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Comment by skywhopper | Hacker News Reader

All the talk of a recession last year was always just bluster to justify layoffs and other anti-worker policies and actions. Anytime there’s that much unanimity in the press about the economic outlook whether it’s a coordinated move or just groupthink, you know it’s not going to happen.

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> All the talk of a recession last year was always just bluster to justify layoffs

Or, a signal of the tail end of an undeclared recession.

If you compare unemployment rate to recessions, they usually begin before the unemployment spike. The unemployment spike then usually plateus around the end of the recession.

That’s actually a good point. I think the covid era is unique though because the “labor shortage” still hasn’t been worked through. A lot of people straight up died, retired early, became shutins, etc. and I’m very certain some sectors have not recovered. I think the recent market elation around AI is basically a last ditch hope/pray effort by Wall Street/C suite execs that something will magically show up and fill in the gaps. I see it at work and it’s cringe, they’re extremely reluctant to hire for desperately needed roles and are apparently hoping that AI will somehow show up and fix all of our problems.

I work in an role that oversees an operations team and a big part of the tech organization.

The ops guys lost 45% of headcount to retirement and turnover. Even with significantly increased pay, qualified candidates don’t exist. We’re trying to hire high school grads, community college kids, and separated veterans to pay to train, but any smart candidate is in demand. Automation and AI may reduce labor demand by about 20%, which isn’t enough.

We found in the high school recruiting that the state of affairs is so poor that you are basically looking for unicorns who undervalue themselves. The median high school grad in a large urban school is… pretty rough in terms of skills.

I work in $well_known_big_tech and have been denied trying to job switch (about 1 month ago). No interview, they reject my resume. I have over 5 years experience. Just my anecdote.

Yeah that’s my understanding and experience from watching our recruiting process. It all comes from the top level “strategy” sessions where they project a recession but fail to project for any amount of turnover.

Do you think the yield inversion was also a coordinated effort?

The yield curve inversion has predicted the last 9 out of the 5 recessions.

Could it also be that the two-year yield is higher (than the 10-year yield) because people expect the fed to lower the FFR after a couple of years after inflation has reached their target?

> The yield curve inversion has predicted the last 9 out of the 5 recessions.

This is a weak argument and the evidence does not support it: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y

Its suggesting that a inverted yield curve alone is as good as a coin toss as far as leading indicators go.

It has a 100% success rate based on my observation. And if we're going to disagree on facts, I'm not sure the point in having any sort of further discussion.

turning off the money hose was a big adjustment for the whole market

participants needed to find a way to trade without guaranteed liquidity and they did

not all markets are in bull runs, the credit markets are still declining, housing market is still pulling back, commercial is still hanging by a thread

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