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Comment by matwood | Hacker News Reader

Layoffs make news, but if you look at the numbers they are relatively small compared to all the hiring the last few years. We have gone from the best time ever in history to be in IT, to a great time to be in IT. There are a lot of jobs if you step outside big tech (and targeted jobs in big tech with certain skills).

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Yup. Even with Meta's huge layoff, they still have more employees now than they did a year ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/yqweue/oc_...

Depending on how you view things, layoffs are only starting. Companies are taking a wait and see approach before taking everything off the table. Some are predicting 2023Q1 to be when it peaks.

Source?

Not OP, but weigh these.

Recession case: inflation depresses other spending, new home starts are decreasing, strong dollar, Chinese economy wobbly, EU economy weak, continued supply chain disruptions, PMI weaker, ad spending curtailed.

Soft landing case: Goldilocks scenario for USA employment; inflation has decreased; chip shortage over; few layoffs outside tech; airline, hospitality, defense, healthcare, energy sectors booming; China economy may strengthen with softened zero-covid policy.

ProTip: Absolutely nobody knows. There are indicators this way and that. The predominant point of view I see in the sensible press it that a global recession centered around China is likely for 2023, but the US will likely be more insulated than most. Things could much worse, but it's now considered unlikely with a soft landing looking pretty plausible. But really the data are increasingly hard to predict and looking ahead more than a month or two at a time is mostly guesswork.

That doesn’t matter to laid off people if most companies have a hiring freeze and there’s net reduction in tech workforce. It means most laid off people won’t get jobs until companies start growing again.

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