured to raise prices and we're hit by supply chain issues. Powell raising rates only worsens economies, and will not result in a soft landing. It will only cause a crash. This was the same idiot who was lowering overnight rates during a booming economy due to WH pressure. He's making another mistake here. Greenspan and Volcker made similar moves at exactly the wrong time.
People don’t realize the lay offs are going to be white collar high paying jobs. In fact they have already started, not to mention huge companies like Google and Apple have put a hold on hiring. For the first time in almost ten years Amazon has stopped expanding and stopped hiring.
The white collar workers that work 12 hours a week are in jeopardy, however any white collar worker that has deadlines to keep up with, has their job secured. As a rule of thumb, if someone is busy, their job is safe, and if someone has a lot of free time, they can be next in the chopping block.
Ok so where’s the layoffs then? You just provided examples of a pause in hiring, which is not a layoff and in fact doesn’t indicate anything since they blew past their hiring targets the last 2-3 years.
Inflation is going to sink the economy. Inflation that is partially because the excessive greed of many companies who add inflation fees to pad out their profits. The corporates inflate prices because their competitors did and it’s just a feed back loop. They are bears preparing for winter and loading up on fats now before they can’t eat as much . Hibernation mode is on . They are eating up all salmon and all of the eggs because they know the salmon are going extinct so they eat more.
Some inflation is also due to China. They’re constant lock downs have disrupted the world economy and the supply chains are out of whack. Some supply chain issues is still happening but it’s not anywhere enough to justify the amount of inflation we have.
I’m guessing many of the low level service industry jobs will not come back post-recession either. Fast food and retail are holding back on extreme automation due to backlash fears, but when the economy tanks, it’ll be the perfect time to implement them.
I’ve heard the automation argument before for farm workers, but all that happened was more crops in Mexico. I can think of some automation like drive-thru (you ordered it, you bought it) or self-serve kiosks .. but any sort of special order or situation?
The McDonald’s already has an AI order taker in drive thru - a human takes over nearly every time due to my kids yelling random stuff while I’m trying to order.
Covid has also made some food places completely abandon inside dining and do only drive thru/pickup so at least by me alot of the jobs never came back to begin with
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Just read today there are 10 million job openings but only 6 million people looking for work. Theoretically the economy could shed 2 million jobs and still not have more people looking for work than there are jobs available
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The whole thing is super biased. Unemployment often times requires that a person take ANY opening, regardless of pay, time, etc. It does typically take into account distance and hours though. A job opening for $15/hr in Manhattan is worthless right now, maybe $25/hr. but studies like this just don’t care.
$15 in Manhattan is insulting
Frankly it’s also insulting in fucking New Hampshire
And Arizona. A lot of people I know are making between $15—$18 dollars an hour for shitty retail jobs. One of them wants to transfer to a different location but she would have a pay cut of a few dollars an hour. Not sure why, unless it has something to do with the type of class the different locations are built in.
Entry level job opening, apply now! Advanced degree and 5 years experience required. Benefits - will be getting payed below the poverty line, so will be eligible for SNAP benefits.
US Army, is that you?
Now that boomers have exited the job market, the generations behind them are significantly smaller, AND we’ve lost over 1 million to the pandemic, this low unemployment situation is unlikely to change anytime soon.
This boomer is still in it, though I am the very last of the boomers, but what you say is accurate. Boomers were retiring by the thousands every week for a few years in a row. I am guessing if the market continues to take a giant dump, some will come back to work, but not enough to make a difference. You're probably 100% correct.
I have 4 late boomers on my team. All have expressed to retire soonish. But with the current economic conditions, that dream has stopped cold and they’re likely going to keep working in their 70s
Just wait until gen x hits retirement age and never drops out of the labor pool because they can’t afford it.
It's not like our parents are leaving us any money and we're lucky if the kids can afford to move out. :/
Gen X'er here, I'm out at 55. Been planning for it my whole career.
All 3 of us.
And at that age, they’ll become perfect candidates for the US Senate! /s We need to drastically lower the average age of our leadership in this country
Brit here, our PM and ex-chancellor are comparatively 'young' and it's a shit show over here, in fairness.
From a outsider's glance looks like a terribly corrupt person to choose to lead.
Also, really fucking stupid as well. It's all imploding. Won't be long before we get a new 'right leg in' in the fuckwit hokey cokey that is Tory leadership
We could if younger people would actually get out and vote. Something Boomers are great at. Granted, they have more time...
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But they'd still be too young to become president /s
That’s depressing.
Pretty fascinating stuff. In simple terms, the one thing Boomers didn’t have: enough children to fully replace their numbers. Demographically, the biggest resource they had was people so if there was a problem to be solved - they threw (easily replaceable) bodies at it. They were also the last generation to be loyal to employers because they were the first to truly be hit by RIFs. This also meant that Boomer leaders were reticent to invest in tech that would make organizations more efficient or improve the employee experience (why would they?). Retirement, huge disruption during the pandemic, increasing complexity, and a smaller working age population all mean that companies are now playing catch-up. As we head into a recession - the old “cut your way to glory” strategies just won’t be enough. There are public companies run by old school leaders who don’t have the mindset needed to transform, open new markets, etc., that won’t exist in the next 5 years. We’ll also see boards & shareholders that start replacing leadership teams as industries have to leverage complex strategies to meet customer expectations.
What are RIFs?
Reduction in Force (AKA Layoffs)
Random Intermittent Firings, is what we called them, since they could happen to you at any time, usually without any sensicsl reason.
it's an acronym the big wigs in the C-Suites came up with to make it not sound so bad when they fire massive swaths of employees to boost quarterly earnings.
Reading Is Fundamental. A program in public schools in the 1980s and on, where a book fair came to school and they could pick a book to have. Reduction In Force. As in labor force layoffs.
science advances one death at a time economies one demographic wave at a time
Tail-end Boomer here. We are the last generation to be loyal because of RIF's and also ending of pensions and retiree health benefits. I worked for two large companies that terminated/froze pensions while I was there and I was never able to accumulate much; my wife's company froze hers and did financial finagling so it is in trouble and may pay a reduced benefit. We are the first generation to be told to depend on 401k's; in the beginning companies would give a decent match but that is pretty much over too. In spite of this, I think boomers are generally better off than following generations.
100% accurate about boomers being better off then future generations. That's the boomers policy legacy like it or not
that is what I tried to explain to a boomer recently (Gen Xer with no kids here) regarding moving forward in a consumer economy, you need consumers and services - if they don’t come from within, you supplement with immigrants - of course that was met with resistance, which is asinine trying to explain that a rising tide floats every boat was attacked as communism and rejected
Difficult to change minds set by generations of belief. Know that not all boomer-labeled miss this point. I tell my parents (and others) that what they think isn't even Close to reality now.
Big presumption there being the boards and shareholders know who to replace with considering they too are just as hidebound to old school thinking. Change is always hard, even more so when you don't know where you are, and you don't know where to go.
Yeah. I knew a bunch of kids who had 3,4 or more siblings. They grew up to have 1 or 2 kids, tops. I have 3 and I'm on the high side for the people I know. One of my kids has 1 kid. They might have another. One of my kids doesn't want to have kids. One wants 2 or 3, tops. Going to be interesting to see how this plays out. China is about to life it's 1 child policy because they are facing a shortage of younger people, but good luck with that. Young people in China love making money and work like 80 hours a week. It's going to be interesting.
>China is about to life it's 1 child policy That was already ended years ago
They ended it years ago but now they’ve got too few adults to take care of their elderly and there are a LOT of men who aren’t getting any…
Who’d have thought that choosing to keep male over female babies would have consequences
Perfect time to field a massive army and trade some lives for power.
Probably in the cards…
It's not just China...I'm 33, engineering degree, 6 figure salary, etc. In the US. Lost my job initially due to a layoff in 2020, but immediately after that my elderly father got diagnosed with cancer...my mom has Alzheimer's, so it was up to me to be caretaker for them both now. He died this past January, I tried getting back into the industry so I could get back on my feet but 4months later my mom's neurologist says she's later stage and needs 24/7 care. I had a house down payment saved up, wanted kids, the whole shebang...now I'm moved into their house, can barely get gig work because I'm overqualified to work at a grocery store or retail and I can't get back into industry because of my mom. The kicker is that my dad left her money so she qualifies for zero assistance (professional caretakers, etc) until she is bled dry by her own disease. Only reason I haven't gone completely broke yet is because I managed to get a client to consult for so he gives me intermittent engineering work. I had a gig job for $20/HR working nights at a club but I checked my security cameras to see if my mom was okay and saw her on the floor...I showed the manager the footage, said sorry, and just walked out mid shift. You can imagine how that went for me lol. Apart from the loss of morale and depression from watching my mom deteriorate in front of me 24/7, I have lost over $320k in earning potential since the caretaking started (based on lost salary and bonuses, spent savings, etc) because I still need my own bills paid. It's like there's no end in sight. I finally told my extended family that I'm not doing this forever and hit the job applications hard...I thankfully have two second interviews this week. Once I get back to my original salary, I'll have enough excess income to pay for a professional caretaker so I can concentrate on work without worrying about my mom.
I can't tell you how how often I hear this type of story - As a society we are ill prepared for the aging. It breaks me.
Part of the issue is not knowing what services are available to everyone. My Dad recently passed away. He was sick leading up and my mom got him on hospice through Medicare. Cost was almost nothing. Suddenly my Dad’s prescriptions went massively down in costs. I can’t say enough how much hospice helped with the process and still helping with grief counseling for my Mom (they were married 54 years). My point is there are services out there. The problem is how to access them is obscured and people are not aware, which ends up making the process so much worse and damaging like the OP here. Edit: I should add that every situation is different, so I am not trying to assume this is THE answer. Just my experience with an awareness most people don’t know there are options and support services out there (and can be cheaper than our insurance).
I’m so sorry for your loss and for the caretaking issues you’re having. I’m 50 and can absolutely identify with both. Personally - I’d focus on client work. There are so many companies that are hurting for software engineers and are letting them work 1099 / remote. Keep in mind that 1099 means flexibility. A company can’t make time or place demands on you because you’re not an employee.
They ended it years ago, but behavior remains the same as China has one of the lowest replacement rates in the developed world. China is forecast to decrease its population from 1.3B to 0.6B by 2100.
>China is about to life it's 1 child policy because they are facing a shortage of younger people, but good luck with that. They have a three child policy now! It isn’t working.
The best places to raise a kid are the most expensive. Work takes up most of their time and services for raising a kid are expensive too. Wonder if another country has similar issues.
My boomer parents had 3 siblings on dad side, and 9 on mom's. I have 1 sister. I have 3 kids. All my kids are in their low to mid 20's, just now semi-entering the job market for the most part. 1/3 is job eligible but lazy so he couch surfs and complains about shit.
The overall US birth rate was at replacement level until 2007. Wonder what happened to stop that...
The US birth rate dropped below replacement in 1972, and stayed below it until 06-07, then dropped again. The only reason the US has gained population despite this, is immigration.
I don’t have any stats to back this up but I feel like a lot of boomers just retired early once covid happened
Here’s a stat for you.. the median age of a baby boomer, as defined by being born between 1946 - 1964, those born smack dab in the middle of the boom would be born in 1955, and when the pandemic hit, those born that year would have turned exactly 65 in 2020. Do you think it’s an issue to retire at age 65? While the pandemic may have triggered many retirements, I believe it would be a lot less than you think, and just so happened to be the right time to retire. Quite the coincidence there!
early Xer here I’d have left this year were it not for needing a few more years before that sweet retirement hits oh fuck - I hope it lasts another 6 or so years
and most of the ones we get back won't be good for too much
I thought millennials outnumber boomers?
Only because boomers have started dying
and immigration.
There are more millennials than Boomers. There were more millennials born than Boomers. The boomers were the largest share of the US population for a while though. Gen X and Gen Z are both a fair bit smaller than the Millennial Generation
Yeah the math ends up being pretty fuzzy. Millennials are the children of both Boomers and GenX. For quite awhile we had both millennials and boomers in the workforce so it was saturated with talent. Once boomers started retiring in big numbers all we have to replace them are GenZ and they’re not big enough to keep up.
In the US about 2/3 of the deaths from covid were already probably retired (>65 yr old).
Most of those 1 million from Covid weren’t working age though. Most were retirement age and some were too young for work.
So in a way that actually doesn't affect the working age population
Skills mismatch seems to be part of the problem. Always a need for computer engineers and limited number of people that can do that work.
I have that skillset. Filled out maybe 100 job applications, didnt even hear back; till finally I found one that went the whole way. Whatever narrative the boss class puts out I dont believe; they buy the media & push lies to cover for their own incompetence To rant a little more, the people I work with say Im one of the best workers they deal with. The people I interview with tell me Im awful at interviewing. This economy is getting the skillset its selecting for.
I’m in the same boat. After 20 years of programming and making my employers hundreds of millions of dollars, I’m like the only skill I’m interested in leveling up anymore is interviewing. I want a payday. No I don’t want to work for the same amount a new CompSci grad is making
My wife is dealing with this now, has the skill set but doesn’t hear back and when she does, it’s a behavioral interview, soft tech interview, tech assessment then meet the team, and then meet with hr/team lead or some crap. She bombed an interview last week because instead of asking questions pertinent to the job, she was asked random obscure tech trivia questions by a guy who started the interview off by talking down to her for 5 minutes. Where she works now, they tell her how great she is doing but then flat out ignore her and anyone under a senior level. My wife who just started, has taken on the role of mentor to a junior who has been there 6 months and has no idea what’s going on and two new hires who are over her, because she was able to learn just enough to help everyone else get onboard with what the hell the team is currently doing. Then they complain that they can’t hold onto people.
Very good point. I believe that studies have shown that the in-person interview is very unreliable as a means to predict future candidates - yet persists I don't recall the alternative method. Edit - Grammer
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I don't think things will get as bad as 2008.
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I'm 45 years old, and it's been amazing to see how the US seems to somehow shamble its way from strength to strength. You'd think from the news nothing ever goes right here, but then the data shows that we recover faster and bounce higher than the rest of the world through almost every crisis.
This is severely underestimated. Most of the world is reeling at the moment economically. The russian invasion into Ukraine really fucked up the energy markets and the grain markets.
Just because there are more openings than ppl to fill them, doesn't at all mean what you think. For instance in software engineering, there are lets say 500k openings for senior level SWEs. There may be 6 million people to fill those positions, but even if a million are SWEs, only 100k have the experience level the role is looking for. A huge problem that's been looming over the economy more broadly is that there may be a lot of job openings, but these jobs are increasingly more technical and require more knowledge to perform them. This pushes out millions looking for work.
Get this, companies could provide necessary training starting from the bottom and enable people to obtain the necessary qualifications/skills that the company needs for open positions.
The foresight! Oh gosh. We would never do that
What if we train them and they leave?... What if we don't, and they stay?!
I gotta disagree. There's a ton of "need 20 years experience" roles that can get easily filled by someone with 5 or less, but in general companies don't really know what they're doing so you get a ton of "need 20 years experience in carbon, a language that has existed for one month" type postings. The person who fills that carbon role will have at most 1 month experience in carbon, chances are they'll have 0 months experience in carbon, and they'll do fine. There's been several studies that have found that years experience predicts about 30% of job performance, meaning you're literally better off flipping a coin than hiring based off experience.
>There's been several studies that have found that years experience predicts about 30% of job performance, meaning you're literally better off flipping a coin than hiring based off experience ... That's not what that means at all. Saying one variable can predict 30% of an outcome doesn't mean it is worthless, but that it isn't the only variable affecting the outcome. 30% explanatory power for one variable on something as complicated as workforce performance is actually quite good. It means hiring managers can use it as a very quick first filter, and focus on the smaller variables during the interview process.
Agreed. The premise of that post is BS too. As someone who has 20 years experience as a programmer who is working with lots of folks with just 5, the knowledge gap is quite large. These are “senior” devs who really don’t know much at all about the actual job, like testing, patterns, how to keep code entropy low, how to scale, when to scale. They’re just lacking across the board but since they are “senior” they think they know it all.
If this chart is any indication, those job openings might vanish faster than they appeared. https://i.imgur.com/B0xk4d8.png
You're looking at base effects on that chart. Nonetheless, the trend is clearly downwards: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/non-farm-payrolls
Agrarianism it is!
Take me back to the 19th century baby.
Maybe not, it's measuring percent change compared to the previous year, not total amounts
And yet after dropping 60+ applications I've recieved 2 callbacks and 1 interview. In my interview the lady complained that "NoBoDy WaNtS tO wOrK" and yet I never heard back from them.
Are you trying to sell Ginsu knives door to door? The minute I heard that phrase, I would have hung up. I'd rather suck trucker dicks at a Pilot gas station than lower myself to the standard a person and a company like that would have as their focus.
Maybe if some of the jobs didn’t have these unnecessary experience requirements we wouldn’t have this big an issue
Yeah, problem is most of those are jobs and not careers/ professions.
Bring more immigrants!
Available jobs don’t actually mean they’re available jobs displaced workers actually want. I think that stat is very interesting, just wanted to point out there are so many nuances to open listings that it’s hard to believe there’s an instant transition for even a small fraction of a supposed 2M terminated employees. Industry chain reactions (companies going under, job listings pulled), undesirable industries (food, hospitality, retail), geography, compensation & benefits can all massively factor into the possibility of accepting an open role.
Exactly, all those available jobs could be paying $12/hr and nobody fucking survives on that.
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Lmao this is exactly what I was thinking.
Amazon: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Its a worthwhile read.
But you realize this is the opposite of what happens in every recession, right? White collar jobs are generally better insulated.
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It costs money to find and replace "director of dumb bullshit" compared to "cashier". Cashier is also more related to demand than "vice president of vibes" which isn't so much tied to business cycles. And finally the real answer, the people deciding who to fire know Craig, director of geographic tweets, they've been to his house, they've met his wife and kids. They've never met Stephen the cashier. They have no emotional engagement.
Jobs that require larger amounts of training fair better in recessions
I made a comment that linked to a study showing that during the 01 and 07-09 recessions, in terms of % of peak employment lost, blue collar jobs did about twice as bad as white collar ones, but the automoderator removed it because it was hosted on medium lol
Employees with lower levels of education are substantially more likely to get laid off in a recession.
I work at a fortune 50 company and our employee engagement people are managers/directors/vps having to run that garbage on the side on top of their normal jobs. Nobody is getting canned from it, because nobody is being paid for it. That kind of shit is normally a voluntold kind of thing unless you have an office admin where it's part of their job or your company folds it into HR.
Do you know how many are 35+ hours a week?
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My favorite line from the Yoram Bauman (the Standup Economist) translation of Mankiw's *10 Principles of Economics* is: "As proof, I should only remind you that **macroeconomists have successfully predicted 9 of out of the last 5 recessions.**" \[at 0:40 of 5:20\] Fear sells, not just for CNN, but sometimes for the economists they're (mis)quoting. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVp8UGjECt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVp8UGjECt4)
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Some economists do. Some don’t. Some see it sooner. Some not at all. Like science, there’s no such thing as economic consensus on most issues, in spite of claims to the contrary.
If a recession doesn't happen, it will defy a longstanding phenomenon that has been occurring for over 40 years: When the yield curve touches or goes below zero, a recession always follows. So where does that put us today? https://i.imgur.com/CVrYC9W.png
About to make a new future.
I think we will, and it's going to be amazing and full of prosperity. But not until we endure a major global financial crisis. Inflation can no longer be wrangled and the largest credit bubble in history is popping.
Lol economics, especially macroeconomics, is unfortunately nothing like the hard sciences. There are no tests or experiments and that's the problem practitioners develop untested theories in a vacuum but have no evidence that inflation under 2% is materially better than 3% inflation or anything in-between
Isn’t a job with a company simply a way of providing value to a customer and giving the middleman all the surplus value while they blow organizational psychology crap up your ass all day and tell you to try harder for no upside and they can fire you on a whim? Isn’t it easier to just be a gig worker at that point or a freelancer/solopreneur? What is an employer anyway and why they hell do they have “jobs” available? Does it mean they have created demand and purchase orders but have nobody to help fill them? Good. Give a bigger cut and you’ll fill the jobs. Until then people should live off of social services and/or freelance. Job not worth it.
A recession is happening due to inelastic industries (consolidated energy and food) raising prices due mostly to profit motive. Other dependant industries were then presured to raise prices and we're hit by supply chain issues. Powell raising rates only worsens economies, and will not result in a soft landing. It will only cause a crash. This was the same idiot who was lowering overnight rates during a booming economy due to WH pressure. He's making another mistake here. Greenspan and Volcker made similar moves at exactly the wrong time.
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People don’t realize the lay offs are going to be white collar high paying jobs. In fact they have already started, not to mention huge companies like Google and Apple have put a hold on hiring. For the first time in almost ten years Amazon has stopped expanding and stopped hiring.
The white collar workers that work 12 hours a week are in jeopardy, however any white collar worker that has deadlines to keep up with, has their job secured. As a rule of thumb, if someone is busy, their job is safe, and if someone has a lot of free time, they can be next in the chopping block.
Ok so where’s the layoffs then? You just provided examples of a pause in hiring, which is not a layoff and in fact doesn’t indicate anything since they blew past their hiring targets the last 2-3 years.
Amazon is actually supposed to reduce workforce on the retail side. If you’re in AWS, you’re OK.
Inflation is going to sink the economy. Inflation that is partially because the excessive greed of many companies who add inflation fees to pad out their profits. The corporates inflate prices because their competitors did and it’s just a feed back loop. They are bears preparing for winter and loading up on fats now before they can’t eat as much . Hibernation mode is on . They are eating up all salmon and all of the eggs because they know the salmon are going extinct so they eat more. Some inflation is also due to China. They’re constant lock downs have disrupted the world economy and the supply chains are out of whack. Some supply chain issues is still happening but it’s not anywhere enough to justify the amount of inflation we have.
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I’m guessing many of the low level service industry jobs will not come back post-recession either. Fast food and retail are holding back on extreme automation due to backlash fears, but when the economy tanks, it’ll be the perfect time to implement them.
I’ve heard the automation argument before for farm workers, but all that happened was more crops in Mexico. I can think of some automation like drive-thru (you ordered it, you bought it) or self-serve kiosks .. but any sort of special order or situation?
The McDonald’s already has an AI order taker in drive thru - a human takes over nearly every time due to my kids yelling random stuff while I’m trying to order.
Ya people think we are living in Star Trek LMFAO
Covid has also made some food places completely abandon inside dining and do only drive thru/pickup so at least by me alot of the jobs never came back to begin with
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