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Comment by robluxus | Hacker News Reader

> Many of those jobs simply never came back

What happened to the people? Did new jobs get created?

They retrained and got reallocated to the new hot sectors (how many people work in tech now vs. in 2008?), or they joined the pool of unskilled labor, or they dropped out of the labor force.

The economy is always changing - new more-productive ways of doing stuff get invented, relative prices change, consumer tastes shift. Layoffs & rehiring is the economy's way of redirecting employees away from unproductive, unprofitable work and into new careers that are better adapted to the times. Your mental model of what a career looks like needs to include leaving jobs (and if you don't do it proactively, it may be done for you) and shifting your efforts into new work that is more adapted to the times.

Yes, for the most part new jobs were created and those people eventually got hired. The unemployment rate has been low for several years. But the labor force participation rate did decline slightly. Some people retired early, or chose to stay at home.

the job market was worse for the decade after 2008, probably due at least in part to that. It didn't really recover until the great resignation.

I feel like people really just got used to the world after 2008.maybe I'm misremebering. Before 2008 everyone was going to college because it was a guaranteed job after you graduate. Then the financial crash happened and it became hard for everyone to get jobs. Then we got cynical about college

We got cynical about college also because the costs spiraled way faster than incomes or prices for other things were rising. Colleges never lay people off, they keep expanding their administrative bureaucracy, all funded by growing student enrollment and easy student loans.

Student enrollment is going to start falling (demographics as well as more people questioning the value) and colleges are going to be in for a world of hurt because they don't know how to tighten their belts.

University Problem: Students are complaining about insufficient parking on-campus.

University Solution: Wipe out 1/4 of the available parking space to build a shiny new library, renovate the old library - turning it into a "student life center" nobody knew they needed, then triple the price for student parking permits and require all freshmen to live in the overpriced on-campus housing.

that's not how i remember it. we had a whole over employed thing for years, people always said unemployment numbers werent accurate because of that, the meme of people getting degrees and serving coffee etc..

community college and public schools without dorming are ~3k a semester. california is $46/credit for 736 for 16 credits.

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