Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

Companies can have legal requirements to post the job, but have no intention of hiring a random outsider.

Idk about interviewing, but there are many benefits to opening fake job listing (gathering a database of people, keeping track of people looking for jobs, etc) which is why people do it. Data is valuable.

It costs nothing to simulate activity, the costs are incurred on the candidate.

Pipelining, mostly.

Besides legal requirements, job hiring is a growth metric.

All of silicon valley is playing a stupid bubble game.

It is one trick that allows management to lie to everyone, and to implement downsizing. Fact is that A LOT of US businesses became unsustainable due to the tariffs (which Trump totally did for "US first" and not, I repeat NOT to get an extra tax started for him to spend), the retaliatory tariffs, followed by Trump doing the largest mass-firing in US history, presumably because this is listed in introductory economics textbooks in the chapter "what caused the great depression".

So a LOT of businesses are now in the position that they have to raise prices significantly into the worst market in decades. So they'll get significantly less revenue and they'll have to go into overdrive on saving money. That means no hiring, layoffs, price hikes, shrinkflation, ... the whole thing. They have to do a lot less with a lot less.

How does management respond to this? Well, management generally isn't competent. Their only job is to negotiate, and now that will really be put to the test. The smarter ones know that negotiation doesn't even matter under these circumstances (since it's a fixed pie being divided: someone has to lose). So they're maximizing their runway and getting out. And first, of course, they lie. They tell people even inside companies that they're hiring, even to the point of having interviews. They post job postings, because that's part of doing covert layoffs: they replace full time employees by temporary ones, even interns. They wait with price hikes until they're through inventory. They notice they've signed long-term contracts with Walmart that they cannot fulfill. And so on. So they lie to maintain their reputation for after the crisis (so on their next interview they can believably claim "I could have saved the company, but I found a better opportunity ...").

So I bet we'll be seeing a LOT of managers, especially higher up, suddenly decide they need to find a new job, and when it turns out that doesn't work, take a 2-3 year excuse to take a break.

As for replacing these people with AI: they're not spending ... and AI is expensive. Sure there's startups using AI, but larger companies are just firing people and not replacing them. Certainly they don't see the current period as a good time to change ... anything.

Governments should be "countering the crisis" and hire, according to economics textbooks, and increase social spending with the savings from the decade past ... except ... there are no savings from the decade past. So governments are firing, laying off, saving on healthcare, and so on and so forth. The US obviously has everyone's attention but the UK is doing the same (frankly, worse) and so is the EU.

Trump will be the most desperate manager of all, doing anything and everything he can to delay this from happening until the midterm elections in November, like lowering interest rates. But the thing everyone needs to remember about interest rates: they only lower for a good reason. The problem for Trump is ... either he delays this to beyond November or he becomes a "lame-duck" president, unable to do anything.

Then I'm not posting job openings at all, and I'm working my personal network extra hard to get a pipeline of actual candidates setup.

And it's not just the ATS doing this -- oooodles of goobers who are nowhere near qualified are using AI and slamming the hiring pipelines. I'm already leaning on the personal networks because of that, anyway, but Parent Poster's idea just means I push for that explicitly instead of informally.

See also: layoffs.fyi -- the market is just SATURATED with quality talent

That will never happen. We've got employers making employees sign ridiculous Non-compete, non-disclosure, non-disparagement, agreements. Do you really think this will ever happen? We've collectively decided that corporations are people and people have freedom of speech. We've spent years doing the H1B dance. (I'm not anti-immigration. I'd love to simply give them citizenship. I've met some amazing people on H1Bs. The system is exploitive to US workers AND the H1B recipients). Face it, as someone who is actually doing the work of IT, you lost a long time ago.

>try to unionize next time

Amazon had a whole paper about how bringing migrants and diversity makes unionization less likely and successful. It's part of the point.

Also it's not just the US. Here in Europe it's the same. Hell the government spent it's money trough the employers org training Moroccans to become programmers to then bring em in. I knew a fair few programmers who believe this is all just for low skill low paying jobs as if paying better wages for those is impossible and as if those deserve to be undercut. The weird thing is how this kind of plainly rightwing economic rhetoric is often masquerading as left wing.

The only silver lining in this mess is that it does seem like this was finally the push for my industry to start seriously pushing for unions. Of course, corporate won't let it come easy but I only see momentum building now.

Good luck unionizing together with offshore office in Bangalore.

How do you reckon? My understanding is that they're valid perm positions that legally must be offered to US citizens before they can be filled by anyone else.

We’ve effectively short circuited the corporate profits to stockholder route - ignoring employees rights, benefits or simple human loyalty and decency

Pray that Darth Trump alters it no further

> Record profits reported by tech companies says the opposite. Money are there, but no will to spend them on people.

And you buy things/services from these major tech companies, but in return they buy nothing from you.

The circular stream that was "supposed to be" capitalism is broken.

... which was needed because no/less profit can and does send the stonk price tanking. That's also a "there are no resources left to do the right thing" - the stonk market dynamics are a part of what is eating our economies alive.

A 401k and an IRA together constitute only $31,500 this year, and less in each previous year, before taxes. That shouldn't be the main factor. FWIW I was including those accounts in my 'savings' number.

“Companies” don’t hire people, a few human individuals acting autonomously, with their own beliefs and biases, are ultimately responsible for bringing someone new onboard.

Once you hit 40s just get the botox anyway. Looks better. Only lasts 3 months or so. Good for a few rounds of interviews.

This is America, the land of grifters and carnival barkers. Everything is about marketing and image. Always has been.

The industry had turned to shit long ago when we deviated from the path of the UNIX philosophy and fell into cargo cult frontend programming. We had the most powerful UI in the world, the command line, and we gave it up for pretty pixels and shiny buttons. We have lost what it truly meant to be an engineer, now just look at the kinds of people entering the industry today: No passion for the science, just chasing cash and quick thrills. And you wonder why our interview process has gotten so shallow?

> So you read nothing about how graduates during 2008 pretty much had forever stunted careers?

Myself included. Graduated in '08, had to work various minimum wage jobs in retail for several years because no one was hiring. I'm just now at a point in my career, nearing 40, where I should have been at 28.

Degree doesn't matter much when your only work experience is 5 years of working at Starbucks, and you barely have personal projects because you're too busy working 2 jobs to just to survive.

Those of us who suffered through that time period barely recovered, and many didn't recover at all. It shaped an entire generation.