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My 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
by charliebwrites 9mo ago
My 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 9mo 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 9mo agoyes, AI isn't penetrating those fields with high job losses at all
- master_crab 9mo 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 9mo ago[deleted]
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 9mo 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 9mo ago[deleted]
- hombre_fatal 9mo 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 9mo 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
- conartist6 9mo agoReally? I see H1B as the tiniest drop in the bucket compared to AI, at least in software. It's not that AI is filling 1 human role with 1 AI, it's that everyone who has a job knows that they need to keep it because the market is insanely cutthroat right now. Everyone has an AI-polished resume, and employers no longer see the value in having talented employees. Even if they did have talented employees they don't trust them enough to know how to do the work. If your employer says "I need you to start using AI" they may as well be saying "I don't trust you to know what's worth is worth your time." I see even a lot of people who have jobs as acting in a way that's consistent with on the verge of being fired, which I think is most of the real "value" of AI so far.
- esseph 9mo agoEven if AI wasn't being used for daily tasks by general employees, it's being used by HR and staff sourcing firms to sort through applications, so it already has had a large (negative) impact on hiring. Maybe we should do an "Ask HN" for those in HR or adjacent roles to poll for experiences there.
- potato3732842 9mo agoBespoke AI has not gotten everywhere but generic AI absolutely has. The workforce is happily making themselves more efficient by using AI on their phones for what used to be multi step look it up in the literature or your supplier's catalog or consult the instructions or read the rules process when performing cookie cutter tasks they know but don't remember exact specifications for.
- Cornbilly 9mo agoSources for this?
- acdha 9mo agoDo you have a source for that? Everyone I know who works outside of tech is complaining about how AI is making their jobs harder because it’s wrong so much of the time that they’re spending more time correcting it than it saves, and it’s been a boon for cheaters looking to remove obvious tells from their attacks.
- potato3732842 9mo agoI'm talking about people who shower after work not people who shower before work. I have no doubt that people who are having AI foisted upon them by admins at the behest of someone else hate it. They use AI as basically a leveled up version of the summaries google used to provide for certain search types. Saves them a bunch of obnoxious clicking around on the internet or in software that was never designed for mobile or to make giving up the kind of info they're seeking easily.
- acdha 9mo agoThat’s usually also followed shortly by learning that you can’t trust the results or you’ll be making customers whole.
- potato3732842 9mo agoThese people usually know enough to know when it's "not quite right". Same "don't trust the docs" story that existed in many workplaces long before AI An example I saw recently was someone asked for a modern equivalent of a grease that's no longer made/relevant and it replied back with some weird aviation stuff. The "real" answer wound up being "just use anything, the builders intent in specifying was to prevent you from using tallow or some other crap 100yr ago"
- woooooo 9mo agoI think parent comment was talking about hype vs reality rather than disagreeing with you. "We're not hiring but AI is in the news" = "We're not hiring because of AI! Don't sell our stock!" It's independent of actual current or future AI adoption.
- DetectDefect 9mo 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 9mo ago[flagged]
- DetectDefect 9mo ago22/50 ~= half. No one claim it was half the population, other than you (strangely). TIL Moody’s Analytics is "doomer FUD".
- bpt3 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo agoAlso RTO mandates as a way to cover up for layoffs.
- zeroonetwothree 9mo agoQ3 GDP was +4.3% We will know Q4 in a bit, but the projection is +2.7% Hardly a recession
- tills13 9mo agoRemove AI data center spending from that.