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US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- zerosizedweasle 10mo agohttps://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/institutional/insights/market-insights/eye-on-the-market/outlook-2026/ https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/institutional...
- newsymonger 10mo ago[flagged]
- charliebwrites 10mo agoMy hot take: We’re already in a recession. We just use AI to justify doing all the same recession behaviors while making it sound like innovation - not hiring this year > AI is making us productive! - no wage growth > AI means we don’t need to raise salaries - layoffs > with AI we can do more with less people - spending less on offsites, work perks etc > we really need that budget for AI - not spending money on that new business tool > AI can do it instead
- hombre_fatal 10mo agoI think that's mostly just HNers assuming AI like Claude Code is already penetrating the day to day work of the workforce. "If I use, then everyone is probably using it". Yet AI penetration is so low right now that it probably has zero role in the job market. And it keeps us distracted from talking about the real reasons behind job opening decline. That said, once AI ubiquity picks up within the next few years, we'll have all of the existing problems we're not talking about... plus AI. And we'll probably be even less capable of talking about the complexities of the market intelligently.
- strangescript 10mo agoyes, AI isn't penetrating those fields with high job losses at all
- master_crab 10mo agoAI isn’t penetrating but all the money needed to invest in the economy has moved over. Maybe that’s also part of the problem
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 10mo agoMaybe. I am likely not a typical HNer, but my company actually has use of AI our 2026 goals. I am not guessing. I know majority of people in this company have those goals baked in. Now, can I suspect other like companies do the same? No. But even if they don't, it does not matter. Because the companies that don't allow AI, have people who use it anyway..
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- hombre_fatal 10mo agoThe writing is on the wall for AI. It is coming fast and it is transformative. That your company is still trying to ramp up AI adoption and processes for 2026 supports my point. But we've been blaming AI for a couple years now, yet I suspect it's still too early in the adoption curve to have a meaningful impact on hiring compared to more boring explanations.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 10mo agoI hear what you are saying. In a very practical sense, I have no real way to measure either of those factors and the company I work for is international so that does not allow for an easy extrapolation. I guess what it really means is: we will find out:P
- DetectDefect 10mo agoHot take? Half of the US is formally in recession already. https://fortune.com/2025/10/09/america-feels-recession-state-dependent-income-cohort-moody-zandi/ https://fortune.com/2025/10/09/america-feels-recession-state... The economy is completely fucked and we are in a race to steal and horde all the data before people catch on.
- bpt3 10mo ago[flagged]
- DetectDefect 10mo ago22/50 ~= half. No one claim it was half the population, other than you (strangely). TIL Moody’s Analytics is "doomer FUD".
- bpt3 10mo ago"Half the US" very rarely means "slightly less than half of the states in the US" without any qualifiers. And yes, Moody's Analytics chief economist is generally known for making wildly inaccurate predictions. Regardless, your take on all of this is what I called doomer FUD, which goes well beyond Zandi's take.
- some_guy_nobel 10mo agoNice - anything to offer up other than name calling? Do you have any ideas of your own related to the displayed data and narrative?
- bpt3 10mo agoSure, I already offered some thoughts up-thread. And I didn't call the parent poster any names, just pointed out that the assessment he was relying on was nonsensical (and probably designed solely to generate ad revenue and brand awareness) and his conclusions were extremely pessimistic compared to the consensus. Should I have invented my own biased metric (maybe based on land mass since very few of the larger US states are experiencing a recession based on the source provided) as a counterpoint? What are your ideas concerning the displayed data and narrative?
- bpt3 10mo agoEh, layoffs also declined, consumer spending is up YoY, and we all know about the investments being made in AI that very well might be propping up the economy. AI, when effective, is deflationary because it allows for similar productivity at a lower cost. That's what you're describing above, not a shadow recession that is being papered over by claims of AI use. To my point: You could have replaced "AI" with "computing" for most of the last 50 years and been left with the same argument.
- candiddevmike 10mo agoMy hotter take: we're in an economic death spiral. There isn't enough juice that can be squeezed short of mass wealth redistribution to reinvigorate the economy, and what is out there is locked up in stocks that don't translate to revenue. Slashing rates will just skyrocket prices and over inflate our monetary supply, and further tax cuts will only whittle away what's left of government services and social safety nets. Companies are going to start collapsing in a domino effect as liquidity dries up and contracts get cut.
- hmmokidk 10mo agoMassive wealth redistribution is just another word for Taxes. When we taxed the rich we were happy. It’s literally all we gotta do.
- garciasn 10mo agohttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S Federal Receipts as a Percent of GDP measures total government revenue relative to the size of the economy, serving as a standardized way to track the federal tax burden over time. Although the top marginal tax rate in the 1950s indeed exceeded 90%, federal receipts hovered around 17% of GDP; this was nearly identical to current levels, because loopholes and high income thresholds (roughly equivalent to $2MM for single/$4MM for couples) meant almost no one actually paid that top rate. The effective tax rate for the top 1% was closer to 42% rather than 90%, demonstrating that extremely high statutory rates on paper do not necessarily generate proportionally higher government revenue.
- rich_sasha 10mo agoThe total tax intake is fairly unambiguous. Personal tax bill for the vast majority of people is also quite clear. But when you get to the top 0.1% or whatever it is, things like "income" and "tax" get ambiguous. I suppose a lot of the ultra rich don't have much earnings, at best cap gains, and even that can be offset, boxed and off-shored ad nauseam. Maybe instead of looking at the ultra rich we could look at what GDP fraction the "bottom 95%" contribute to the tax burden - is that more or less than before. Not sure where to look for this data but sounds like a nice little exercise.
- eru 10mo ago> - layoffs > with AI we can do more with less people That's pretty silly. Just look at the unemployment rate, not at the headlines.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago> My hot take: We’re already in a recession Personal-savings rate says we're heading into a recession, but aren't yet in one [1]. Labour-force participation, on the other hand, suggests we may be [2]. Assuming we go into another shutdown at the end of the month, none of this may be clear until well into the autumn. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
- esbranson 10mo agoThe prime age (25-54 years old) labor force participation rate disagrees.[1] It's almost the highest it's ever been and steady. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
- FatherOfCurses 10mo agoAlso RTO mandates as a way to cover up for layoffs.
- zeroonetwothree 10mo agoQ3 GDP was +4.3% We will know Q4 in a bit, but the projection is +2.7% Hardly a recession
- tills13 10mo agoRemove AI data center spending from that.
- ZeroCool2u 10mo agoBloomberg gift linK: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-07/us-job-openings-decline-to-lowest-level-in-more-than-a-year?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2NzgwMDg3NywiZXhwIjoxNzY4NDA1Njc3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUOEVBWkRUOU5KTFYwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJBMTc4NDk2MTA2M0M0RDBBQjdCRENDN0NCMEVERDIxRSJ9.mFf8gcWb2mrxy7RtV_LnubD9xm9xe_fX7aU9ST15sqY https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-07/us-job-op...
- DetectDefect 10mo agoNot necessary, this information is free: https://finviz.com/calendar/economic/detail/UNITEDSTAJOBOFF?dateFrom=2026-01-07#398105 https://finviz.com/calendar/economic/detail/UNITEDSTAJOBOFF?... > Job openings in the US fell by 303,000 to 7.146 million in November 2025, the lowest since December 2020 and well below market expectations of 7.60 million. The number of job openings decreased in accommodation and food services (-148,000); transportation, warehousing, and utilities (-108,000); and wholesale trade (-63,000). On the other hand, openings increased in construction (+90,000). Meanwhile, hires were little changed and total separations were unchanged at 5.1 million each. Within separations, both quits (3.2 million) and layoffs and discharges (1.7 million) were little changed.
- bt1a 10mo agotransportation, warehousing, and utilities being a headlining loser here is the most striking.... perhaps?
- AnimalMuppet 10mo agoCertainly sounds like canaries telling us the rest of the economy is not doing great. (Not warning us that it's going to have problems. Telling us it already does.)
- HeyLaughingBoy 10mo agoThe economy canaries can't tell us anything: they're already dead.
- bluedino 10mo agoWe got rid of a lot of contractors at the end of year. We also aren't hiring anyone new and only replacing some people that have left.
- cheeze 10mo agoSame - and even replacing those that have left is a fight right now.
- mbgerring 10mo agoIt makes sense that you wouldn't hire in such an uncertain environment. We have a President using emergency powers to affect sweeping, unpredictable, consequential changes to the economy that can dramatically alter unit economics overnight and completely tank a previously viable business. Within this calendar year, the President's ability to do this may be upended by pending court cases, an election, or both. Following those potential changes, the breach of trust created by the previous chaos may mean that trade never returns to normal. I don't envy anyone trying to make long-term business decisions, like hiring, in such an environment.
- ojbyrne 10mo agoActually its easy if you're a multinational. You invest outside the United States.
- OGEnthusiast 10mo agoThe US needs an offshoring tax. If you want to sell to Americans you also need to hire Americans.
- toomuchtodo 10mo agoThe HIRE Act: 25% tax on outsourcing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45161419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45161419 - September 2025 (19 comments)
- pjc50 10mo agoshrug enjoy paying more taxes for your consumption, I guess.
- toomuchtodo 10mo agoYes, I do want to pay more to bolster my country's domestic workforce vs subsidizing corporate shareholders and offshore workers, while also having that come out of corporate profits. shrug
- notepad0x90 10mo agoI was just telling someone the other day how all the talk of civil wars and unrest were overblown, Americans will never resort to that with the economy the way it is. Even in the '08 recession (and even worse scenarios), recovery was a possibility. There would be no jobs at the time, but you can reasonably expect them to be created in a few years. You could go to school and switch careers. But I think right now there is a dreadful perfect storm of sorts. - It's not just LLMs, the social/political environment just doesn't favor risk taking, which means less opportunities. - The US will be alienated from all its good trade partners for a decade plus at best. They'll still do trade, but the era of relying on US companies, or relying on a stable US consumer base is over. - The dollar will decline, by how much I don't know but it will. Less buying power for American companies. - Education is in shambles, and skilled & educated immigrants who can leave the US are doing so in droves. Brain drain will be real, the pipeline to replace them will take a generation, and that is if it was fixed today. - Historically, there is a natural re-balancing of powers that happens as a result of people getting upset and organizing change or some sort. But the ability of the population to organize meaningfully is curtailed because tech, moderation and surveillance capitalism. - I won't say too much about the current admin, but things are really scary. Not as in "i'm upset about this" or "so much for democracy" but more like "i'm scared for my life" levels of scary. - Erosion of trust is huge, you don't take risks if you don't have some trust. consumer spending, loans, business spending,etc... and the erosion of trust is fundamental and hard to repair. Trust is also heavily asymmetric, it costs a lot to obtain, but it takes little to lose it. Once lost, gaining it again is usually orders of magnitude more costly. let me stop there for brevity, but my point was how the US has never truly been in a situation where the economy is doing bad, and the politics is untenable. You have people who are in power and well incentivized to make things even worse, you can cancel elections and deploy troops better if things are really and truly "bad". When people stop having their basic needs met (and I don't mean health care and affordable houses - but food and shelter), I'm concerned there will not be many ways left where the rule of law and peace can be sustained. It's one of those things, like "you can't unspill the milk". If things get as bad as I fear, right now, today is as good as it will ever get in the US. What scares me is that Americans aren't terrified enough, those that know better are in catatonic state of "what can i possibly do about it?" - and I mean all Americans regardless of politics.
- Haaargio 10mo ago[flagged]
- fsflover 10mo ago> it would mean to move away from google & android etc. Where do you go?
- microtonal 10mo agoJolla's Sailfish OS, GrapheneOS (I know, uses AOSP). It's going to be more touch than running stock Android or iOS, but the more users and funding these get, the more resources for development. I think there will be a lot of chaos in the coming years. But chaos also creates opportunities. There is a lot of local talk about moving away from US Tech and for new tech, you already see this happening. E.g. our local university has forbidden the use of most US LLM services (because of privacy and data protection issues) and are doing trials with Mistral. Most likely they'll roll out Mistral university-wide. Two years ago, they would have certainly gone Gemini.
- fsflover 10mo agoI prefer Librem 5 and Pinephone, since they don't rely on proprietary software or Google.
- jibe 10mo agohttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSJOL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSJOL Job openings are still very high, ~30% higher than the average for the last few decades.
- talloaktrees 10mo agohonest question, because it's something I don't understand well. is it possible the quantity of job openings can mask the quality of jobs openings? if job openings at fast food restaurants goes up 1000% maybe this isn't positive
- nemomarx 10mo agoYou want to look at info broken down by sector and wages yeah. Look into "underemployment" for more
- marcosdumay 10mo agoYes, employment statistics rarely tell you anything about the quality of the jobs. And when they do tell something, it's the simplest information possible. But the statistics are selected in a way that if a society maintains a low headline unemployment for a long time, it's correlated to an increase in the quality of the jobs¹. The correlation is still not perfect, and authoritarian countries love to redefine the date so their absolute value changes. 1 - More clearly, a constant low unemployment correlates to a positive derivative in quality. And a constant high unemployment correlates to a negative derivative in quality.
- lotsofpulp 10mo agoCash is king. Look at change in income by quintile (or preferably decile, but I was too lazy to check mark all those and make a graph) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1Q95B&height=490 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1Q95B&heig...
- standeven 10mo agoShouldn’t job openings always trend upwards with increasing population?
- rich_sasha 10mo ago[flagged]
- throwway120385 10mo agoA new life awaits you in the offworld colonies!
- noitpmeder 10mo agoYou mean South Amerizuela
- websiteapi 10mo ago[flagged]
- 1121redblackgo 10mo agoWhat makes you hopeful that this year is like the other years, and not more like something unto itself?
- loeg 10mo agoThe bears will be right eventually. But they'll be wrong many times in a row before that. And we'll pull through, eventually. I'm a long-term optimist, so I'm not particularly worried about when the next downturn will be.
- sp4cec0wb0y 10mo ago2016 socio-economy and 2025/6 socio-economy are vastly different.
- websiteapi 10mo agoGo look, you see these types of articles every year, not just 2016.
- microtonal 10mo agoIn other years, the US was not threatening to annex allies, blow up NATO, etc. To speak in Hacker News terms, the world is slowly and increasingly faster going to rebase away from the US. Sadly for the US, their biggest arch enemy (besides DEI), China, is going to benefit from it hugely. Frenemies that play according to a rule book are more worthy than frenemies that have gone insane.
- websiteapi 10mo agoIn other years they used similar excuses like China and then Trump in 2016 and then Covid, then J6, then Covid again… Again, doomer mentality.
- Herring 10mo ago[flagged]
- inetknght 10mo ago> They have been poor for generations because they dislike diversity more than they want a strong economy and common prosperity. What do you expect when people reject education and embrace religion? > As far as I can tell the best fix is higher education. How do you "fix" higher education that's been rejected?
- Herring 10mo agoYeah I didn't say it was an easy fix, I just said I thought it was (probably) the best. America has been having diversity/foreign policy issues since day 1 with wiping out the Indians. It's not going to go away tomorrow.
- IncreasePosts 10mo agoFlorida has a GDP in line with Australia, or South Korea, or Spain, and with a smaller population. Not exactly what I would call generationally poor. Texas has the same GDP as Italy, but with half the population.
- s_dev 10mo agoAlabama, US and Bavaria, Germany also have a similar GDP per capita. You would simply be insane to think Alabama was in any way wealthier than Bavaria. This isn't me having a go at the US, this is me having a go at GDP.
- Ray20 10mo ago> You would simply be insane to think Alabama was in any way wealthier than Bavaria. Is it accurate? Europe has a fairly low standard of living compared to America, but their totalitarian governments are quite effective at silencing all dissent.
- clickety_clack 10mo agoThis is lowest in the past year or so, not the lowest since say ‘08.
- xbar 10mo agoNor January, 1930. This economy is in a bad and worsening state. But it definitely can get a whole lot worse.
- sailorganymede 10mo agoAs someone who's about to quit to go work on their startup, glad to know things are gonna be terrible if everything goes to shit and I need to return to the job market.
- barbazoo 10mo agoHopefully by the time your startup fails the job market has recovered /s
- UncleOxidant 10mo agoBut what if they plan to fail fast?
- yuddpo 10mo agoI see these reports as statistics. “54% Americans have zero retirement savings” doesn’t mean that I should expect a 50% chance my savings will magically disappear when I retire. You have to be careful with statistics, and news in general. Remember that your life is your own, with a unique set of circumstances, and think for yourself.
- almostlikemagic 10mo ago[dead]
- elif 10mo agoGenerally economists say response is necessary at over 4% unemployment. It doesn't take a big swing to unsettle the entire economy. I guess my point is that even if you think AI's displacement of workforce is vastly overblown, be scared of 5% labor impacts.
- rvz 10mo agoNow this is what really is “AGI”.
- paul7986 10mo agoAI is only going to reduce jobs further. My own personal example working at a small govt contractor in which we had a team of 12 working on an app for 10 years. We lost the re-bid to a smaller team (5 to 6)/budget using AI. We have been informed going forward the company will be following the competition (small teams using AI and bidding like the competition via smaller budget needs).
- lvl155 10mo agoCorporate America is such a weird place. They rather hire immigrants than retrain or educate existing workforce. Everything about the US economy is plug and play then discard. And if they can’t plug and play, they will just scrap the whole thing. That’s exactly what’s happening right now.
- fullshark 10mo agoLook at the incentives and you'll see it's not weird at all.
- kypro 10mo agoHow is that weird? If American's can't compete with the wage expectations of foreign workers then they're not going to be hired. If US workers can't compete then vote for less immigration. It's not the corporates or the foreigners fault, it's the government that's putting those groups first over US workers.
- 93po 10mo agoits not that they're putting people who are immigrants over US workers, they are putting corporate profits before US workers. the US is terrible at protecting american jobs for americans. i am not overly educated on this but it seems like a lot of countries, europe specifically, are extremely protective of their jobs. i don't think americans are somehow inherently more worthy of employment and opportunity than people from other countries, but it does seem like it may be a playing field that isn't very level if a lot of other countries are protecting jobs but the US isn't. in addition to our cost of living being tremendously high compared to the countries we outsource our work to, it isn't even an option for an american to go get a job in (for example) india and send home paycheck to support family in the US.
- NickC25 10mo ago>the US is terrible at protecting american jobs for americans. I recently finished Peter Zehan's The End of the World is Just the Beginning and in it, it explicitly says that the American economic order was created in such a way that the loss of American jobs over time was by design. Basically, as the American worker and consumer expects more and more, we need a larger international system to support that ("a rising tide..." analogy). However, we let the profits derived from such a system wind up in a smaller and smaller group of self-interested people who don't give a damn if the whole system goes belly up, because they've "got theirs". Such short-sighted thinking.
- 29athrowaway 10mo agoMany job openings are just a way for recruiting to harvest resumes, or to give the impression there's some growth going on, or to conceal the actual open headcounts for teams. Ghost jobs. This impacts vulnerable people looking for jobs and makes job search highly inefficient.
- meindnoch 10mo agoMakes sense. I know of multiple companies that reduced their headcount by a factor of 10 after Opus 4.5. Their new business model is basically: CEO + CTO + CFO + hundreds of Opus 4.5 agents.
- jppope 10mo agoYou should let them know that they should be able to let that CFO go soon
- GrowingSideways 10mo agoGenuinely, what would be the point of having a CEO?
- tenacious_tuna 10mo agoWho else is going to run the models?
- ausbah 10mo agoanother model
- GrowingSideways 10mo agoThe CTO, obviously.
- weitendorf 10mo agoI'm a big agent proponent myself but I don't think these kinds of companies actually exist yet. It's gotta either be some CTO who learned the word "orchestration" or "agent harness" and decided to play around with that stuff, or pure fantasy from the usual suspects of VC-twitter trying to build FOMO/signal themselves as part of the "in crowd"/drive engagement with hyperbole.
- fluorinerocket 10mo agoHow is that working out, genuinely curious
- hermitcrab 10mo agoThere is going to be plenty of jobs for soldiers, nurses and gravediggers when WW3 starts.
- guluarte 10mo agoI think this is somewhat normal? companies slow down hiring at the end of the year
- irishmanlondon 10mo ago[dead]