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I think there's something quite interesting (well to me anyway) where if you go by the internet, there is this bloodbath (slight exaggeration perhaps but feels

by cal_dent 11mo ago

I think there's something quite interesting (well to me anyway) where if you go by the internet, there is this bloodbath (slight exaggeration perhaps but feels like that) in jobs out in the US, UK, Aus and major European countries (the volume of anecdotes & complaints would suggest a significant downturn in employment) but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along. Not great guns but still ok. The interesting thing is how much is internet chatter a leading signal for this thing now than in previous cycles? Outside of the unique circumstances of covid, we've never had, to my knowledge, a notable downturn when social media, and all the chatter it generates, has been so prominent or mass engaged. How much of it is just internet noise vs canary in the coal mine stuff. Who knows? But curious to find out in coming months/year

epistasis 11mo ago
At least in the US we haven't had official data for quite some time. The BLS lost its chief because of "bad numbers" The numbers we do have show significantly worse jobs numbers compared to prior years. We might get data again, maybe not, but the US government has had an internal revolution, and it's doubtful we will have data as good as in the past, and it's quite likely that any bad news will be deeply buried.
- reactordev 11mo ago
  BTC would agree with you. It’s nose diving.
  - epistasis 11mo ago
    Since its a Sunday night during a holiday weekend without any big breaking news, I would suspect that's probably just a bunch of people that had automated sales at $90k, or something similar.
    - reactordev 11mo ago
      Love that HODL optimism. Looking at the longer charts there seems to be support around $80k so maybe. This could just be holiday shopping. The timing of economics with this though has me worried the support will falter causing a sell off and Monday’s bell will be a bloodbath.
      - epistasis 11mo ago
        I have zero optimism for BTC, hold zero, and can't imagine a circumstance where I'd ever buy some. (Though perhaps a few more years of current US policy and USD will be so terrible that BTC starts to be more attractive...) I see that Tokyo stock markets are way down today, that's probably what's driving lower BTC?
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
      - fragmede 11mo ago
        For a look at the shopping economics, this year's bfcm at stripe is pretty fun! http://bfcm.stripe.com http://bfcm.stripe.com people are selling off Bitcoin to have money to buy stuff, and that link is an inside baseball look at how much stuff is being bought.
    - dboreham 11mo ago
      A common pattern is: people (I supposed I mean: investors) are somewhat worried that markets are over valued. They ponder, think, research, binge-watch Prof G videos... Then they travel to have Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of in-laws. Market gets discussed over cigars. If they get a confirmation signal from the brother in law attorney or sister in law dentist that they are worried too...then after mulling it over on the flight back to Denver...the market dumps on Monday.
tencentshill 11mo ago
I know 4 people who were laid off this year. 2 federal government (1 contractor) and 2 large corporate. Entirely anecdotal, but the data I see isn't good.
- arresin 11mo ago
  The commenter you’re replying to is from Australia and things are likely different here
csomar 11mo ago
Tech is more affected than the rest which is over-represented in discussions. Also people who can’t find a job tend to be more vocal than the rest.
- fragmede 11mo ago
  Are they perhaps more vocal because they have a lot of time on their hands?
  - t-writescode 11mo ago
    You mean spending all their time looking for a new job, applying for various benefits, doing side work as much as they can, at pay far lower than they're used to so it takes more hours of gig work to reach equilibrium?
    - shagie 11mo ago
      > ... at pay far lower than they're used to ... Is this saying something more about the relative expectation of compensation bands? New grads are unlikely to have a comparable benchmark. People who've worked in Big Tech and finding themselves applying to regular companies where the revenue per employee is in the $200k range are likely going to have difficulty adjusting to such. I work in the public sector and make very low six digits. Others I know have compensation that is 3x or 4x what I make while working in technology industries. If both I and the people I chat with were to find themselves suddenly out of a job, I suspect I'd find an acceptable job elsewhere more easily than they would because anything I did would be a pay raise while anything they took would be a pay cut. This in turn translates to that I would be the less risky candidate (that I wouldn't be looking for a new position that would pay more within the year)... and thus I believe not only would I be more likely to accept the job I would also be more likely to be extended the position. Browsing reddit there are a lot of people on cscareerquestions (and similar) who have the mindset of FAANG or bust as a new grad. That they wouldn't even consider working at a company like Little Cesar's or Home Depot despite those companies having open positions. --- Furthermore, this gets into a lemon market situation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons ). Where it becomes harder to distinguish a good candidate for a poor one and that can only be found out after someone is hired, the companies that have people are more afraid of hiring a lemon than so don't hire anyone. This further depresses the market for the highly skilled candidates. Additionally, people who are skilled are less likely to look for a new job because the market is depressed and they're not as likely to get a good position afterwards.
markus_zhang 11mo ago
Reality is not particularly rosy for new graduates AFAIK. If I lose my job, I wouldn't be super surprised that I might never get a similar job for the rest of my life -- it is not that I do not have the skills, but 1) the amount of time for a laid off SDE to get a new job could reach to years, not months, so I need to do something else to earn $$$, and 2) why are companies going to hire me, who have gap years and are older, but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary? And yes I believe this time it's going to be different. I believe that if the economy dumps again, we are really going to see more hot wars. It is different from 2001, and different from 2008. We have kicked the can for almost 20 years and I kudos the policy makers who managed to achieve this.
- sheepscreek 11mo ago
  > but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary Cause garbage in, gets garbage out. With AI models being all the more rage in the coming years, unexperienced hires will prove many times more costly. (10x garbage with agents). So companies are going to concentrate their worker base even more with experienced folks. They need fewer of them. Yes. But quality matters more than ever. I really feel bad for the new graduates. For no fault of their own, the bar went up so high. Unless they’re a child prodigy doing some coding projects on the side since the age of 10 - no one will hire them. So how will they ever gain the experience they need? Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a reinvention of coding schools - that will now focus on fundamental and industry knowledge - imparted by other veterans, instead of teaching applied skills.
  - markus_zhang 11mo ago
    I agree with you, but I forgot to mention that in the original reply I meant to say that "After the economy turns around, there is no point to hire me, an older guy with maybe a couple of gap years, who worked as a Uber driver for the last two years and can't leetcode". But yeah, new graduates is going to suffer anyway. And I'm scared of the collapse of the existing world order. Maybe we won't see a turn around for many years if it does collapse -- and we are already seeing many cracks on it.
sheepscreek 11mo ago
I believe you’re in the minority here. Perhaps your experience is different because of your skill set or the market you’re in. Anyone that I know personally who got laid off (in tech) took at least 6 months to find a job. I don’t know about anyone else but that to me is pretty brutal. More so as the people getting laid off are mid career, some with kids. Edit: Add to the above that companies like Walmart are seeing an uptick in high wage earners becoming their customers, and McDonalds seeing a shrinking population of low-wage customers. It’s easy to infer the rest from there. People who used to do well are cutting expenses and those who were already struggling are..I seriously don’t know what they’re doing. Where do you eat when you downgrade from McDonalds..Wendy’s? It’s a sad state of affairs. Source: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-11-16/mcdonalds-is-losing-its-low-income-customers https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-11-16/mcdonalds-...
- __MatrixMan__ 11mo ago
  > Where do you eat when you downgrade from McDonalds? You buy groceries. And if you must downgrade from there you eat the rich.
  - mbfg 11mo ago
    the advantage of fast-food over groceries, is that you don't have to worry about spoilage and waste. So the delta is probably less than you think. Now granted McD is an s-show, they are no longer the restaurant of the poor, You likely can get a better burger meal deal at a Chilis than a McD, as sad as that is.
    - ac29 11mo ago
      Even if you waste half your groceries its still cheaper than eating out. And wasting that much is difficult to do, most staples will last weeks to years without risk of spoilage. There are some fresh fruits and vegetables that are exceptions because they dont take well to refrigeration or freezing but really not much.
      - 11mo ago
vannevar 11mo ago
>...but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along. I don't know that the official data shows things "still bobbing along." The graph of monthly employment numbers looks like it has a decidedly downward trend overall. September jobs were unexpectedly high, but we've had a lot of subsequent downward revisions and it may happen again for September. https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2025/11/20/jobs-report-employment-september-2025 https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2025/11/2...
- cal_dent 11mo ago
  looks like a return to post GFC pre-covid trend. That's sort of what I mean, we've obviously come from a boom-ish market and correcting. How much of it now is the shock that now isnt the same as the 2021-2023 market v this is the start of a real downturn. I don't know
  - vannevar 11mo ago
    Don't be fooled by the scaling due to the covid spike, 2025 looks quite a bit worse than pre-covid. It looks more like pre-2008.
duxup 11mo ago
I find that social media just trends more negative generally. People engage with the negative.
johnnyanmac 11mo ago
>out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along. The Titanic had 3 days of warning and took 3 hours to sink. A large ship takes a long time to do anything, be it turn or drown. If you've been following the breadcrumbs in pretty much any industry (especially tech), you know the market isn't in a good shape. If you're looking outside expencting to see the world burning, you gotta wait another 3 hours (or hope someone steps in first).
vachina 11mo ago
Jobless are probably a vocal minority. Nothing paints a picture of recession in reality right now.
- MangoToupe 11mo ago
  Well for one, the concept of a recession is entirely unrelated to employment rates
- ta12653421 11mo ago
  Clearly: You are not in one of the major EU-countries :-)
iwontberude 11mo ago
Actually having trouble finding candidates...
- pyuser583 11mo ago
  What are you looking for?
  - iwontberude 11mo ago
    DevOps
reeredfdfdf 11mo ago
I live in Finland, with over 10% unemployment according to official statistics (second highest in EU, just after Spain). From what I can tell, things really suck especially for fresh grads. There's fierce competition for jobs like cashier at supermarket, hundreds of applications for one position is normal. Lots of fresh grads with bachelor's or master's degree compete for those jobs too, since they can't find anything better. Also, of the few open positions, many are the kind of "rental work" that offer only limited hours a week, at unpredictable times. So, this is what an objectively bad job market looks like in Europe.
- torginus 11mo ago
  Is having temporarily high unemployment that bad? Sure, demand is not as sky high as it used to be but doesn't mean people won't get a proper job eventually. Imo it shows that you consider your people valuable and have a strong social safety net, so people are not forced to accept the first job that comes their way and compromise on pay or what you want to do. I'm sure those grads could get underpaid crappy jobs the next day if they had to, but the point is they're not forced to. If you can't sort this out in a couple years, then you have a real problem.
  - mschuster91 11mo ago
    > If you can't sort this out in a couple years, then you have a real problem. The problem is, we've been in an era of the polycrisis for decades - first 2007 the financial crisis thanks to the US subprime loan market, then the Euro crisis, then came the refugee crisis 2015, then the second refugee crisis 2018, then Covid, then the Russian invasion, then the Israel-Palestine war, and now Trump. And the last three and a half crises are still going on simultaneously. There has been no recovery period in which things could settle and those who got left behind could catch up, it was straight from one crisis to the next.
MangoToupe 11mo ago
> we've never had, to my knowledge, a notable downturn when social media, and all the chatter it generates, has been so prominent or mass engaged How would we even know? It's not like there's a practical way to measure this from an individual's perspective.
fuoqi 11mo ago
There are several factors which contribute to the "rosy" official picture: - A lot of people participate in the gig economy instead of getting registered as unemployed. - AI has eroded a lot of employment opportunities for graduates, i.e. people relatively active on social networks. - Official data can be horribly inaccurate (phone surveys in 2025, seriously?) with grossly outdated models (remember the recent huge revisions?). Political pressure does not help here either. - The unemployment stats do not account for significant downgrades in salary and working conditions. They will show the same picture for a person with a cushy office job and the same person working 2 jobs in retail from paycheck-to-paycheck.
port11 11mo ago
I've been unemployed for quite some time as a software developer with 13 years of experience. The unemployment agency of my country tries to help, but the reality is that the amount of new jobs every week is staggeringly low since end-2024. The agent on my case was herself honest about the prospects. It's even worse for younger developers or very old folk. I tuned into my old freelance network in Germany and the account manager told me they're seeing 60–70% less freelance work in tech. I could get a job in the odd thing here and there, so I'm not immensely worried yet, plus it allows me to stay home and raise our baby. But I think everyone around me is worried, even outside tech.
elric 11mo ago
Some anecdata from Belgium: the software market is dead. Hardly anyone is hiring. Rates have plummetted. There are (virtually) no startups. Big corpos are hiring in Southern and Eastern Europe instead, when they're not outsourcing to India. Unlike some of the US commenters, our high tax rates and lack of stock-options driven reward schemes means that most of us don't have enough money in the bank to casually found a startup.
- mschuster91 11mo ago
  > Unlike some of the US commenters, our high tax rates and lack of stock-options driven reward schemes means that most of us don't have enough money in the bank to casually found a startup. That's because it effectively is gambling. Maybe if you are one of the first 50 employees in a startup that is one of 100 to reach "unicorn" stage, you have the chance to strike it big... but then you are 0.01% of all employees of startups. The 99.99%? They'll have had their company fold or let them go due to the company "pivoting" or "having to look better in quarterly reports", they'll have left voluntarily for one reason or the other, or they'll have been let go right before the vesting period to save the company money and end up with nothing vested, or the company will have gone to three, four, five or more rounds of funding watering down existing options, or the company will have gone bust... all while having traded the "chance" of striking it big for lower pay, thus reducing payments into our tax, social security and healthcare systems. Europe does not like gambling with the lives of its citizens and the stability of our systems.
- fragmede 11mo ago
  I've been lead to believe that, in lieu of startup founding cash in the bank, there's a better social safety net, for use in cases like these. Is that not the case?
  - elric 11mo ago
    There is a pretty good social safety net, at least in Belgium. Though its funding is under pressure due to high spending and taxes being pretty much maxed out already. And while I could probably start a company and be reasonably sure that I won't go homeless if it fails, by virtue of that social safety net. The social safety net doesn't give me the cash to hire my first couple of engineers. This is a bit of a caricature of course. Banks exist. Startup accelerators exist. There are places and ways to get funding. But doing it with your own savings is virtually unheard of over here.
Earw0rm 11mo ago
Think it's a filter effect. The areas getting hit especially hard happen to overlap strongly with the most online, which is a relatively small part of the economy overall - and, if you get cut, you've got a bunch more time to to talk about it, which amplifies things further. Plenty of other areas doing OK for now - construction, healthcare especially - there's no shortage of money around, it's just not going into tech projects outside of the AI bubble.
nicbou 11mo ago
Some anecdata from Berlin: - It's now much harder to get a job without speaking German - There is now competition for low-wage service jobs - At times it felt like half of my friends were unemployed - My dev friends have a much harder time finding work. Back in 2015-2020 I had to beat recruiters back with a stick.
- prasoon2211 11mo ago
  Agree on all points, especially half of my friend circle being unemployed at one point. Folks with amazing jobs having to spend >1y trying to find a "meh" job. Pretty much impossible to find a job without fluent German.
  - nicbou 11mo ago
    My dev friends could find English speaking jobs but everyone else is struggling. Some are moving away, compromising, or nervously watching the end date of their unemployment insurance. The salaries actually went down since last year if I'm not mistaken.
BenGosub 11mo ago
IMO the shift towards AI was very detrimental to the job market, because every company started to work on their AI strategy and not on their core competencies. This has resulted in most companies failing to materialize their AI strategies, while burning their cash. One of the reasons for this is that the average company competes against Goliaths that have infinite funding. At first many companies stopped developing mobile apps and I think mobile app devs were the first hit. Second, the frontend developers were hit because of how the AI can generate good enough websites, however, they aren't hit as hard as the mobile developers. This has spread into most parts of the stack with a variable impact.
doom2 11mo ago
> but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along. Not great guns but still ok. The interesting thing is how much is internet chatter a leading signal for this thing now than in previous cycles? It's really interesting to read both this comment and the featured article because my recollection is that one of the big reasons Harris lost in 2024 is that Democrats kept saying the underlying economic data was fine but voters felt things were bad, even if they weren't (the so-called 'vibecession'). Maybe also a bit of distrusting economic experts. So which is it? Are voters just being illogical and should trust when others say the economy is doing fine? Or is there something not being captured in economic data that validates people's concerns?
array_key_first 11mo ago
The downturn of the economy, as a whole, is very real while simultaneously we are doing "just fine". The "just fine" part is that our stock market is doing quite well, and those who are already wealthy greatly increased the velocity of their wealth. The flip side is that everything is too expensive, including labor, and we have to cut corners to make line go up. Most companies, by this point, have been more or less stripped for parts in pursuit of growth. Most are stagnating or experiencing negative growth now, because obviously, except a key few. And those key few are pretty much holding everything together. Speculatively. Based off of the promise of growth without labor. So, that's kind of where we're at right now.

epistasis 11mo ago

At least in the US we haven't had official data for quite some time. The BLS lost its chief because of "bad numbers" The numbers we do have show significantly worse jobs numbers compared to prior years. We might get data again, maybe not, but the US government has had an internal revolution, and it's doubtful we will have data as good as in the past, and it's quite likely that any bad news will be deeply buried.

reactordev 11mo ago
BTC would agree with you. It’s nose diving.
- epistasis 11mo ago
  Since its a Sunday night during a holiday weekend without any big breaking news, I would suspect that's probably just a bunch of people that had automated sales at $90k, or something similar.
  - reactordev 11mo ago
    Love that HODL optimism. Looking at the longer charts there seems to be support around $80k so maybe. This could just be holiday shopping. The timing of economics with this though has me worried the support will falter causing a sell off and Monday’s bell will be a bloodbath.
    - epistasis 11mo ago
      I have zero optimism for BTC, hold zero, and can't imagine a circumstance where I'd ever buy some. (Though perhaps a few more years of current US policy and USD will be so terrible that BTC starts to be more attractive...) I see that Tokyo stock markets are way down today, that's probably what's driving lower BTC?
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - fragmede 11mo ago
      For a look at the shopping economics, this year's bfcm at stripe is pretty fun! http://bfcm.stripe.com http://bfcm.stripe.com people are selling off Bitcoin to have money to buy stuff, and that link is an inside baseball look at how much stuff is being bought.
  - dboreham 11mo ago
    A common pattern is: people (I supposed I mean: investors) are somewhat worried that markets are over valued. They ponder, think, research, binge-watch Prof G videos... Then they travel to have Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of in-laws. Market gets discussed over cigars. If they get a confirmation signal from the brother in law attorney or sister in law dentist that they are worried too...then after mulling it over on the flight back to Denver...the market dumps on Monday.

tencentshill 11mo ago

I know 4 people who were laid off this year. 2 federal government (1 contractor) and 2 large corporate. Entirely anecdotal, but the data I see isn't good.

arresin 11mo ago
The commenter you’re replying to is from Australia and things are likely different here

csomar 11mo ago

Tech is more affected than the rest which is over-represented in discussions. Also people who can’t find a job tend to be more vocal than the rest.

fragmede 11mo ago
Are they perhaps more vocal because they have a lot of time on their hands?
- t-writescode 11mo ago
  You mean spending all their time looking for a new job, applying for various benefits, doing side work as much as they can, at pay far lower than they're used to so it takes more hours of gig work to reach equilibrium?
  - shagie 11mo ago
    > ... at pay far lower than they're used to ... Is this saying something more about the relative expectation of compensation bands? New grads are unlikely to have a comparable benchmark. People who've worked in Big Tech and finding themselves applying to regular companies where the revenue per employee is in the $200k range are likely going to have difficulty adjusting to such. I work in the public sector and make very low six digits. Others I know have compensation that is 3x or 4x what I make while working in technology industries. If both I and the people I chat with were to find themselves suddenly out of a job, I suspect I'd find an acceptable job elsewhere more easily than they would because anything I did would be a pay raise while anything they took would be a pay cut. This in turn translates to that I would be the less risky candidate (that I wouldn't be looking for a new position that would pay more within the year)... and thus I believe not only would I be more likely to accept the job I would also be more likely to be extended the position. Browsing reddit there are a lot of people on cscareerquestions (and similar) who have the mindset of FAANG or bust as a new grad. That they wouldn't even consider working at a company like Little Cesar's or Home Depot despite those companies having open positions. --- Furthermore, this gets into a lemon market situation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons ). Where it becomes harder to distinguish a good candidate for a poor one and that can only be found out after someone is hired, the companies that have people are more afraid of hiring a lemon than so don't hire anyone. This further depresses the market for the highly skilled candidates. Additionally, people who are skilled are less likely to look for a new job because the market is depressed and they're not as likely to get a good position afterwards.

markus_zhang 11mo ago

Reality is not particularly rosy for new graduates AFAIK. If I lose my job, I wouldn't be super surprised that I might never get a similar job for the rest of my life -- it is not that I do not have the skills, but 1) the amount of time for a laid off SDE to get a new job could reach to years, not months, so I need to do something else to earn $$$, and 2) why are companies going to hire me, who have gap years and are older, but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary? And yes I believe this time it's going to be different. I believe that if the economy dumps again, we are really going to see more hot wars. It is different from 2001, and different from 2008. We have kicked the can for almost 20 years and I kudos the policy makers who managed to achieve this.

sheepscreek 11mo ago
> but not some fresh graduates who can work 80 hours per week and only demand half of the salary Cause garbage in, gets garbage out. With AI models being all the more rage in the coming years, unexperienced hires will prove many times more costly. (10x garbage with agents). So companies are going to concentrate their worker base even more with experienced folks. They need fewer of them. Yes. But quality matters more than ever. I really feel bad for the new graduates. For no fault of their own, the bar went up so high. Unless they’re a child prodigy doing some coding projects on the side since the age of 10 - no one will hire them. So how will they ever gain the experience they need? Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a reinvention of coding schools - that will now focus on fundamental and industry knowledge - imparted by other veterans, instead of teaching applied skills.
- markus_zhang 11mo ago
  I agree with you, but I forgot to mention that in the original reply I meant to say that "After the economy turns around, there is no point to hire me, an older guy with maybe a couple of gap years, who worked as a Uber driver for the last two years and can't leetcode". But yeah, new graduates is going to suffer anyway. And I'm scared of the collapse of the existing world order. Maybe we won't see a turn around for many years if it does collapse -- and we are already seeing many cracks on it.

sheepscreek 11mo ago

I believe you’re in the minority here. Perhaps your experience is different because of your skill set or the market you’re in. Anyone that I know personally who got laid off (in tech) took at least 6 months to find a job. I don’t know about anyone else but that to me is pretty brutal. More so as the people getting laid off are mid career, some with kids. Edit: Add to the above that companies like Walmart are seeing an uptick in high wage earners becoming their customers, and McDonalds seeing a shrinking population of low-wage customers. It’s easy to infer the rest from there. People who used to do well are cutting expenses and those who were already struggling are..I seriously don’t know what they’re doing. Where do you eat when you downgrade from McDonalds..Wendy’s? It’s a sad state of affairs. Source: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-11-16/mcdonalds-is-losing-its-low-income-customers https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-11-16/mcdonalds-...

__MatrixMan__ 11mo ago
> Where do you eat when you downgrade from McDonalds? You buy groceries. And if you must downgrade from there you eat the rich.
- mbfg 11mo ago
  the advantage of fast-food over groceries, is that you don't have to worry about spoilage and waste. So the delta is probably less than you think. Now granted McD is an s-show, they are no longer the restaurant of the poor, You likely can get a better burger meal deal at a Chilis than a McD, as sad as that is.
  - ac29 11mo ago
    Even if you waste half your groceries its still cheaper than eating out. And wasting that much is difficult to do, most staples will last weeks to years without risk of spoilage. There are some fresh fruits and vegetables that are exceptions because they dont take well to refrigeration or freezing but really not much.
    - 11mo ago

vannevar 11mo ago

>...but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along. I don't know that the official data shows things "still bobbing along." The graph of monthly employment numbers looks like it has a decidedly downward trend overall. September jobs were unexpectedly high, but we've had a lot of subsequent downward revisions and it may happen again for September. https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2025/11/20/jobs-report-employment-september-2025 https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2025/11/2...

cal_dent 11mo ago
looks like a return to post GFC pre-covid trend. That's sort of what I mean, we've obviously come from a boom-ish market and correcting. How much of it now is the shock that now isnt the same as the 2021-2023 market v this is the start of a real downturn. I don't know
- vannevar 11mo ago
  Don't be fooled by the scaling due to the covid spike, 2025 looks quite a bit worse than pre-covid. It looks more like pre-2008.

duxup 11mo ago

I find that social media just trends more negative generally. People engage with the negative.

johnnyanmac 11mo ago

>out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along. The Titanic had 3 days of warning and took 3 hours to sink. A large ship takes a long time to do anything, be it turn or drown. If you've been following the breadcrumbs in pretty much any industry (especially tech), you know the market isn't in a good shape. If you're looking outside expencting to see the world burning, you gotta wait another 3 hours (or hope someone steps in first).

vachina 11mo ago

Jobless are probably a vocal minority. Nothing paints a picture of recession in reality right now.

MangoToupe 11mo ago
Well for one, the concept of a recession is entirely unrelated to employment rates
ta12653421 11mo ago
Clearly: You are not in one of the major EU-countries :-)

iwontberude 11mo ago

Actually having trouble finding candidates...

pyuser583 11mo ago
What are you looking for?
- iwontberude 11mo ago
  DevOps

reeredfdfdf 11mo ago

I live in Finland, with over 10% unemployment according to official statistics (second highest in EU, just after Spain). From what I can tell, things really suck especially for fresh grads. There's fierce competition for jobs like cashier at supermarket, hundreds of applications for one position is normal. Lots of fresh grads with bachelor's or master's degree compete for those jobs too, since they can't find anything better. Also, of the few open positions, many are the kind of "rental work" that offer only limited hours a week, at unpredictable times. So, this is what an objectively bad job market looks like in Europe.

torginus 11mo ago
Is having temporarily high unemployment that bad? Sure, demand is not as sky high as it used to be but doesn't mean people won't get a proper job eventually. Imo it shows that you consider your people valuable and have a strong social safety net, so people are not forced to accept the first job that comes their way and compromise on pay or what you want to do. I'm sure those grads could get underpaid crappy jobs the next day if they had to, but the point is they're not forced to. If you can't sort this out in a couple years, then you have a real problem.
- mschuster91 11mo ago
  > If you can't sort this out in a couple years, then you have a real problem. The problem is, we've been in an era of the polycrisis for decades - first 2007 the financial crisis thanks to the US subprime loan market, then the Euro crisis, then came the refugee crisis 2015, then the second refugee crisis 2018, then Covid, then the Russian invasion, then the Israel-Palestine war, and now Trump. And the last three and a half crises are still going on simultaneously. There has been no recovery period in which things could settle and those who got left behind could catch up, it was straight from one crisis to the next.

MangoToupe 11mo ago

> we've never had, to my knowledge, a notable downturn when social media, and all the chatter it generates, has been so prominent or mass engaged How would we even know? It's not like there's a practical way to measure this from an individual's perspective.

fuoqi 11mo ago

There are several factors which contribute to the "rosy" official picture: - A lot of people participate in the gig economy instead of getting registered as unemployed. - AI has eroded a lot of employment opportunities for graduates, i.e. people relatively active on social networks. - Official data can be horribly inaccurate (phone surveys in 2025, seriously?) with grossly outdated models (remember the recent huge revisions?). Political pressure does not help here either. - The unemployment stats do not account for significant downgrades in salary and working conditions. They will show the same picture for a person with a cushy office job and the same person working 2 jobs in retail from paycheck-to-paycheck.

port11 11mo ago

I've been unemployed for quite some time as a software developer with 13 years of experience. The unemployment agency of my country tries to help, but the reality is that the amount of new jobs every week is staggeringly low since end-2024. The agent on my case was herself honest about the prospects. It's even worse for younger developers or very old folk. I tuned into my old freelance network in Germany and the account manager told me they're seeing 60–70% less freelance work in tech. I could get a job in the odd thing here and there, so I'm not immensely worried yet, plus it allows me to stay home and raise our baby. But I think everyone around me is worried, even outside tech.

elric 11mo ago

Some anecdata from Belgium: the software market is dead. Hardly anyone is hiring. Rates have plummetted. There are (virtually) no startups. Big corpos are hiring in Southern and Eastern Europe instead, when they're not outsourcing to India. Unlike some of the US commenters, our high tax rates and lack of stock-options driven reward schemes means that most of us don't have enough money in the bank to casually found a startup.

mschuster91 11mo ago
> Unlike some of the US commenters, our high tax rates and lack of stock-options driven reward schemes means that most of us don't have enough money in the bank to casually found a startup. That's because it effectively is gambling. Maybe if you are one of the first 50 employees in a startup that is one of 100 to reach "unicorn" stage, you have the chance to strike it big... but then you are 0.01% of all employees of startups. The 99.99%? They'll have had their company fold or let them go due to the company "pivoting" or "having to look better in quarterly reports", they'll have left voluntarily for one reason or the other, or they'll have been let go right before the vesting period to save the company money and end up with nothing vested, or the company will have gone to three, four, five or more rounds of funding watering down existing options, or the company will have gone bust... all while having traded the "chance" of striking it big for lower pay, thus reducing payments into our tax, social security and healthcare systems. Europe does not like gambling with the lives of its citizens and the stability of our systems.
fragmede 11mo ago
I've been lead to believe that, in lieu of startup founding cash in the bank, there's a better social safety net, for use in cases like these. Is that not the case?
- elric 11mo ago
  There is a pretty good social safety net, at least in Belgium. Though its funding is under pressure due to high spending and taxes being pretty much maxed out already. And while I could probably start a company and be reasonably sure that I won't go homeless if it fails, by virtue of that social safety net. The social safety net doesn't give me the cash to hire my first couple of engineers. This is a bit of a caricature of course. Banks exist. Startup accelerators exist. There are places and ways to get funding. But doing it with your own savings is virtually unheard of over here.

Earw0rm 11mo ago

Think it's a filter effect. The areas getting hit especially hard happen to overlap strongly with the most online, which is a relatively small part of the economy overall - and, if you get cut, you've got a bunch more time to to talk about it, which amplifies things further. Plenty of other areas doing OK for now - construction, healthcare especially - there's no shortage of money around, it's just not going into tech projects outside of the AI bubble.

nicbou 11mo ago

Some anecdata from Berlin: - It's now much harder to get a job without speaking German - There is now competition for low-wage service jobs - At times it felt like half of my friends were unemployed - My dev friends have a much harder time finding work. Back in 2015-2020 I had to beat recruiters back with a stick.

prasoon2211 11mo ago
Agree on all points, especially half of my friend circle being unemployed at one point. Folks with amazing jobs having to spend >1y trying to find a "meh" job. Pretty much impossible to find a job without fluent German.
- nicbou 11mo ago
  My dev friends could find English speaking jobs but everyone else is struggling. Some are moving away, compromising, or nervously watching the end date of their unemployment insurance. The salaries actually went down since last year if I'm not mistaken.

BenGosub 11mo ago

IMO the shift towards AI was very detrimental to the job market, because every company started to work on their AI strategy and not on their core competencies. This has resulted in most companies failing to materialize their AI strategies, while burning their cash. One of the reasons for this is that the average company competes against Goliaths that have infinite funding. At first many companies stopped developing mobile apps and I think mobile app devs were the first hit. Second, the frontend developers were hit because of how the AI can generate good enough websites, however, they aren't hit as hard as the mobile developers. This has spread into most parts of the stack with a variable impact.

doom2 11mo ago

> but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along. Not great guns but still ok. The interesting thing is how much is internet chatter a leading signal for this thing now than in previous cycles? It's really interesting to read both this comment and the featured article because my recollection is that one of the big reasons Harris lost in 2024 is that Democrats kept saying the underlying economic data was fine but voters felt things were bad, even if they weren't (the so-called 'vibecession'). Maybe also a bit of distrusting economic experts. So which is it? Are voters just being illogical and should trust when others say the economy is doing fine? Or is there something not being captured in economic data that validates people's concerns?

array_key_first 11mo ago

The downturn of the economy, as a whole, is very real while simultaneously we are doing "just fine". The "just fine" part is that our stock market is doing quite well, and those who are already wealthy greatly increased the velocity of their wealth. The flip side is that everything is too expensive, including labor, and we have to cut corners to make line go up. Most companies, by this point, have been more or less stripped for parts in pursuit of growth. Most are stagnating or experiencing negative growth now, because obviously, except a key few. And those key few are pretty much holding everything together. Speculatively. Based off of the promise of growth without labor. So, that's kind of where we're at right now.