Idk there’s a lot of diff variables and it’s complicated of course, I really don’t think it’s because “AI’s taking the jobs” tho.
If you are in Western Europe, then yes it's because of a shadow recession.
If you are in Seattle, then it's because the larger employers are shifting headcount to the Bay or abroad.
If you are not in the Bay, NYC, or Seattle, it's because domestic nearshoring during 2018-23 failed (eg. Cisco, NetApp, and Google in RTP)
I've written about this before on here [0][1]
Edit: for clarification, it’s never been worse. See link.
https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/articles/labor-market-data...
Unemployment rate has been going down for the past couple months, even though it was already lower than it has been for most of the period since the 70s: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE
That Yahoo page mentions these as a source, but it doesn't link them, presumably because they don't match its claims.
That said, both going down implies the people without jobs have stopped looking for jobs (which drops them from the unemployment rate calculation). Question then is why have they stopped and how are they getting by?
Or perhaps it's the other way around, new kids entering working age and not bothering to look for a job while living off their parents, and people in retirement age who won't retire for whatever reason?