11 ms·
California unemployment rises to 5.5%, worst in the U.S. as tech falters
- nextworddev 1y agoHmm anecdotally I’m seeing a lot of hiring in all places ranging from faang to startups. So tech hiring is not evenly distributed.
- seanmcdirmid 1y agoIt could be FAANG retreating from HCOLs to LCOLs with the hope that they can make up the expertise gap with AI.
- rafram 1y agoUnless you can provide some evidence for that, it seems like pretty plain BS. The issues with outsourcing/offshoring were never the kind that can be solved with AI.
- vitaflo 1y agoIt’s pretty obvious the future is low wage devs using AI. It’s only a matter of time before US devs are squeezed out of the market.
- AstroBen 1y agoAI is good at low wage junior work, not senior work. It's the other way around
- __turbobrew__ 1y agoI believe you have it backwards, the future is having high wage devs use AI. Imagine a world where a single high wage devs with lots of experience can oversee say 10 AI agents. The boilerplate and grunt work can be taken care of by the agents and the human can refine the results as they know better than the AI and where the AI went wrong. If you stick a low experience human in front of an AI the human does not know if the AI is spewing nonsense and therefore sometimes you will get nonsense from the process.
- nextworddev 1y agoThis is a big part. Lots of rotating L6 and L7 with L4 and 5
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoAre those job posts or actual hires?
- FollowingTheDao 1y agoYes, I was going to ask the same question. Article on the topic: https://www.apollotechnical.com/ghost-jobs-in-tech-why-companies-are-posting-roles-they-dont-plan-to-fill/ https://www.apollotechnical.com/ghost-jobs-in-tech-why-compa...
- Der_Einzige 1y agoThat's hiring for people with AI skills. If you're not in AI, you're fked right now.
- littlexsparkee 1y agoOr peripheral to it, e.g. data engineering for pre-training data or a joint DE/ML role, etc. Sometimes the scale (petabyte) or specific stack experience is a barrier.
- __loam 1y agoNot true. The people who are screwed right now are juniors. There's still a lot of hiring happening for traditional development.
- esseph 1y agoNot every business is in tech. Every business uses tech. R&D tax credit problem fixed, now development starts to get back on track at a lot of companies.
- Esophagus4 1y agoThere is definitely hiring going on, but having seen this now from the hiring manager side, companies are flooded with candidates because of all the tech layoffs. So yes, companies are hiring, but it’s hard to get hired right now because of the volume of candidates. Not impossible, but definitely harder.
- darth_avocado 1y agoIn my anecdotal experience hiring has been picking up but it seems that everyone expects the 2021 ZIRP economy where new grads were getting $200-300k offers with easy interviews. The experienced hire market is now back to where we were in 2015-2016 and new hire market slightly lagging behind. Unfortunately a lot of people will have to be comfortable working for non tech companies in tech roles like 10 years ago. It sucks because the living standards are more expensive than 10 years ago.
- nextworddev 1y agoThis is the right take, plus the glut of applicants.
- 999900000999 1y agoI just had to accept a keep the lights on offer. Still a software role, but I'm making what I was in 2018 without adjusting for inflation. 2020 I was making about 80k more, even though I got that job through a combination of networking and luck. My budget is less ball out and more it's nice I covered my rent
- scarface_74 1y agoMost developers have always worked for non tech companies…
- darth_avocado 1y agoI agree but that’s not the expectation a lot of people I meet have, especially new grads
- giantg2 1y agoI'm not seeing many jobs in my area for non-tech companies. The non-tech company is working for is outsourcing to India. I might be getting terminated soon and expect I will end up working retail. Nobody wants early career generalists.
- mertleee 1y ago
- scythe 1y agoI got my first (and only; I changed careers) tech job in 2014. I only learned years later that 2014 was considered a "down" year for the industry. The "job market" exists at the margins. If you're good, you get hired.
- rufus_foreman 1y ago>> If you're good, you get hired In the long term. But in the long term we're all dead. I only have one social media account, LinkedIn, and I have that account because I wanted to help people that got laid off from the company I worked for who were good, but were definitely not getting hired in 2008. There were developers who were top notch, but they weren't getting hired, they were sitting there not working getting poorer, frustrated and divorced. I'm on my last job so I have no idea what the job market is like now, don't know don't care, but no. There are times when even the best developers can't even get a phone interview.
- AstroBen 1y agoThis is why you should live below your means and save money when times are good. It's very possible, especially in the tech industry to get to a position where you can comfortably ride out a few years of a crappy job market
- littlexsparkee 1y agoYeah that was my M.O., had to step down a few months ago to take care of a mobility issue and I'm glad I planned for it.
- AstroBen 1y agoI got my start around then as a junior working fully remote with 6 months experience.. something everyone assures me is impossible Perseverance is the most important thing I think
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bdcravens 1y agoIs it possible that the companies with cash to burn are trying to take advantage of the situation and swoop up talent on the cheap?
- Herring 1y agoWhat’s with the comments here? Forget the official reports, we should ask a couple randos on HN about their inboxes?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kristopolous 1y agoAfter reading the article it looks like the attribution is defensible: "In contrast, professional and business services were down 7,100 jobs in July, the worst of any sector, and the tech-heavy information sector lost 1,000 jobs." This could be many things. People could be leaving to do their own startups. The BLS counts that as a job loss thus high-velocity sectors can be reported as job loss.
- Cyclone_ 1y agoPeople leaving to do their own startups would be a pretty small portion of the job market, even on the SF Bay area.
- kristopolous 1y agoright, upon further research, there's no corresponding increase in LLC or EIN filings so the startup hypothesis is likely unsupported
- seangrogg 1y agoIn all fairness, plenty of people leaving the trappings of Big Tech are pretty capable of uprooting and doing business elsewhere; California offers relatively little other than what it has from existing inertia.
- hshdhdhj4444 1y agoAgglomeration effects are real. Research has constantly shown that people working in high productivity area generate more wealth than the same people working outside high productivity areas. The real problem, IMO, is that workers in the tech industry have voluntarily destroyed these agglomeration benefits by using the short period of power workers had during/after the pandemic to insist on work from home instead of better worker protections. As a result, it’s very possible that high productivity areas in the U.S. are no longer that, and remote work has reduced all Americana’s productivity, making it impossible to justify the higher cost of living and salaries in big cities.
- JohnTHaller 1y agoAll of New York City only added 1,000 jobs in the first half of 2025. The economy is crumbling underneath the hood.
- throwmeaway222 1y agoanecdata: after lay off 10 months ago, I suddenly got 3 offers in July and I am employed now. I think it's the BBB that fixed the tax code issue - just a guess.
- bitbasher 1y agoanecdata: I run a saas product and my primary customers are recruiters, after the BBB I have had more daily signups and new subscribers than previous months.
- littlexsparkee 1y agoless recruiter activity than a few months ago, cleared one interview gauntlet just to have the role change due to a new lead hire, otherwise getting followups for screens but hit or miss on the tech assessments. might have to spend more time practicing. 10 yoe, SFBA.
- throwmeaway222 1y agosorry to hear that, keep it up, it was absolutely demoralizing for me during those 10 months I started to believe I was actually losing my mind after a literal 20 year history in startups/tech. But my colleagues are all younger than me - they are hiring people out of college too, so you can make it just keep pushing
- dyauspitr 1y agoThis might be the only good thing in all of BBB
- bravesoul2 1y agoGood... for tech workers, and tech companies.
- MisterBiggs 1y agoI was laid off this year and also saw a massive uptick in offers in July. Based in Colorado, but was looking nation wide and I got more interest out of SF than the rest of the country combined.
- deadbabe 1y agoI’ve started seeing emails from recruiters coming in again after a long drought. These unemployment figures will probably be lagging indicators.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jfengel 1y agoGood on the rust belt states for being able to get their unemployment down under 5.5%.
- giantg2 1y agoI wonder if the participation rate is lower or people moved away.
- heavyset_go 1y agoMight be a case of those who are permanently out of the workforce because they couldn't find work are not counted in unemployment statistics, along with flight and deaths of despair.
- hshdhdhj4444 1y agoIt’s helpful when the government is subsidizing your entire economy. Farming, healthcare, autos, etc are almost completely subsidized by the government.
- stockresearcher 1y agoCareful. Coronado, Miramar, Camp Pendleton, Twentynine Palms, Edwards, Mcclellan, Vandenburg, Travis, etc. How many bases do you think there are in Iowa?
- jeffbee 1y agoSame newspaper last week: tech guys so over-abundant they are paying $2000 each to sleep in bunk beds in Mission flophouses.
- littlexsparkee 1y agoyou can still have a local AI boom in SF (which has a housing shortage) while tech employment falls state-wide
- aaroninsf 1y agoWorst reported. Serious question: who is producing reliable numbers now? The Trump administration is actively suppressing federal reporting and openly threatening to cease collecting and reporting data, and this is absolutely signaling to sycophants and supporters that they should falsify or withhold unflattering data. This is a truly terrible timeline.
- Waterluvian 1y agoThe USSR went this route and it worked out great. It’ll be interesting to watch the U.S. do the same.
- lisbbb 1y ago[flagged]
- tomhow 1y ago> WHICH IS A HUGE REASON WHY TRUMP IS ASKING FOR RATES TO COME DOWN!!!!! The guy freaking knows business, whether your little minds can accept it or not, the people in charge right now actually are trying to fix this crap. Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks* around it and it will get italicized.* https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- arunabha 1y ago> The implication was that, going forwards, the numbers would be more accurately calculated in order to reflect REALITY of US employment, which is far bleaker than any of us really wishes to accept, myself included! Ok, would that imply that if the jobs numbers are not worse in the next couple of reports and instead, are suspiciously higher then the administration is in fact cooking the books?
- jeffbee 1y agoSo the clickbait headline is "as tech falters" but tech actually had the least losses of any sector, except government. More correct in all possible ways would have been "as construction falters", "as manufacturing falters", or "as banking falters".
- littlexsparkee 1y agoit's a little tricky with the labels, they did mention that professional and business did the worst of all sectors and while information sector lost jobs as well, that sounds like the closest match for tech so I have reservations about the claim as well
- jeffbee 1y agoGenerally the BLS categories are hard to parse. Some major companies are software categories, others are information. But in general the "information" sector is pretty heavy on newspapers, books, and film as well. And search engines etc have their own categories. Would you be able to guess without looking what top-level category contains Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, or Google?
- dyauspitr 1y agoThese might be the only reliable numbers in the country…
- cheschire 1y agohttps://archive.is/Gsu0y https://archive.is/Gsu0y
- zombiwoof 1y ago[dead]
- selfhosttoday 1y agoI'm not sure if this is entirely related, but during COVID (in SF) I was always surprised to see my colleagues so adamant against RTO once the vaccine was widely disseminated. I always felt that if jobs were remote there would be no need to hire us specifically - they'd hire in the cheaper parts of the country remotely or worse yet, other countries. The usual retort was that folks in North Carolina, Canada, Eastern Europe, Bangalore or whatever weren't as good - but I always thought such rebuttals were arrogant at worst, and ignorant at best. Sad to see that to some extent that's exactly what happened. My current tech take is that developers shouldn't allow AI and/or agents to do the entirety of their job, rather allow them to do more, and it should be framed as such specifically. e.g. don't use AI to write the entire feature, use it to make the feature better and drive more revenue, or more correct and result in less bugs, thus less wasted effort on ops/etc. It's amusing to see some people excited for AI to do the entirety of the implementation and planning, as if there would be no impact on us. If AI is that good, you just need TPMs (to the extent it's even possible, anyway). It's no surprise to see that jobs that cannot be done remotely are making a comeback.
- dasil003 1y agoHaving seen what happens when TPMs run things and otherwise smart engineers just do what they’re told, I can assure you this will not lead to good outcomes no matter how good AI gets.
- selfhosttoday 1y agoYes, but at least this way you don't need to pair SWEs.
- declan_roberts 1y agoThis is the time to cut back on h1b permits.
- bsder 1y agoOr, better yet, simply prevent any company who laid people off from being able to access any more H1-Bs for some number of years. You can keep your current H1-Bs, but no more for you for 5 years if you do a layoff.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y agoNot sure how that is better. Remove current H1Bs prior to any layoffs of US nationals.
- Jcampuzano2 1y agoBoth should be implemented. If you are laying workers off you clearly don't need additional H1B workers. You should be barred for at least a year if not more from putting in any applications for H1B after any major layoff. It should also be scrutinized if you preferably fire local workers over your H1B workers. Anybody caught doing so should be barred from H1B for a decade. I like my H1B coworkers, but things have gone too far. You can't do layoffs and simultaneously put in applications for thousands of H1B workers. It makes no logical sense and should be illegal. The system is completely broken right now. Not to mention most of this H1B work is not actually due to lack of local talent. Building a web or mobile app is not rocket science and there are plenty of people capable of doing so. Any company putting in H1B for anything but research positions or positions requiring exceptional expertise is probably abusing the system.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago>Both should be implemented. Love your thinking here. Total agreement. And yeah I have had great experiences with my H1B coworkers, but they are doing jobs that US professionals could easily do. At this point H1Bs are just (possibly unwitting?) scab labor.
- IX-103 1y agoMy anecdata - the large tech company I work for has practically stopped hiring. I went from conducting interviews practically every week in the first quarter to none at all on the post 3 months. Even during the layoffs on 2022 they were still hiring for some positions, so I conducted around 1-2 interviews a month.
- wavemode 1y agoI'm literally one of the last software engineers my company (in the Bay area) ever hired. I've been here for 2 years and only 1 engineer joined since then, meanwhile dozens left.
- akmarinov 1y agoSame in mine - started off as 800, had a salary freeze for a year, had a hiring freeze for now 2 years and after layoffs and people leaving we’re now at 480
- mertleee 1y agoThere's a reason most people you run into SF are either here on O1 or h1b visas these days... Time to cull the waterloo crowd and maybe think twice about cheap outsourcing to latam and india.
- justinhj 1y agoif it means I can hire Waterloo graduates again here in Canada that sounds fantastic
- mertleee 1y agoI couldn't agree more! Canada has massive potential, albeit also large issues with their immigration system being gamed. In my opinion, outsourcing is a larger evil. The money used to pay the salaries of outsourced engineers should be taxed at-least at 20% (along with remittances to India) akin to what we currently penalize foreign countries for maliciously suppressing the cost of physical goods. This is called Countervailing Duty or Anti Dumping Duty penalties. I've reached my limit with the entitlement of these people in the united states. Especially systematically excluding americans or non-indians once they reach a hiring level / role.
- s5300 1y ago[dead]
- trade2play 1y agoIndian software wages are about 1/3 US. The U.S. would need to tax them much more to dissuade outsourcing.
- la64710 1y agoHow will you tax people in India sitting here in US?
- akavi 1y agoAs an American citizen, born and bred, I would literally, physically fight you on behalf of keeping Waterloo grads in America. Many of the best coworkers I've had the pleasure of working with, not to mention the founders of the company I spent over a quarter of my career at (Pagerduty).
- exabrial 1y ago[flagged]
- hn_throwaway_99 1y agoAnyone talking about CA saying "oh, how can they be redistricting" should STFU and direct their ire at Texas and Trump. They started this, demanding this completely irregular mid-decade redistricting, so I for one am thrilled the Dems are finally growing a pair and fighting back.
- mrtksn 1y agoWhat if this turns into rust belt but for software? Once high paying jobs gone with AI, politicians trying to please grumpy software developers promising them to open a software shop and create jobs. Mostly college drop-outs, voting for a certain party that promises to take on AI :) Half kidding of course, but AFAIK many industries went through such a transformation and today most social and political issues stem from those areas that once were affluent lost their industries. Why not the software too?
- exabrial 1y agoLiterally no jobs are going away due to AI.
- mrtksn 1y agoSure, in total probably there will be even more and better jobs. Just like with the auto industry or the other industries that turned from producing stuff into designing stuff and telling to Chinese to produce it like this.
- mat_b 1y agoThat's not the whole picture. There are less positions available where you tell someone else what to do and more competition for those positions.
- rayiner 1y agoDefine “jobs.” A lot of the “jobs” created by offshoring production involved being service workers for the 25% of knowledge workers who benefit from offshoring.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y agoThis is easily, demonstrably false. The Washington Post ran an article over 2 years ago of specific, documented instances where people lost their jobs due to ChatGPT: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/02/ai-taking-jobs/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/02/ai-taki...
- softwaredoug 1y agoAre we sure its just tech? Isn't the entertainment industry going through a rough time right now as well?
- leeroihe 1y agoOver 50% of h1b visas issued in tech went to indian h1b's - no it's not an issue that's equivalent in the entertainment industry.
- jmspring 1y agoTime to start holding businesses accountable for pushing the cheaper labor option. Many of those on visas are biased toward those from their own cultural heritage as well.
- lokrian 1y agoThose businesses own all the social media, all the search engines, all the apps people discuss things on, and all the politicians.
- rayiner 1y ago> Many of those on visas are biased toward those from their own cultural heritage as well. It’s not even “bias.” It’s an odd form of white supremacy that views whites as above having material interests of their own. “It’s okay to be unfair to white people because they don’t need it like we do.” I make the clarification because I’ve noticed it even among people who don’t have in-group bias. My mom quite dislikes other Bangladeshis, but only slowly realized over 30 years of living here that there are white-majority parts of the country with real economic challenges.
- jmspring 1y agoI'm having a problem understanding are you saying it's white supremacy or parallel / similar too such? If its the former, I am not sure what you are trying to convey. For myself - seasoned engineer, european pursuasion, I want to work with people that are open and collaborative. I've worked with backgrounds like mine I would never work with again. I do have an issue with employers find an excuse to bias towards the lower cost labor pool that is H1s. And when teams get saturated that way, it perpetuates the same. These days, I have found large companies with a tech component and smaller companies within tech centers are more diverse/inclusive (as you will) than the FAANG type companies.
- siliconc0w 1y agoAfter a long drought I've seen more recruiter emails recently but I do think the days of 500k-1M TC are dwindling. Big Tech seems to be moving a lot of positions to LCOL areas and I don't see that abating.
- adw 1y agoThis very very very much depends what you do. ML critical-path roles are doing much better than everything else as far as I can tell.
- mdaniel 1y agoIn the midst of a gold rush, sell shovels and maps In the less glib way, I'll draw attention to the fact that machine learning roles are only one moving part of the machinery required to manage, operate, train, evaluate, demo, and integrate AI adjacent opportunities. That's to say one need not be a pytorch or differential equation ninja to contribute meaningful to riding the hype train
- adw 1y agoEntirely agree. Most of the critical path roles are not foundation model training, even in places that do foundation model training.
- vondur 1y agoCalifornia’s economy feels like it’s running on tech companies at this point. Any downturn in their hiring has really big effects on the California state budget.
- heavyset_go 1y agoThat's the downside of depending on regressive income taxes instead of taxing assets, capital gains, dividends, etc sufficiently.
- vondur 1y agoI think California had the highest capital gains tax in the US.
- wskinner 1y agoCalifornia has the most progressive taxation scheme of any state. Dividends and capital gains are taxed as income. I’m curious what you would consider “sufficient” taxation - the top marginal combined rate for a Californian is over 50%.
- Ericson2314 1y agoWhat it needs is more property tax aga, or better yet, land value tax.
- bushbaba 1y agoUnemployment in California was higher back in 2015. Feels like this is layoff related
- ipnon 1y agoIt's more concentrated in the middle class now. There are this year lots of underemployment opportunities for the lower class, and with MediCal and other welfare you can make ends meet. I have worked in both economies.
- TowerTall 1y agoIt is only two weeks ago the commissioner of labor statistics got fired and going forward one needs to be very sceptical about the integrity of numbers or statistics coming from the official US government resources. How can anyone at this point trust any US statistics? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fires-commissioner-of-labor-statistics-july-jobs-report-erika-mcentarfer/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fires-commissioner-of-lab...
- w10-1 1y agoThe topic deserves a lot better explanation. It's not helpful to just talk about absolute numbers of jobs gained or lost in a sector without talking about percentages and historical variability. It also appears the California number cited is based on a survey of ~4K people, some reporting they can't find work, while e.g., Federal unemployment is a function of people getting unemployment benefits. Do states do the same surveys with the same methodology, so the numbers are comparable? Likely not. So the term seems to be used in different senses, and "worst in the US" is unsupported. Further, for tech in particular, it's not clear which jobs were converted to contracts, for AI services or outsourcing (in or out of US). This kind of salad article is likely the future: enough for the general public worried about jobs, but not helpful to anyone who actually wants to understand and plan accordingly.
- jmalicki 1y agoNone of the above purported facts are true. From the link: Employment and Unemployment in California (Based on a monthly federal survey of 4,400 California households which focuses on workers in the economy) This is federal not state data. Federal unemployment data is based on this said survey. This link explicitly debunks that myth: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
- tqi 1y agoIMO it's far too early for "AI" to have had a meaningful effect on Software company hiring. A more plausible explanation for me is that between roughly 2012 and 2022, there was a tremendous increase in the supply of SWE talent (via undergraduate CS programs massively increasing enrollment, boot camps, immigration, etc), fueled primarily by ZIRP. On the demand side, ZIRPy VC funding primarily went to bullshit Crypto and (to a lesser extent) bullshit Metaverse companies, most of which have not panned out, meaning there is a dearth of late stage and newly public companies to hire said talent.
- disillusioned 1y agoI agree with all of this, coupled with a decent amount of layoffs from the Mag7s, though I'm not sure how distributed those were in California, necessarily.
- rubidium 1y agoBiotech is facing a huge downturn right now too.
- Fade_Dance 1y agoThat's a poster child of a casualty of ZIRP. Hard to imagine an industry any longer duration and hungry for cheap risk. I'm not sure about the thesis that this is primarily fallout from free money and suppressed interest rates though. That was really a '22 story, and even with long and variable lags, that element has been in play for a while now. Oversupply of talent definitely sounds like a good argument though. I'll posit there has been some disruption by recent developments in the industry. Also, while metaverse and crypto startups may be passe, the AI scene has disgusting amounts of hype and money, and crypto ain't dead either, which brings me back to the earlier point that I do think some disruption is there to fill the gap in the narrative.
- rubidium 1y agoFor people I talk, it is the end of ZIRP that caused it. ZIRP ended in April 2022. Even as interest rates went up the VCs still had committed funds to distribute for a year to 18 months. Then the biotechs had runway for 1-2 years from that. Now that’s all gone, and they can’t raise their next series. In the meantime, C> plus synbio is recently having a lower win rate than hoped for. That plus all the money that is there is all going to AI companies due to the shorter time to return / higher potential roic / hype.
- xyst 1y agoGot to love our kakistocracy.
- roody15 1y agoH1B visas are not going to help the situation. The reality is our corporate structure lobbies for legislation that lowers wages through various means and is quite effective at doing it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]