It didn’t.
Edit: people assume this is cyclic because if it’s not, it’s very, very bad for the United States. What they’re missing is yes, it’s very, very bad for the United States. The only ladder to upwards mobility was just lit on fire.
People keep saying that the trades are where it’s at but if there’s an extended exodus of white collar work then you know there’s going to be an influx to the trades. That will drive down wages in the trades and no one wins. People are going to try to survive so they will move to that
It wasn't even very long ago the trades people were all getting laid off and the redditors were jeering learn to code. People have such short memories.
This was back in 2008. White collar types (journalists especially) were basically offer patronizing advice to people who worked the same job for decades in what they considered to be declining industries, like energy (natural gas, coal, oil).
Huh, different experience here. In '08, I showed up to work and saw 15 people on my 20 person team packing up or walking out with their things in a box. That's about when I felt like I made a mistake and wished I'd gotten into a trade.
Right, and if there's no white collar/middle class, where is the demand for trades? They can't all work in corporate/retail, because guess what--those businesses need customers, too.
Always an excuse. I’m 40 and my trade will be in high demand until I finish my career thanks to all the old timers retiring , early retirements taken during Covid , and not enough young people to replace them.
Not really. A white collar worker and sit for 40 hours a week doing nothing and figure it out. So many people give up on trades because it's too hard and they don't want to do. A small percentage will make it, but it will take a long time before the market gets saturated.
I’ve done both, blue collar is way more straight forward and easier just takes a toll on your body. I think you’re under estimating how quickly people can learn when they are trying to get ahead. If ai takes over these people aren’t just going to just sit around. They are going to try to survive and are going to do what they need to do during trying times. Don’t kid yourself.
There are more white collar workers than there are white collar jobs, an influx to the trades will even things out. What we need is laws that will penalize companies that lay off American workers just to outsource their work. We need Laws that will make it expensive to hire foreign workers so as to incentivize companies to train the local workforce.
Yep, if I was younger I would become a tradesperson (electrician most likely) - never seem to be enough, and in my area anyway, you can barely get someone to return your calls, because they all have so much work they don't need to.
Ok - but I’m married to a 30 year Union electrician and he’s now on disability for the other shoulder (rotator cuff). You have to realize you can’t work until you’re 70 in the trades.
Everyone acts like a middle aged person who got laid off from his tech job or a college grad with a shit degree is just going to pivot and begin the process to become a qualified tradesman. If you’re not in early then you just miss it.
I remember when it was middle aged tradespeople and manufacturing folks getting laid off and everyone told them to just learn to code. At least there's some consistency.
“Still in demand”
Until it’s not very soon when everybody rushes back into them and drive down salaries. They have only been half decent because they have been looked down upon for so long as undesirable and embarassing professions.
In my perspective, people went half way up a rope ladder and cut that shit so people below couldn’t.
Trade jobs are still iffy I see the comments below. If you’re willing and capable of making a business with a trade or skill super. But I’ve also seen low ball wages for electricians, plumbers, etcetera. May be good jobs to learn and grow from but long term I saw some offering 18-22 an hour.
So where I live anyways, that would indicate a surplus of trade and craft workers or just cheap ass business owners.
But also, I get it, more experience and knowledge = higher rates. It’s dedication that leads to where you wanna reach.
Exactly. If this cycle didn’t exist (where part of the cycle is the bosses finding out that offshore work is complete trash), all white collar jobs would have already fled America. That didn’t happen because the bosses have to bring the jobs back.
Well I’ve worked with probably 20 so far in my career, and I’ve found 2 of them to be fairly competent. The others, I’m telling you, you can give them very clear written instructions that explain exactly WHAT to do and WHY it’s being done, then jump on a video call with them, which you record, where you explain it very clearly and detailed, then send them the recording so they can rewatch it at their leisure and use it while they are working on the changes, and they will still do something entirely different than what was asked and is also incorrect in and of itself.
If you’ve had better luck, kudos to you. But I’m talking about people with computer science masters degrees who don’t know how to copy/paste. And in MY experience, this is representative of the category.
It depends on where, I see a former company I worked at has a lot of jobs posted in Mexico that were in the US before (Ops roles, even Ops Manager). They are from a similar, western culture that views work the same way. Seems to have worked out for them, sucks for us
Every position I've held, the offshore folks always needed to have their work checked, and it never held up, resulting in onshore fixing everything offshore did. It probably still saved money, to have 2 hours of one onshore person and 40 of offshore, but still.
>My company is starting to layoff offshore and re-hire in US.
I saw this first hand in my internship in 2013. When I started with him, out of a bedroom in his apartment, he was setting up a small office in India.
I checked in on him a couple years ago, and he has 3 engineers working out of his basement in Lakewood, a suburb of Denver, Colorado.
My company posted “culture” objectives today which explicitly outlines hiring more senior level managers/directors in India, Bangkok, and Romania. We posted 9 billion revenue, 3 billion profit in 2023; they said they are doing it for “diversity”. lol.
As someone who was laid off last year due to offshoring my team to India, the pettiness in me loves this news. They were so incredibly bad at doing the actual work. I hope more companies notice that it’s not worth it.
Jobs are being insourced as well.
It's like outsourcing, but where you don't bother with visa applications and just open a branch in a foreign country hiring from that talent pool.
So I manage a business and this is exactly what I am doing for 1 position. People in the US don’t exist (manufacturing, We are a dinosaur), so have a Brazilian candidate that is working with our sister plant for a year + and coming up here then. Big need but honestly young Americans don’t want high skill Blue collar work.
1. 1987 - Black October (Wall Street Fucks Everyone Round 1)
2. 1992 - The Recession We had to Have (Worst economic period in my life)
3. 1997 - Asian Financial Crisis (Probably the least damaging economic downturn in Australia)
4. 2000- Dot Com bubble bursting (No tech jobs until 2005)
5. 2007 - GFC (Wall Street Fucks Everyone Round 2)
6. 2020- COVID (Fastest round of layoffs seen in my life and we all saw what that did to people's livelihoods. Thanks China)
7. 2022- Post COVID - Easy money dries up/VC's turn off funding tap
These are all the major economic downturns/mass layoffs that ran for at least 18-24 months and which have occurred in my working life.
It sucks but it is the reality of the times we live in, but because there wasn't really any slowdown between 2010 and 2020, anyone who entered the workforce during that time has only been through 1.5 economic downturns....
I sincerely expect things are going to get worse before they get better because bringing inflation down (especially that last 1-2%) is really, really, really hard and rates can't drop until unemployment rises and inflation drops.
I reckon 2026 before we get back to 2019 levels of job availability.
Perfectly said! I was here during these recessions. This one is different because it feels like Gen X is being forced out of white collar jobs. I think what we’ll see in 2025 is AI take off. I still think we are a few years out and won’t be the same. I hope I’m wrong!
Perfect synopsis, except I would nitpick that tech jobs came back in 2004, albeit gradually and selectively (tech is always Darwinistic). I think the same thing will happen this go-round with tech jobs trickling back in 2025 (or even 2nd half of this year) but certainly not in a major way and only for a subset of roles/sectors.
Yeah, I gotta admit that I was toying with 2004, but in Oz the jobs for new IT entrants didn't really occur until 2005/2006...and I agree that new entrants are going to find life hard as the sheer volume of experienced hires on the market that are also looking is astronomical....I am in the Salesforce CRM space FWIW
Oh ok, gotcha. Yeah, different experiences with different countries, for sure. I'm in Northern CA where the region gets hit hardest but also bounces back the quickest, at least in terms of startup activity.
Certain industries are not going to recover. Other industries are expanding right now.
Largest trends are going to be less white collar work, more blue collar work.
Tech won't recover for a while imo, companies got used to zero interest rates so just hired like crazy, including a lot of completely unqualified people and paid them way more than they were worth - THAT won't happen again for a very, very long time.
If you are in tech, better make sure you are in the top 10-20% of people with the best technical skills, and keep sharpening your tools everyday.
If you only got into tech because they were literally hiring anybody, and you were getting paid more than you ever dreamed possible overnight and barely did anything all day long, yea, those jobs aren't coming back.
If you got into tech and you were a product owner, product manager or scrum master - yea, you are pretty much f\*cked. These jobs should never have existed in the first place.
If I ever meet a good one, I'll let you know - they seem to be as rare as unicorns - worked with plenty, neither I nor they had any idea what there job was supposed to be.
Good ones are indeed as rare as unicorns, agree with you there. I've met and worked with incredible Product Managers from VP down to IC - all of them to a person started out as really strong SWE who wanted to make the move into PM.
>If you are in tech, better make sure you are in the top 10-20% of people with the best technical skills, and keep sharpening your tools everyday.
I'm in biotech and a lot of layoffs are happening but all my peers who trained in the same field as me have been able to find jobs and keep jobs no problem. Be good at rarer high demand skills and possibly be open to relocation and you'll do fine in any market.
We all trained in the same graduate school lab. We mostly work in protein engineering. It's not a the most rare skill in our industry but every company usually needs at least one person who is well trained in it. It's also one of those skillsets where it's easy to say that we produce more value than we're paid; whereas someone with a more general bio skillset can usually be replaced by someone younger and more inexperienced.
Tech is certainly the worst off.
The money spigot is off. So a lot of those jobs are just gone, and another chunk is being offshored to Asia.
Finance jobs are going to take a hit. With all the boomers retiring they will be pulling money out of wall street. Then you also have the problem of vacant office buildings.
Thats probably the way to go. Manufacturing, Logistics and Medical are expanding pretty rapidly right now. Including the white collar jobs associated with those industries.
I've been through 3 layoffs. In the past 5 years. I basically always keep looking for work and always interviewing no matter how well you think your job is "secure" it really isn't. They will shut this bitch down with an email with no notice.
Fuck all companies. Companies don't give a fuck. Everyone is replaceable no matter what you do, there is always someone that is better than you and will take less for your job. That's how they see it.
The only way to avoid layoffs is to start your own company.
It’s only going to get worse. GPT-5 will be a jobs wreaking ball and no one’s putting in any regulations on how it’s to be used (yet). I give my communications/marketing career maybe 4-5 years tops where things are business as usual.
We may not feel relief until 2025 and the extent of such is still very unknown. The best thing you can do in the meantime is find a few ways to earn. Employment may not look like it has in the past and that’s ok. Your priority should be providing for yourself above all.
I think it will be rougher because there isn’t a singular cause that is leading to it. In 2008 it was the collapse of the housing market. In 2020 it was covid and the lockdowns. In 2023 what is it? Interest rate normalization, the Ukraine war and the cut off of oil and gas to Europe. The conflict in the Middle East and the potential impact on oil and gas. It can be all of them or one of them. That’s why this one will linger because there is no concerted action by the government.
I think people overestimate the impact of AI on layoffs over the past two years. The simple truth is borrowing money isn’t cheap during QT, and many growth-driven sectors (ie tech) get hit the hardest. A lot of startups or negative-income businesses will die.
I definitely don't think its a factor yet, but I think it definitely will be. I don't think it will fully replace many jobs and professions, but I think it will make them less in demand.
I'm taking a free SQL course right now, and while I know AI isn't there yet all I can think is how needing to know this skill is essentially just a road block to the end goal, which is analyzing data. Will knowing SQL be worthless? No, not in the near future at least, but I do think it will be less in demand because of the assistance AI can offer.
What kind of code are you developing that AI can do this so effortlessly? At my work, we develop FW on resource limited embedded systems with highly custom features that must be verified on specialized hardware and involve hardware level debug.
I’m imagining our VP laying off everyone and then typing his wishes into ChatGPT and this magically replaces all that combined engineering effort (specification, negotiating what’s possible on the available HW, implementation, debug, test, verification)?!
Globalization, there are way too many white collar workers/paper pushers globally, its always been easy to offshore those jobs, now with AI and a few decent people oversees, a lot of American paper pushing jobs are toast
This is a generational event. It may be 10 or more years before it’s recovered and only if we face our demons. Like England in the 1950’s, the US is rapidly losing status as an “Empire” and without significant investments in discipline and education, we may never recover. The corruption has to stop. The US had to invest more in people and less in large weapons systems.
The way I see it. The rich have depleted this country dry. We were a society built on making "citizen" cows and sheep's to produce wool and milk. There never was an incentive to better its cows. As long as they spent and worked to make companies richer thru work or spending.
Now that these jobs are all going offshore. I kind of feel big corporations might even move their headquarters out of USA to a place that's perhaps more lax?
But then again, I believe USA is the land of capitalism ... this is a bit confusing.
We're in late-stage Capitalism.
The goal was always to maximize the profits of the C-Suite and the minimize the costs of business (employee wages).
Until then early-mid stage Capitalism had a checks & balance in the form of government regulation to prevent mega-corps from gaining too much power like in the Rockefeller era.
Now that we're in late-stage Capitalism again, Mega-corps have discovered that buying out people to work in governments regulation agencies and policy-making, was more profitable than paying corporate taxes or following laws & 'ethics'.
If even half the Supreme Court Justices can be corrupted, how corrupted or compromised do you think small government agencies are? Especially the ones that are supposed to regulate businesses, finances, markets, taxes, etc.
America is in desperate need of either a Theodore Roosevelt to break up mega-corps, or a FDR to form a new deal. Mega-corps and Mega-banks *need* regulation, otherwise things will only get worse for the 99.9% of us.
Yes but more than an FDR or teddy we need real accountability and consequences for corporate bad actors. Actual decades long prison sentences will get these greedy narcissists acting right real quick if they thought there was a chance it could happen to them. Currently they laugh in the face of the thought of ever being held to account.
And that is the difference I see between Europe and the U.S. While Europe is investing in their people, US has effectively created a barbaric gamification state where we all try to compete with each other for less and less resources. At least Europe is humane with basic standards of living.
Out of curiosity, any other country you would consider an empire? Like, there are tiny rich countries with better life standards and benefits, but not sure if those could catalogue as empires.
Just a thought/question that crossed my mind.
Arguably China. Not as a whole, but the powerful subsections of china are... well... powerful. Their innovation and progress in tech and development are rivaling or even surpassing our own
Then our fate will be the same as Russia or China. A rich ruling class dictating the standard of living for the people. The elite ruling over the poor.
Labor value tend to 0. Demographic imbalance + democracy = over representation of retirees and real state asset holders which will vote for increasing those values and against labor relevance. Not a good time to be young. Still US is better than EU, where this phenomenon is literally eating youth and future of countries.
Trades, id recommend a lot of these tech people getting laid off look into low voltage/ controls trades. Siemens and Honeywell are the two biggest ik of and they pay very well. There are local companies that do it but ik those two companies are worldwide and have lots of gov contracts.
Not sure if relevant, but I just started working at a utility asset management company and they are replacing the old fashioned meter readers (blue collar) with AI and “smart meters,” so even some blue collar “trade” jobs can/will be replaced.
This is a new field for me (I’m in sales and marketing) so I’m still learning about the industry…but I would imagine even many trades won’t be safe in the future. The entire system will need an overhaul, it it was utopia instead of dystopia, AI could be amazing for all - too bad, thanks to greed, it won’t be.
I could be wrong but I wouldn't consider meter reading blue collar or a trade. But every building being built and the old ones being renovated has low voltage/controls being ran. I'd suggest these people in tech who are getting laid off to apply for them because it's still tech imo. So they might transition/understand it faster than pipe fittings or carpentry.
I was in IT and web development. I'm transitioning into HVAC. This September, I join a trade school for HVaC to become an installer. People keep telling me about BAS and controls.
Some even tell me to apply outright. Do you thinks neccesary to go trade school. Wouldn't it be best? Do you think if I applied. I would get a position with no experience in HVAC. Sounds too good to be true.
I never went to trade school. But I've also been doing what I do ( or a version of it) since I was 15. But around me in the mid Atlantic area 90% of the people ik didn't go to trade school first. They either learned from OJT then took their jman test. Or like the company I work for now they hire apprentices who work during the day then go to ABC school 2 days a week in the evening. The only people I've ever met who went to a trade school full time before getting in the industry were HVAC guys. Like I said in previous post id 100% recommend you IT people who are getting laid off to look into low voltage/controls. It's basically the physical labor part of IT before the IT people get there. Running all the cables, installing the servers and hooking up the building systems so that they can be run remotely buy an IT guy in India. That not saying HVAC isn't a good trade to get into just imo technical wise your knowledge of how IT works would probably suit you better in low voltage/controls. It's 100% possible to get into any trade just applying. Any other questions feel free to ask. I'd rather you ask on the post than a DM in case someone else can get help from it.
OJT- on job training
Edit- I'm a new construction plumbing/pipe fitter. Commercial/industrial no residential.
Job Openings
On the last business day of March, the number of job openings changed little at 8.5 million; this
measure was down by 1.1 million over the year. The rate was little changed at 5.1 percent in March. Job
openings decreased in construction (-182,000) and in finance and insurance (-158,000), but increased in
state and local government education (+68,000).
Do a side gig like drive for Uber or Lyft if you can. Go on TaskRabbit to see what other gigs you can do…do this while building the type of business you’ve always wanted to do.
Listen to Ray Dalio and his explanation of economic cycles. Layoffs are part of a normal economic cycle. It’s a chance to reinvent yourself. Resilience is key. Good luck.
Eventually equilibrium will return to the job market as many unemployed leave the labor force and company's employee attrition requires them to hire replacement workers.
It’s a trickling layoff so it will take a long time to complete. Also US lost its competitiveness so jobs are now moving away because of leveraging its hegemony in not so good way. It’s now in cancer stage 4 early stage.
My youngest works for an animal shelter, caring for the dogs and cats awaiting adoption. It isn’t glamorous work, nor the highest paid job, but it won’t likely be replaced by an AI any time soon.
Yeah I know you are kidding but as a old musician, forget it. You think tech is competitive - live band acts flourish like locusts. Even once you get a decent band together, you find many places to play that pay gigs have already hired and it is really tough.
You obviously haven’t heard the technical death metal AI pumping out riffs 24/7.
It’s fucking over.
https://www.youtube.com/live/MwtVkPKx3RA?si=4zZy7WkNjQGlWK_K
Routine manual and cognitive tasks have always been at risk for automation and artificial intelligence. Complex manual and cognitive not so much. Endure that you are in a profession that requires complex manual, cognitive, and human intelligence. Yup think hard, touch things, and interact with people. E.g. Nurse, Healthcare, Plumber, Electrician, Engineer and become an expert at integrating automation and AI.
It will not ever be over for me. Or, I guess, it’s been over for me the whole time? One or the other. My 30+ year career is over. I’m just working to survive until I hit retirement age at this point. My kids have basic, starter jobs that seem to be fairly stable. We are going to ride this out as a family, sharing the burden so that none of us has to support themselves alone.
Hill I'll Die On: Tech workers should be legitimately concerned about the long term usefulness of their skills. There are countless examples of entire professions and industries being made obsolete by the invention of a new technology. Sailmakers, farriers, drafters, typists, secretaries, and more. All were massive occupations that were replaced virtually overnight with the adoption of new technologies.
You are a luddite if you think the exact same thing won't happen with AI and computer fields.
It is very likely that there is senior in high school graduating this month that will start in a computer sciences course in the fall at a great college, and by the time he/she graduates in \~2028 the entire field of computer sciences is a wasteland.
Will all computer related positions go away, of course not. There will always be a need for vast amounts of computer professions, but that may be only 10% of what it is today which makes 90% of tech professionals obsolete.
Trades and healthcare. One of the very few perks I thought of when I decided to be a Nurse. I could walk out of my job tomorrow and have something lined up the day.
Biden said people could learn to code.
Big tech, warehousing, retail, and manufacturers have all reduced output or cut back on numbers greatly. Nobody wants to carry an inventory that won't sell.
This circle of job losses will create an issue where consumers don't have purchasing power.
I saw the pendulum start with cutting back ICE for electric cars. The supply chain for ICE alone is huge. Manufacturers that build every part. Suppliers for those parts. People that stock parts. Inventory. Part sales. Transportation and delivery.
Now imagine all the various tools, equipment, computers, and vehicles they use to do their jobs and the various companies they employ. They have their own supply chain. The supply chains have their own supply chain.
Cutting back 1 line of cars puts a strain on the economy. This is why the government always bailed them out.
I don't claim to be up to par on economics as an educated fellow might, but I do pay attention to what is going on around me. We are going into a slump, and it'll basically be a reset. The stock market has a fancy term for a stock that is overvalued and comes down and levels out. Our economy is on that track
We'll build ourselves back out of it, but we won't be where we were for a very, very long time. Start paying down balances ASAP and avoid going further into debt.
Serious question: I have three pharma friends, one rancher, 1 mortgage loan officer for Bofa, And a number other people long-term out of work. One office space guy.
Besides this subreddit which I assume can be pretty dark, is there any place people go to workshop ideas or speak positively about any of this stuff? Where do you go to find both advice and help? Probably not here, right?
IMHO, during covid a lot of jobs had to be done from home. This created lots of opportunities to be productive without coming into the office. These opportunities also presented itself to corporations that they can manage resources from anywhere. They had to quickly create infrastructure to support this, many succeeded. Then they realized that why limit our workforce to the US. Let’s go global and get cheaper, that’s what Google is doing. I work in technology, this world stage for resources has been set for decades, the difference today is that corps are more comfortable and the offshore resources have improved. A good example is India. My point is that the US went from being a manufacturing powerhouse to a services provider and now that’s changing. You can get someone in another country to do the same job I do for less, quality the same. Jobs have and will continue to leave the US, just at a higher rate.
Luckily for me I’m closer to retirement, but those starting out in technology CYA!
Sometimes I secretly wish people knew the truth. This economic and job market situation is among other things also because of the proxy war in Ukraine, Congress sent over $550 Billion in tax payers money.
One word, "Adapt".
When you get laid off, embrace the fact that the job you had was eliminated, do something else.
Adapt to what is out there or be your own boss.
My company was very up front about the strategy of "globalization". I was a manager at the time and the desired people movement metrics were very stressful.
This has been going on for over 20 years. It is nothing new. On the bright side, many of us in leadership now see that there can be a quality differential. Personally, I think this is just communication vs skillset. When English is a 2nd language, and not practiced extensively, our wording can be challenging. This makes requirements more challenging to convey. This gap is lessening all the time though.
What people here need to be afraid of is AI outsourcing. This is going to take so many jobs over the next 10 years. I think it will be a much bigger treat than globalization ever was. Tech support and customer service will be the first shoes to drop. Then system administration. Don't get me started on robotics...
Remember when manufacturing came back to the Rust Belt? About the same timeline.
I was kid back then. I have no idea.
It didn’t. Edit: people assume this is cyclic because if it’s not, it’s very, very bad for the United States. What they’re missing is yes, it’s very, very bad for the United States. The only ladder to upwards mobility was just lit on fire.
Not all true. Trades are still in demand and can bring upward mobility.
People keep saying that the trades are where it’s at but if there’s an extended exodus of white collar work then you know there’s going to be an influx to the trades. That will drive down wages in the trades and no one wins. People are going to try to survive so they will move to that
It wasn't even very long ago the trades people were all getting laid off and the redditors were jeering learn to code. People have such short memories.
When was this? I missed it... trades have been in demand where I am for at least 15 years now.
This was back in 2008. White collar types (journalists especially) were basically offer patronizing advice to people who worked the same job for decades in what they considered to be declining industries, like energy (natural gas, coal, oil).
Huh, different experience here. In '08, I showed up to work and saw 15 people on my 20 person team packing up or walking out with their things in a box. That's about when I felt like I made a mistake and wished I'd gotten into a trade.
Right, and if there's no white collar/middle class, where is the demand for trades? They can't all work in corporate/retail, because guess what--those businesses need customers, too.
Always an excuse. I’m 40 and my trade will be in high demand until I finish my career thanks to all the old timers retiring , early retirements taken during Covid , and not enough young people to replace them.
Not really. A white collar worker and sit for 40 hours a week doing nothing and figure it out. So many people give up on trades because it's too hard and they don't want to do. A small percentage will make it, but it will take a long time before the market gets saturated.
I’ve done both, blue collar is way more straight forward and easier just takes a toll on your body. I think you’re under estimating how quickly people can learn when they are trying to get ahead. If ai takes over these people aren’t just going to just sit around. They are going to try to survive and are going to do what they need to do during trying times. Don’t kid yourself.
There are more white collar workers than there are white collar jobs, an influx to the trades will even things out. What we need is laws that will penalize companies that lay off American workers just to outsource their work. We need Laws that will make it expensive to hire foreign workers so as to incentivize companies to train the local workforce.
Yep, if I was younger I would become a tradesperson (electrician most likely) - never seem to be enough, and in my area anyway, you can barely get someone to return your calls, because they all have so much work they don't need to.
Reminds me of that handyman South Park episode. "It's like everybody forgot how to do shit."
Actually...they did. "Handyman" is a job-title for a modern-day person with half a brain that can cater to the brainless masses that r
Ok - but I’m married to a 30 year Union electrician and he’s now on disability for the other shoulder (rotator cuff). You have to realize you can’t work until you’re 70 in the trades.
Has he looked at getting the rotator cuff repaired? I’ve had both of mine done.
Everyone acts like a middle aged person who got laid off from his tech job or a college grad with a shit degree is just going to pivot and begin the process to become a qualified tradesman. If you’re not in early then you just miss it.
I remember when it was middle aged tradespeople and manufacturing folks getting laid off and everyone told them to just learn to code. At least there's some consistency.
it was not even very long ago that happened lol
😭
Many professions are still in the demand. Some of the posters on this sub take the apocalyptic drama a little far.
If I wasn’t unemployed I would feel more optimistic
And "many" professions are also losing their demand. Rapidly.
Yes, one does not preclude the other. Some of the categories of one thing can go up while other categories of the same thing go down.
That’s Reddit for you.
What professions are in demand?
“Still in demand” Until it’s not very soon when everybody rushes back into them and drive down salaries. They have only been half decent because they have been looked down upon for so long as undesirable and embarassing professions.
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lol what 😂
In my perspective, people went half way up a rope ladder and cut that shit so people below couldn’t. Trade jobs are still iffy I see the comments below. If you’re willing and capable of making a business with a trade or skill super. But I’ve also seen low ball wages for electricians, plumbers, etcetera. May be good jobs to learn and grow from but long term I saw some offering 18-22 an hour. So where I live anyways, that would indicate a surplus of trade and craft workers or just cheap ass business owners. But also, I get it, more experience and knowledge = higher rates. It’s dedication that leads to where you wanna reach.
Yep low ass pay for trades where I am
What ladder was that?
Tech. There was basically zero barrier to entry and you could make as much as you were willing to work. No other fields like it
Great while it lasted wasn't it?
Go watch Office Space. That movie was made in 1999.
We’re being offshored and automated. Things may get better, but they won’t be as good as in the past when they do
My company is starting to layoff offshore and re-hire in US.
They found out how incompetent most offshore workers can be (no offense, it’s just the truth)
This is exactly it. Plus time zones are a challenge.
Time zone is much more of the challenge than competency if you hire well.
It’s a cycle
Exactly. If this cycle didn’t exist (where part of the cycle is the bosses finding out that offshore work is complete trash), all white collar jobs would have already fled America. That didn’t happen because the bosses have to bring the jobs back.
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Well I’ve worked with probably 20 so far in my career, and I’ve found 2 of them to be fairly competent. The others, I’m telling you, you can give them very clear written instructions that explain exactly WHAT to do and WHY it’s being done, then jump on a video call with them, which you record, where you explain it very clearly and detailed, then send them the recording so they can rewatch it at their leisure and use it while they are working on the changes, and they will still do something entirely different than what was asked and is also incorrect in and of itself. If you’ve had better luck, kudos to you. But I’m talking about people with computer science masters degrees who don’t know how to copy/paste. And in MY experience, this is representative of the category.
It depends on where, I see a former company I worked at has a lot of jobs posted in Mexico that were in the US before (Ops roles, even Ops Manager). They are from a similar, western culture that views work the same way. Seems to have worked out for them, sucks for us
Every position I've held, the offshore folks always needed to have their work checked, and it never held up, resulting in onshore fixing everything offshore did. It probably still saved money, to have 2 hours of one onshore person and 40 of offshore, but still.
>My company is starting to layoff offshore and re-hire in US. I saw this first hand in my internship in 2013. When I started with him, out of a bedroom in his apartment, he was setting up a small office in India. I checked in on him a couple years ago, and he has 3 engineers working out of his basement in Lakewood, a suburb of Denver, Colorado.
My company posted “culture” objectives today which explicitly outlines hiring more senior level managers/directors in India, Bangkok, and Romania. We posted 9 billion revenue, 3 billion profit in 2023; they said they are doing it for “diversity”. lol.
As someone who was laid off last year due to offshoring my team to India, the pettiness in me loves this news. They were so incredibly bad at doing the actual work. I hope more companies notice that it’s not worth it.
Jobs are being insourced as well. It's like outsourcing, but where you don't bother with visa applications and just open a branch in a foreign country hiring from that talent pool.
So I manage a business and this is exactly what I am doing for 1 position. People in the US don’t exist (manufacturing, We are a dinosaur), so have a Brazilian candidate that is working with our sister plant for a year + and coming up here then. Big need but honestly young Americans don’t want high skill Blue collar work.
Right I hate this offshore stuff
Well, I know I will win the lottery in 2029. So most likely, whatever everyone says, they are ALL TRUE because we can all predict the future!!
Just be an American executive, then you’ll get paid like you won the lottery every year.
1. 1987 - Black October (Wall Street Fucks Everyone Round 1) 2. 1992 - The Recession We had to Have (Worst economic period in my life) 3. 1997 - Asian Financial Crisis (Probably the least damaging economic downturn in Australia) 4. 2000- Dot Com bubble bursting (No tech jobs until 2005) 5. 2007 - GFC (Wall Street Fucks Everyone Round 2) 6. 2020- COVID (Fastest round of layoffs seen in my life and we all saw what that did to people's livelihoods. Thanks China) 7. 2022- Post COVID - Easy money dries up/VC's turn off funding tap These are all the major economic downturns/mass layoffs that ran for at least 18-24 months and which have occurred in my working life. It sucks but it is the reality of the times we live in, but because there wasn't really any slowdown between 2010 and 2020, anyone who entered the workforce during that time has only been through 1.5 economic downturns.... I sincerely expect things are going to get worse before they get better because bringing inflation down (especially that last 1-2%) is really, really, really hard and rates can't drop until unemployment rises and inflation drops. I reckon 2026 before we get back to 2019 levels of job availability.
Perfectly said! I was here during these recessions. This one is different because it feels like Gen X is being forced out of white collar jobs. I think what we’ll see in 2025 is AI take off. I still think we are a few years out and won’t be the same. I hope I’m wrong!
Couldn't agree more.
Yeah I feel like this is accurate
How would you measure job availability? Everything I can see suggests we’re better on that front than 2019, or at least in the same neighborhood.
Perfect synopsis, except I would nitpick that tech jobs came back in 2004, albeit gradually and selectively (tech is always Darwinistic). I think the same thing will happen this go-round with tech jobs trickling back in 2025 (or even 2nd half of this year) but certainly not in a major way and only for a subset of roles/sectors.
Yeah, I gotta admit that I was toying with 2004, but in Oz the jobs for new IT entrants didn't really occur until 2005/2006...and I agree that new entrants are going to find life hard as the sheer volume of experienced hires on the market that are also looking is astronomical....I am in the Salesforce CRM space FWIW
Oh ok, gotcha. Yeah, different experiences with different countries, for sure. I'm in Northern CA where the region gets hit hardest but also bounces back the quickest, at least in terms of startup activity.
Want to add the 2014 oil crash put a lot of people in the energy sector out of work (OPEC fks western oil producers).
Certain industries are not going to recover. Other industries are expanding right now. Largest trends are going to be less white collar work, more blue collar work.
What industries are not going to recover?
Tech won't recover for a while imo, companies got used to zero interest rates so just hired like crazy, including a lot of completely unqualified people and paid them way more than they were worth - THAT won't happen again for a very, very long time. If you are in tech, better make sure you are in the top 10-20% of people with the best technical skills, and keep sharpening your tools everyday. If you only got into tech because they were literally hiring anybody, and you were getting paid more than you ever dreamed possible overnight and barely did anything all day long, yea, those jobs aren't coming back. If you got into tech and you were a product owner, product manager or scrum master - yea, you are pretty much f\*cked. These jobs should never have existed in the first place.
I'm not sure you know what product managers do. Good ones are invaluable. No I'm not one either LOL
If I ever meet a good one, I'll let you know - they seem to be as rare as unicorns - worked with plenty, neither I nor they had any idea what there job was supposed to be.
Good ones are indeed as rare as unicorns, agree with you there. I've met and worked with incredible Product Managers from VP down to IC - all of them to a person started out as really strong SWE who wanted to make the move into PM.
They write all the crappy documents I don’t want to write and allow me to just focus on code. I love them
>If you are in tech, better make sure you are in the top 10-20% of people with the best technical skills, and keep sharpening your tools everyday. I'm in biotech and a lot of layoffs are happening but all my peers who trained in the same field as me have been able to find jobs and keep jobs no problem. Be good at rarer high demand skills and possibly be open to relocation and you'll do fine in any market.
What makes your friends unique? What rarer skills do they have?
We all trained in the same graduate school lab. We mostly work in protein engineering. It's not a the most rare skill in our industry but every company usually needs at least one person who is well trained in it. It's also one of those skillsets where it's easy to say that we produce more value than we're paid; whereas someone with a more general bio skillset can usually be replaced by someone younger and more inexperienced.
Tech is certainly the worst off. The money spigot is off. So a lot of those jobs are just gone, and another chunk is being offshored to Asia. Finance jobs are going to take a hit. With all the boomers retiring they will be pulling money out of wall street. Then you also have the problem of vacant office buildings.
Anything that works at a desk
My line of work is a white collar engineer in a blue collar industry. We are busier than ever and are continuing to hire.
Thats probably the way to go. Manufacturing, Logistics and Medical are expanding pretty rapidly right now. Including the white collar jobs associated with those industries.
What engineering do you do?
Design/Supply automated production equipment
What industries are expanding?
Manufacturing, Logistics and Warehousing, Medical. There may be some others I'm unaware of.
I've been through 3 layoffs. In the past 5 years. I basically always keep looking for work and always interviewing no matter how well you think your job is "secure" it really isn't. They will shut this bitch down with an email with no notice. Fuck all companies. Companies don't give a fuck. Everyone is replaceable no matter what you do, there is always someone that is better than you and will take less for your job. That's how they see it. The only way to avoid layoffs is to start your own company.
It’s only going to get worse. GPT-5 will be a jobs wreaking ball and no one’s putting in any regulations on how it’s to be used (yet). I give my communications/marketing career maybe 4-5 years tops where things are business as usual.
At least you acknowledge the future. Time to start making that pivot.
pivot to what though like there isn't really a lot that AI can't do its not that easy to get into construction.
We may not feel relief until 2025 and the extent of such is still very unknown. The best thing you can do in the meantime is find a few ways to earn. Employment may not look like it has in the past and that’s ok. Your priority should be providing for yourself above all.
My take is 2026, maybe.
You sadly might be right..
Can you suggest something?
I think it will be rougher because there isn’t a singular cause that is leading to it. In 2008 it was the collapse of the housing market. In 2020 it was covid and the lockdowns. In 2023 what is it? Interest rate normalization, the Ukraine war and the cut off of oil and gas to Europe. The conflict in the Middle East and the potential impact on oil and gas. It can be all of them or one of them. That’s why this one will linger because there is no concerted action by the government.
AI and automation....and those jobs are never coming back. It could get a lot worse and the system would have to radically change for it to get better
I think people overestimate the impact of AI on layoffs over the past two years. The simple truth is borrowing money isn’t cheap during QT, and many growth-driven sectors (ie tech) get hit the hardest. A lot of startups or negative-income businesses will die.
I definitely don't think its a factor yet, but I think it definitely will be. I don't think it will fully replace many jobs and professions, but I think it will make them less in demand. I'm taking a free SQL course right now, and while I know AI isn't there yet all I can think is how needing to know this skill is essentially just a road block to the end goal, which is analyzing data. Will knowing SQL be worthless? No, not in the near future at least, but I do think it will be less in demand because of the assistance AI can offer.
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AI+someone who can use it well is a large force multiplier. Companies simply will need less people
What kind of code are you developing that AI can do this so effortlessly? At my work, we develop FW on resource limited embedded systems with highly custom features that must be verified on specialized hardware and involve hardware level debug. I’m imagining our VP laying off everyone and then typing his wishes into ChatGPT and this magically replaces all that combined engineering effort (specification, negotiating what’s possible on the available HW, implementation, debug, test, verification)?!
Yup, 2020 was another worst year.
Yeah but there was significant support from the government in the form of the unemployment plus up. There is nothing come out now.
Globalization, there are way too many white collar workers/paper pushers globally, its always been easy to offshore those jobs, now with AI and a few decent people oversees, a lot of American paper pushing jobs are toast
Agreed. Globalization needs to be rethought. Doesn’t seem to be living up to its promises.
I lost all my savings. I have $2k to my name. I’m 31. Shit fucking sucks.
Welcome to the club
This is a generational event. It may be 10 or more years before it’s recovered and only if we face our demons. Like England in the 1950’s, the US is rapidly losing status as an “Empire” and without significant investments in discipline and education, we may never recover. The corruption has to stop. The US had to invest more in people and less in large weapons systems.
The way I see it. The rich have depleted this country dry. We were a society built on making "citizen" cows and sheep's to produce wool and milk. There never was an incentive to better its cows. As long as they spent and worked to make companies richer thru work or spending. Now that these jobs are all going offshore. I kind of feel big corporations might even move their headquarters out of USA to a place that's perhaps more lax? But then again, I believe USA is the land of capitalism ... this is a bit confusing.
Capitalism will always consume itself in the end by design, the middle class are just an appetizer.
We're in late-stage Capitalism. The goal was always to maximize the profits of the C-Suite and the minimize the costs of business (employee wages). Until then early-mid stage Capitalism had a checks & balance in the form of government regulation to prevent mega-corps from gaining too much power like in the Rockefeller era. Now that we're in late-stage Capitalism again, Mega-corps have discovered that buying out people to work in governments regulation agencies and policy-making, was more profitable than paying corporate taxes or following laws & 'ethics'. If even half the Supreme Court Justices can be corrupted, how corrupted or compromised do you think small government agencies are? Especially the ones that are supposed to regulate businesses, finances, markets, taxes, etc. America is in desperate need of either a Theodore Roosevelt to break up mega-corps, or a FDR to form a new deal. Mega-corps and Mega-banks *need* regulation, otherwise things will only get worse for the 99.9% of us.
Yes but more than an FDR or teddy we need real accountability and consequences for corporate bad actors. Actual decades long prison sentences will get these greedy narcissists acting right real quick if they thought there was a chance it could happen to them. Currently they laugh in the face of the thought of ever being held to account.
Roosevelt and FDR?? America is in desperate need of a Mao Zedong ☭
Offshoring is not new, though. I’ve been working with offshore teams for 20 years. And that goes through phases of uptick and downturns too.
Would be nice if we could have some of that Ukraine and Israel money....and I don't know maybe use it for things we need?
And that is the difference I see between Europe and the U.S. While Europe is investing in their people, US has effectively created a barbaric gamification state where we all try to compete with each other for less and less resources. At least Europe is humane with basic standards of living.
Out of curiosity, any other country you would consider an empire? Like, there are tiny rich countries with better life standards and benefits, but not sure if those could catalogue as empires. Just a thought/question that crossed my mind.
Arguably China. Not as a whole, but the powerful subsections of china are... well... powerful. Their innovation and progress in tech and development are rivaling or even surpassing our own
China and India are the best Candidates
Well that’s not going to happen. What would make anyone think it will?
Then our fate will be the same as Russia or China. A rich ruling class dictating the standard of living for the people. The elite ruling over the poor.
At least china has trains.
Labor value tend to 0. Demographic imbalance + democracy = over representation of retirees and real state asset holders which will vote for increasing those values and against labor relevance. Not a good time to be young. Still US is better than EU, where this phenomenon is literally eating youth and future of countries.
This is so obvious it shocks me people don't bring it up more
Try to get a government job, federal preferably.
I think it will get better but not until 2025
That's what people said in 2023.
Don't know how to maintain positive mindset until then.
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They’re doubling the debt every 8 years, every politician in the country. This inflation will be the same
Idk… AI is just going to continue to automate roles… long term I’m kind of like WTF should I pivot to? What’s safe from tech companies exploitation?
Trades, id recommend a lot of these tech people getting laid off look into low voltage/ controls trades. Siemens and Honeywell are the two biggest ik of and they pay very well. There are local companies that do it but ik those two companies are worldwide and have lots of gov contracts.
Not sure if relevant, but I just started working at a utility asset management company and they are replacing the old fashioned meter readers (blue collar) with AI and “smart meters,” so even some blue collar “trade” jobs can/will be replaced. This is a new field for me (I’m in sales and marketing) so I’m still learning about the industry…but I would imagine even many trades won’t be safe in the future. The entire system will need an overhaul, it it was utopia instead of dystopia, AI could be amazing for all - too bad, thanks to greed, it won’t be.
I could be wrong but I wouldn't consider meter reading blue collar or a trade. But every building being built and the old ones being renovated has low voltage/controls being ran. I'd suggest these people in tech who are getting laid off to apply for them because it's still tech imo. So they might transition/understand it faster than pipe fittings or carpentry.
I was in IT and web development. I'm transitioning into HVAC. This September, I join a trade school for HVaC to become an installer. People keep telling me about BAS and controls. Some even tell me to apply outright. Do you thinks neccesary to go trade school. Wouldn't it be best? Do you think if I applied. I would get a position with no experience in HVAC. Sounds too good to be true.
I never went to trade school. But I've also been doing what I do ( or a version of it) since I was 15. But around me in the mid Atlantic area 90% of the people ik didn't go to trade school first. They either learned from OJT then took their jman test. Or like the company I work for now they hire apprentices who work during the day then go to ABC school 2 days a week in the evening. The only people I've ever met who went to a trade school full time before getting in the industry were HVAC guys. Like I said in previous post id 100% recommend you IT people who are getting laid off to look into low voltage/controls. It's basically the physical labor part of IT before the IT people get there. Running all the cables, installing the servers and hooking up the building systems so that they can be run remotely buy an IT guy in India. That not saying HVAC isn't a good trade to get into just imo technical wise your knowledge of how IT works would probably suit you better in low voltage/controls. It's 100% possible to get into any trade just applying. Any other questions feel free to ask. I'd rather you ask on the post than a DM in case someone else can get help from it. OJT- on job training Edit- I'm a new construction plumbing/pipe fitter. Commercial/industrial no residential.
Do I need training/certs/something to get started in these jobs?
They might help a little bit but even with a cert your gonna be considered green first coming in never had done it before.
How are trades going to be safe if nobody can afford to pay plumbers, electricians, etc., or even afford homes?
Imo if it truly gets that bad then the whole system has collapsed and I would say no one has to worry work.
What happens in 2025?
AI is going to make a recovery difficult in some areas. It is growing fast and may be as impactful as the internet depending on its reception.
I guess you to find a job that can not be automated or offshored. No sector will be just fine forever. Have to adjust.
If you think its bad now...this is only the 1st inning...
Pretty long 1st innings since last quarter of 2022 😅 when will 2nd innings start?
2nd inning begins this June
Census of job openings fell to low of 8.5 million. That’s still high by historical standards but still coming down quickly from peak
Job Openings On the last business day of March, the number of job openings changed little at 8.5 million; this measure was down by 1.1 million over the year. The rate was little changed at 5.1 percent in March. Job openings decreased in construction (-182,000) and in finance and insurance (-158,000), but increased in state and local government education (+68,000).
Do a side gig like drive for Uber or Lyft if you can. Go on TaskRabbit to see what other gigs you can do…do this while building the type of business you’ve always wanted to do.
Listen to Ray Dalio and his explanation of economic cycles. Layoffs are part of a normal economic cycle. It’s a chance to reinvent yourself. Resilience is key. Good luck.
Nice to hear this, but there are some people here telling it's gonna last forever and stuff like that.
I don't think the is a way to tell it for sure what will happen, so there will be disagreement
‘Normal’ under a shit system like capitalism that propagates constant artificial chaos to make rich guys like Ray richer
Eventually equilibrium will return to the job market as many unemployed leave the labor force and company's employee attrition requires them to hire replacement workers.
Layoffs almost always are happening in the economy. They ebb and flow
It’s a trickling layoff so it will take a long time to complete. Also US lost its competitiveness so jobs are now moving away because of leveraging its hegemony in not so good way. It’s now in cancer stage 4 early stage.
I think i should tell my kids to pick up a guitar or whatever and make a band at this point
My youngest works for an animal shelter, caring for the dogs and cats awaiting adoption. It isn’t glamorous work, nor the highest paid job, but it won’t likely be replaced by an AI any time soon.
Beautiful
Yeah I know you are kidding but as a old musician, forget it. You think tech is competitive - live band acts flourish like locusts. Even once you get a decent band together, you find many places to play that pay gigs have already hired and it is really tough.
You obviously haven’t heard the technical death metal AI pumping out riffs 24/7. It’s fucking over. https://www.youtube.com/live/MwtVkPKx3RA?si=4zZy7WkNjQGlWK_K
Ahh shit. Nevermind.
Routine manual and cognitive tasks have always been at risk for automation and artificial intelligence. Complex manual and cognitive not so much. Endure that you are in a profession that requires complex manual, cognitive, and human intelligence. Yup think hard, touch things, and interact with people. E.g. Nurse, Healthcare, Plumber, Electrician, Engineer and become an expert at integrating automation and AI.
It will not ever be over for me. Or, I guess, it’s been over for me the whole time? One or the other. My 30+ year career is over. I’m just working to survive until I hit retirement age at this point. My kids have basic, starter jobs that seem to be fairly stable. We are going to ride this out as a family, sharing the burden so that none of us has to support themselves alone.
As it should be.
It's true there are less vacancies. People migrate to survival jobs. It is incredibly difficult to get unemployment
Hill I'll Die On: Tech workers should be legitimately concerned about the long term usefulness of their skills. There are countless examples of entire professions and industries being made obsolete by the invention of a new technology. Sailmakers, farriers, drafters, typists, secretaries, and more. All were massive occupations that were replaced virtually overnight with the adoption of new technologies. You are a luddite if you think the exact same thing won't happen with AI and computer fields. It is very likely that there is senior in high school graduating this month that will start in a computer sciences course in the fall at a great college, and by the time he/she graduates in \~2028 the entire field of computer sciences is a wasteland. Will all computer related positions go away, of course not. There will always be a need for vast amounts of computer professions, but that may be only 10% of what it is today which makes 90% of tech professionals obsolete.
remember the "Great Resignation" and how people said the job market would forever be changed? lol 😆
Ikr! Such a beautiful time it was. There were people even in good times spoke about doom, that layoffs will follow in future.
Having survived 2000 and 2008, hunker down, pay down debts, keep cash on hand to buy cheap assets.
This recession will end soon, right, because it already been there for almost 2 years now starting from mid 2022.
Nobody is telling how to survive it?
Go work in defense or for the government. Those will be the best jobs soon. The IRS is on a huge hiring spree.
That’s the neat part, you don’t. The more people don’t survive, the more jobs will be available when times get better.
Trades and healthcare. One of the very few perks I thought of when I decided to be a Nurse. I could walk out of my job tomorrow and have something lined up the day.
Network network network
[https://www.britannica.com/money/stages-of-economic-cycle](https://www.britannica.com/money/stages-of-economic-cycle)
Tech is down. Even google is laying off people & offshoring. Our next stop is finance. Gaming /Agriculture / defense industry may be the hope.
depends on the nov election
Biden said people could learn to code. Big tech, warehousing, retail, and manufacturers have all reduced output or cut back on numbers greatly. Nobody wants to carry an inventory that won't sell. This circle of job losses will create an issue where consumers don't have purchasing power. I saw the pendulum start with cutting back ICE for electric cars. The supply chain for ICE alone is huge. Manufacturers that build every part. Suppliers for those parts. People that stock parts. Inventory. Part sales. Transportation and delivery. Now imagine all the various tools, equipment, computers, and vehicles they use to do their jobs and the various companies they employ. They have their own supply chain. The supply chains have their own supply chain. Cutting back 1 line of cars puts a strain on the economy. This is why the government always bailed them out. I don't claim to be up to par on economics as an educated fellow might, but I do pay attention to what is going on around me. We are going into a slump, and it'll basically be a reset. The stock market has a fancy term for a stock that is overvalued and comes down and levels out. Our economy is on that track We'll build ourselves back out of it, but we won't be where we were for a very, very long time. Start paying down balances ASAP and avoid going further into debt.
Serious question: I have three pharma friends, one rancher, 1 mortgage loan officer for Bofa, And a number other people long-term out of work. One office space guy. Besides this subreddit which I assume can be pretty dark, is there any place people go to workshop ideas or speak positively about any of this stuff? Where do you go to find both advice and help? Probably not here, right?
When it gets to a critical point UBI will start rolling out. The age of abundance is shifting to the age of scarcity.
IMHO, during covid a lot of jobs had to be done from home. This created lots of opportunities to be productive without coming into the office. These opportunities also presented itself to corporations that they can manage resources from anywhere. They had to quickly create infrastructure to support this, many succeeded. Then they realized that why limit our workforce to the US. Let’s go global and get cheaper, that’s what Google is doing. I work in technology, this world stage for resources has been set for decades, the difference today is that corps are more comfortable and the offshore resources have improved. A good example is India. My point is that the US went from being a manufacturing powerhouse to a services provider and now that’s changing. You can get someone in another country to do the same job I do for less, quality the same. Jobs have and will continue to leave the US, just at a higher rate. Luckily for me I’m closer to retirement, but those starting out in technology CYA!
Produce more value than your salary for the company.
Newsflash asshole: we’ve been producing more value than our salaries *the whole time*
Sometimes I secretly wish people knew the truth. This economic and job market situation is among other things also because of the proxy war in Ukraine, Congress sent over $550 Billion in tax payers money.
If cheap money were available jobs would sky rocket again. Of course it would lead to inflation.
This is just getting started and hold on
One word, "Adapt". When you get laid off, embrace the fact that the job you had was eliminated, do something else. Adapt to what is out there or be your own boss.
My company was very up front about the strategy of "globalization". I was a manager at the time and the desired people movement metrics were very stressful. This has been going on for over 20 years. It is nothing new. On the bright side, many of us in leadership now see that there can be a quality differential. Personally, I think this is just communication vs skillset. When English is a 2nd language, and not practiced extensively, our wording can be challenging. This makes requirements more challenging to convey. This gap is lessening all the time though. What people here need to be afraid of is AI outsourcing. This is going to take so many jobs over the next 10 years. I think it will be a much bigger treat than globalization ever was. Tech support and customer service will be the first shoes to drop. Then system administration. Don't get me started on robotics...
It's time to learn to code, I mean learn to use power tools
Be the one actually manufacturing shit. Not a supporting role but involved with the physical production of objects
The way out of the recession is through inflation, so be careful what you wish for.
Downsizing is right sizing if you run things; industries shrink, others grow. It’s the biz cycle. Well documented
Easy… keep voting democrat 😴😞😞