The article talks about how the Fed chair thinks we might be overestimating jobs and with the number of people I know who are currently struggling to find jobs I would believe that (not engineers, just people that had random jobs). Lots of people I know are out of work right now.
Why not engineers? I've definitely never had a harder time getting interviews, though obviously anecdotal. Or do you just mean that the scope is larger than software eng?
Many of my engineering friends happen to work in defense (I'm friends with a lot of aerospace engineers from college) and are now highly specialized engineers on stable and long term projects and happen to be at the forefront of innovation in that space and all have high level security clearances (for some of them I don't really know what they do since it's classified). Though it also could be they just have gotten lucky. My friends I made from hobbies work random and less highly technical jobs and I know a decent amount of people "in between jobs" right now. It's all anecdotal but there's a clear enough pattern that if the chair of the Fed also thinks we're underestimating I think it's very likely we are.
A few articles I've read note that there are indications that there has been a very strong "low fire, low hire" pattern. So while we don't see mass layoffs, those who are out, are really out.
I saw a statistic that roughly 10% of the US workforce is in some form of "customer-facing service" role and I just have to wonder how many of those jobs are nearly gone, or already gone. Even if it's a 5% reduction, or 3% over the next decade, that seems catastrophic without a completely new category of jobs to replace them.
I haven't talked to a cashier at a grocery store in years. It's all self-checkout. I stayed in a hotel recently and I didn't even talk to someone at the front desk. I just checked in at a kiosk and got my room card. There was no one else around.
I guess the people that used to do those jobs are all just driving Ubers and Doordash now?
There would be if we were investing in our infrastructure the way we should be, rather than allowing an aging population to hoard their wealth and shirk their responsibilities.
Watch and you'll see all sorts of things happening that shouldn't be possible in an economy with healthy amounts of competition.
An example that has been on my mind recently is dynamic pricing [0], where everyone is charged a different amount based upon what an algorithm thinks the company can get away with. When healthy competition exists, you can't just arbitrarily charge people more, because they'll just go buy from a competitor.
What does it mean when the things that happen in a healthy free market aren't happening?
I grew up listening to right-wing news radio, and one of the first things I learned in the realm of politics is that "our economy is great; offer quality goods and services at a competitive price and you will make a modest profit and grow and succeed". My political journey in the following decades is a tale of me seeing more and more that idea is false. The companies that truly shape our world first curry favor from those who already have wealth and power, and then focus on crushing competition and establishing a monopoly rather than making a profit; that's why these huge world-changing companies go a decade or more without ever making a profit--the news radio people never gave me an explanation for that.
>The gig economy is hiding the real employment problem in most of the West.
This. Jobs that were previously contract employment jobs that came with health insurance, workers rights and social security and were mostly taken by youth as part time jobs to fund studies, are now turned into gig jobs where you get none of those things and are mostly taken by migrants who live 10 in an apartment and send the money home.
Gig work used to mean that you have several customers you bounce around for doing part time gigs, not you work full time for the same tax dodging Amsterdam based food delivery company who doesn't want to hire local workers on employment contracts to evade labor laws and liabilities.
How does this benefit society? It only benefits the capital owning class. Why isn't the government regulating this gig industry abuse? It's literally what its job is.
So I sort of agree that there's a narrower version of employment that we should care about more than the top-line number. I'd define as maybe "households with at least one dependent under 20 and ~hours worked by household members." I would then break that down into several groups: fine (have healthcare, make enough to cover typical costs for their area, household works < 55 hours/week/adult, and can save 15% for retirement on a household basis), the struggling (make less than this, but work, or work > 55 hours/week/adult, but can cover housing and most basic expenses), and the hopeless (income too low to cover basic costs or not employed). IE If someone is working 60/hrs a week @ $10/hr, and has a kid, maybe not "unemployed" but IMO categorically, almost the same. Same thing if they just do gig work to net $20k/yr. Or are actually unemployed.
All that said, the main issue with the health insurance metric is that it would end up being a forcing function for the continued coupling of work and healthcare, which is bad and toxic.
This is such a myopic perspective. You're not completely wrong about the risk, but there's no good reason health insurance should be so tied to employment.
What "is", right now, leads us to the suggestion of int32_64, which would actually be a good metric to keep track of.
You are right about what "ought" to be, but until and unless we can get there, maybe we can at least base our information on what "is" in the moment, not on what we would like to be the case?
I think the parent agrees with you and that tracking uninsured rather than unemployed is a better view of the economy from the ground floor.
My metric for "fully employed" would be has a job, has health insurance and has enough money in savings to fully cover their out of pocket max. Could not be a barer minimum of survival.
Most job listings are fake - keep the investors, competitors and other employees think you are hiring. And who knows, maybe the right resume will actually be worth a look.
I've had 500 applications over the last four years come back without ever having gotten an interview. With my background and experience I've always gotten at the bare minimum an HR call before.
Now none.
If you look at HN who is hiring threads sometimes the same companies post every time for very extended periods of time. And I've applied at some of them to never hear back. IMO they're just fishing for people who have specific profiles that they don't disclose in the job description, not actually hiring.
I get the feeling most of the newer jobs that are going to be created are going to be in the blue collar fields and the US isn't geared for providing those. I'm also not sure that people who have been conditioned to work white collar jobs will be happy to work in blue collar jobs.
> I get the feeling most of the newer jobs that are going to be created are going to be in the blue collar fields and the US isn't geared for providing those.
What blue collar field/industry is expected to grow?
> I'm also not sure that people who have been conditioned to work white collar jobs will be happy to work in blue collar jobs.
A quick google search shows about 60% of workers are white collar and about 30% are blue collar. I suspect blue collar workers are not going to be happy with the influx of white collar workers competing for their jobs.
I think it has a potential to raise a lot of the salaries of blue-collar positions in middle America, and then create demand for the trades over the next decade or so.
I find it unlikely that white collar positions will be switching drastically to blue collar unless they’re already on the fence about it or they’re not middle to high up in the white collar ladder (six figures+)
You probably need to be more granular. I got lucky, but in 2000 anything tech-related was nuclear winter. A lot of people just left the industry. 2008 was more broad-based and, while it wasn't a great market for tech (I held off making a change for a couple of years for that reason), I'm not sure it was terrible for a lot of tech.
H1B abuse is rampant, so the headline is what we expect. Jobs are for the foreign born, just look at HN for evidence of that. They even hire lawyers to help the outsourced labor “navigate our system.”
My understanding is that after being nearly flat since 2016 with nearly all the jobs going to foreign born people, there have been job gains of nearly half a million citizens in 2025 "for whatever reason".
Readit News
How money Works "The Gig Economy is Full" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqmJN5z6Rjc (10 Dec 25)
There are not enough jobs for the employable people.
I haven't talked to a cashier at a grocery store in years. It's all self-checkout. I stayed in a hotel recently and I didn't even talk to someone at the front desk. I just checked in at a kiosk and got my room card. There was no one else around.
I guess the people that used to do those jobs are all just driving Ubers and Doordash now?
Watch and you'll see all sorts of things happening that shouldn't be possible in an economy with healthy amounts of competition.
An example that has been on my mind recently is dynamic pricing [0], where everyone is charged a different amount based upon what an algorithm thinks the company can get away with. When healthy competition exists, you can't just arbitrarily charge people more, because they'll just go buy from a competitor.
What does it mean when the things that happen in a healthy free market aren't happening?
I grew up listening to right-wing news radio, and one of the first things I learned in the realm of politics is that "our economy is great; offer quality goods and services at a competitive price and you will make a modest profit and grow and succeed". My political journey in the following decades is a tale of me seeing more and more that idea is false. The companies that truly shape our world first curry favor from those who already have wealth and power, and then focus on crushing competition and establishing a monopoly rather than making a profit; that's why these huge world-changing companies go a decade or more without ever making a profit--the news radio people never gave me an explanation for that.
[0]: https://youtu.be/16i7bPQtoCY?t=720
This. Jobs that were previously contract employment jobs that came with health insurance, workers rights and social security and were mostly taken by youth as part time jobs to fund studies, are now turned into gig jobs where you get none of those things and are mostly taken by migrants who live 10 in an apartment and send the money home.
Gig work used to mean that you have several customers you bounce around for doing part time gigs, not you work full time for the same tax dodging Amsterdam based food delivery company who doesn't want to hire local workers on employment contracts to evade labor laws and liabilities.
How does this benefit society? It only benefits the capital owning class. Why isn't the government regulating this gig industry abuse? It's literally what its job is.
What's the point of being considered 'employed' if you can be wiped out with one trip to the ER?
All that said, the main issue with the health insurance metric is that it would end up being a forcing function for the continued coupling of work and healthcare, which is bad and toxic.
What "is", right now, leads us to the suggestion of int32_64, which would actually be a good metric to keep track of.
You are right about what "ought" to be, but until and unless we can get there, maybe we can at least base our information on what "is" in the moment, not on what we would like to be the case?
My metric for "fully employed" would be has a job, has health insurance and has enough money in savings to fully cover their out of pocket max. Could not be a barer minimum of survival.
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None of the jobs ads are real.
Add the fact that they stick around longer and I can comfortably say 50%+ of the jobs people are applying to are fake.
What blue collar field/industry is expected to grow?
> I'm also not sure that people who have been conditioned to work white collar jobs will be happy to work in blue collar jobs.
A quick google search shows about 60% of workers are white collar and about 30% are blue collar. I suspect blue collar workers are not going to be happy with the influx of white collar workers competing for their jobs.
I find it unlikely that white collar positions will be switching drastically to blue collar unless they’re already on the fence about it or they’re not middle to high up in the white collar ladder (six figures+)