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How do we know that the rise in unemployment is being driven by AI specifically, and not by wider economic circumstances? The article's evidence for the AI cla

• pizlonator 2y ago
  Exactly. I think there are many other factors influencing tech jobs.
• jarsin 2y ago
  All financial articles use what I call the "as"s reason. It works like this. Find whatever is hot that day, week or month then put it after the "as". Stock market down as Trump holds another signing. Stock market up big as Musk slashes government spending.
  • rcktmrtn 2y ago
    I also started noticing this headline pattern ("something A as something B") all over the place a while ago and now automatically break it down as: * Something A (probably) happened * Something B (probably) happened * The author/publisher are slimy weasels and I'm not going to give their stupid article any more time
• rchaud 2y ago
  You would need to wait for several quarters' worth of labor market data and a thorough empirical analysis to see whether the hypothesis held up. 2-3 years would need to pass just to collect enough data.
• myth_drannon 2y ago
  According to the article, the overall unemployment rate is 4%. So something is happening with IT jobs, not the economy. I call it bullshit that it's the AI, it's the outsourcing/remote jobs
  • Spooky23 2y ago
    Companies overhired during the pandemic. Big companies hired people to deny their competitors employees. Also as you flatten organizations and use cloud services you can discard lots of people. Every large company had a storage team. I worked for a big company that probably had 250 FTEs just running storage. Not anymore. There’s also a ton of uncertainty in the US. Everyone is banking on a significant correction.
• legohead 2y ago
  We don't. Economics is complex and it is extremely common for journalists to simply take something and run with it. Even just saying "unemployment" needs scrutiny, as there are multiple ways to measure "unemployment."
• blueanon 2y ago
  I think it could be related. We purchased AI tools - with the new expectation - baked into weekly sprint deadlines that we will get 30% more work done.
  • darth_avocado 2y ago
    But AI isn’t making you productive, corporate execs are using it as an excuse to understaff the company.
    • blueanon 2y ago
      I didn't comment on our productivity or AI. Just the expectation :)
      • bogrollben 2y ago
        Oof. You got me.
    • bongodongobob 2y ago
      Well if they have 10 people and were thinking about hiring 3 more, now they don't need to because they are 30% more productive. Productivity increases don't just cause people to be laid off. It means you can hire less.
  • rsynnott 2y ago
    ... Yeah, but I mean that's just nonsense, and is not going to happen. People can expect all they want, but ultimately reality is reality.
    • blueanon 2y ago
      It is.
    • lazide 2y ago
      Expectations can remain unreasonable longer than you can remain solvent.
• nradov 2y ago
  The financial and business press always invents causes to try to explain current events. Like you'll see an article that states "stocks fell today due to profit taking". In reality journalists have no clue why it happened and just make up something that sounds plausible or at least isn't objectively false.
  • jader201 2y ago
    Actually, it's even more devious than that. They use wording -- just like this article does -- like "X happens as Y also happens". The keyword being "as" and not "because" or "due to". It implies causality, by coupling both in the same title, without technically linking the two. E.g. "Stocks fall as rate increase looms" They're basically just saying two things happened at the same time, or one after the other, but one didn't necessarily cause the other. IOW, they know they can't link the two -- i.e. they can't user words like "because" or "due to" -- but they also know that by coupling them in the same headline, readers will still infer causality.
    • kridsdale1 2y ago
      I have specifically noticed this pattern with the red-flag headline word “amid”. It always means the beta coeffficent is 0 but they want you to think it’s 1. “President announces crackdown on immigration amid ongoing success of Taylor Swift’s new album”.
      • reverendsteveii 2y ago
        My partner and I make an informal hobby of tracking language like that which is designed to sneakily water down the strength of a headline. "Amid" rather than "because of" is a really good one. My personal favorite is "Reports: ". If you just preface your headline with that, you can say any old thing you want to and then later when pressed on the truth value of it you can retreat to the idea that you weren't reporting that as fact, you were reporting the fact that other people are saying it and you're not obligated to say who or how many or any other things that people might be saying. The practical upshot is that you as a journalist get to purposely induce people to believe something you know to be false but no one can technically call you a liar.
• heroprotagonist 2y ago
  This probably depends on how you define "IT". I think for employment type stats the list of categories is fairly wide, and can include almost anything that requires a computer that doesn't fit into other categories (which btw is often used for 'exempt' overtime status to put people in on-call rotations without resulting in an 'engaged to wait' scenario that requires payment for time not spent on a call. because they're "experts in IT related field"). But specifically this is probably mostly driven so far by tech support industries. "IT" being customer service reps who use a computer to respond to chat messages, in some cases. Or actual tech support that's had its entire entry system stripped and replaced by an AI-guided walkthrough of predefined steps customers are required to take before they talk to a human. This will certainly have impact on the amount of support staff needed, even if a portion of that is simply frustrating customers into searching for answers themselves.
  • mjr00 2y ago
    > Or actual tech support that's had its entire entry system stripped and replaced by an AI-guided walkthrough of predefined steps customers are required to take before they talk to a human. How much tech support was still in the US though? Outside of small onshore teams, frontline tech support for the major players was already all in India/SEA. You could replace those people with AI, yes, but it wouldn't reflect in US unemployment stats.
    • bobthepanda 2y ago
      there are also internal IT teams at any corporation handling a decent amount of electronics for internal use. it's possible those are now getting thinned out with AI for the super mundane things like "my phone won't connect to the wi-fi."
    • Spooky23 2y ago
      More than you might think. There are many scenarios where US nationals are the only ones that can touch data. They are replacing second tier people with people overseas who interact with chatbots and a limited number of staff in the US. So one dude can access customer data, but he’s servicing a dozen agents.
• billywhizz 2y ago
  "Another Reason".... "Another reason for January’s tech job losses was that companies began implementing some intended spending cuts for this year, Janulaitis said, and many slashed budgets based on what the economy looked like during fiscal planning last year."
• trod1234 2y ago
  > How do we know that the rise in unemployment is being driven by AI specifically, and not by wider economic circumstances?. There are several important things to look at that show this. First and foremost, IT has about a 40 year history now, with corresponding economic data. In its entire history, its been uncorrelated with interest rates and other assets. These correlated assets are what most people refer to when they speak of wider economic circumstance. The IT industry is uncorrelated with this, with 40 years to back that up. IT labor markets are however strongly correlated with advances in information technology. This correlation is found throughout that dataset as well, in both the boom and bust cycles. The deep unemployment which we are seeing here, which doesn't include the first batch of laid off employees two years ago [18 mo], is only correlated and impacted by Information Technology advances. There is only one such major advance that has been made in this time period... Artificial Intelligence. AI has improved dramatically from a modular swappable design, and it can replace entry level positional tasks completely. It probably won't ever be able to take over the senior level positions, or the mid level positions, but that doesn't matter. The companies involved in integrating these things into the production environment have mislead most of their customers, and in the process burnt all the bridges. Many of these companies market towards replacing workers with AI, grossly negligent of the whipsaw they are creating with that misleading narrative. In the short term they make lots of profit, while destroying the environment they need to sustain themselves. By choking off the professional development pipeline which is a sequential pipeline in developing talent, this leaves few opportunities to progress to mid and senior level positions, which were few and far between to begin with. When there is no economic incentive to go into any specialized field because AI has burnt the only bridge for a long-term career, people don't go into these jobs. Worse, those caught surprised by this change in circumstance, who actually have sufficient experience to perform at these mid-level ranges, may abandon the profession causing exponential brain drain. As anyone knows, people age and eventually die. Senior level people are at greater risk to this than others. This inevitably creates a tsunami of cost in those irreplaceable positions which cannot be addressed by the market, and balloons far above what the market can bare. The forward looking expectations have made any labor in this industry worth less than AI services, and IT as a general rule is a labor multiplier where changes here eventually expand and infect everywhere. Business is not constrained in hiring people because many business receive operations funding upfront from their financial engineering which often comes from money printers. By the time they notice the problem, it will be too late to solve it, in many respects its already too late because you have people who are incredibly competent, near geniuses, and they see no future in the industry and are retraining ahead of the curve. AI threatens society because it disrupts the core pillars of society, which is indirect but immeasurably important to sustained organization of labor and food production. Agriculture is dependent on something like 64 different intermediate producers to maintain production levels sufficient to feed people. Failures back to pre-modern industrial technology would mean half the people alive today starve to death, no matter how much they work. These are the issues which the article doesn't really touch on correctly but its WSJ so what do you expect. Their journalism has never really been up to snuff.
• sleight42 2y ago
  Exactly. Seems more likely that it's driven but much higher interest rates than AI. AI is likely just how these businesses are trying to justify why/how they've laid off more workers instead of asking the remaining people to do a lot more work for the same pay.
• anaccount342 2y ago
  they think it is 'due to AI' because it helps push tech stocks; not due to any facts. I also recommend looking at this article's source (https://e-janco.com/career/employmentdata.html?srsltid=AfmBOooEkF4s4BCLym9KLi5wo5EZ9GgRtX5Zt8XPxvrwp7g9-ducTSJL https://e-janco.com/career/employmentdata.html?srsltid=AfmBO...), apparently the Janco guys think its going to be be a better year for tech than last year. Trash journalism....
• wkat4242 2y ago
  Yeah it's a bit early to see any impact from AI. In fact what I see is more hiring due to the scramble to build more products "now with AI!!!". In our company we're not seeing any major impact on productivity yet and no jobs were lost. Yet.
• hulitu 2y ago
  > How do we know that the rise in unemployment is being driven by AI specifically, and not by wider economic circumstances? It is right there, in the headline, sir. The economy is so good, like never before. /s