Employment increases by 206K in June; unemployment rate changes little at 4.1%
bls.gov
bls.gov
Anecdotally, more people I know have been laid off in the past year than I’ve ever seen before. I’ve been laid off twice in under 18 months, and am currently going on three months without a job.
And with the caveat that they are both echo chambers, the consistent sentiment I’ve seen here and on LinkedIn is that this is the worst tech job market since the Great Recession. Is tech really that uniquely sensitive to interest rates while the rest of the economy doesn’t care?
https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-7/high-tech-industries-a...
Perhaps they will analyze the tech employment soon?
There isn't anything that drills down to sector-level, but the employment situation by occupation is probably the closest: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t13.htm
It doesn't get as far down as software or computing-related occupations, but these would fall under the broader "professional and related occupations." This seemingly encompasses most white collar work and it has the third-lowest unemployment rate, behind only maintenance and repair operations and management and finance.
Obviously, a lot of what you feel is happening will be colored by the particular people you know. It's probably wrong to even think of that as "tech employment." My wife and I both work for software companies. I don't personally know anyone who has been laid off in the past year. But I live in Texas and we both work in defense software. San Francisco adjacent web tech is not the entirety of "tech."
That's just the three largest contractors.
This is likely due to IRS Section 174 which changed how tech salaries can be expensed.
As far as I was able to surmise, after becoming interested in the topic last year, it was a combination of factors: interest rates, 174, over hiring during 2020-2022, over estimating future demand for digital goods/services during the covid, lack of cheap money for funding unprofitable businesses, AI hype, and probably other factors.
The most logical answer is multiple events/factors all within a short span of time, rather than one single thing being the sole reason for the downturn.
> The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for April was revised down by 57,000, from +165,000 to +108,000, and the change for May was revised down by 54,000, from +272,000 to +218,000. With these revisions, employment in April and May combined is 111,000 lower than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)
The average weekly wage is 1200$. Seems like what most master degrees can command. Oof. The median is probably much lower.
Hourly earnings up by 0.3% vs expected 0.3%