Americans Kiss Job Hopping Goodbye (msn.com) 65
Americans quit 39.6 million jobs in 2024, an 11% drop from 2023 and 22% below the 2022 peak, Labor Department data showed Tuesday, signaling an end to the post-pandemic job-switching frenzy. The monthly quit rate fell below pre-pandemic levels as workers faced diminishing options in a cooling labor market. Available positions per unemployed worker dropped to 1.1 from 2 in March 2022, while hiring declined to a monthly average of 3.5% in 2024 from 4.4% in 2021.
Total hiring fell to 66 million in 2024 from 71 million in 2023, though the job market remained stable. The unemployment rate held at 4.1%, with economists expecting steady job growth in Friday's upcoming labor report. The Conference Board's latest survey showed fewer respondents viewing jobs as plentiful compared to the early 2020s, with more reporting difficulties finding work.
Total hiring fell to 66 million in 2024 from 71 million in 2023, though the job market remained stable. The unemployment rate held at 4.1%, with economists expecting steady job growth in Friday's upcoming labor report. The Conference Board's latest survey showed fewer respondents viewing jobs as plentiful compared to the early 2020s, with more reporting difficulties finding work.
Yup (Score:5, Insightful)
The market is shit, companies don't like paying, and half the job postings are fake.
Federal hopping (Score:2)
Re:Federal hopping (Score:5, Insightful)
Republicans are tanking the economy. People will be less likely to move to new positions if they see the new company as a risk. They'll also be less likely to take quitting over being fired or laid off, because the latter means they get to draw unemployment benefits (and possibly, depending on their employment contract, some level of severance).
Fed workers being illegally fired by a wannabe despot are being put in a no-win situation, but this too is a goal of Trump. He and Musk want to destroy the American economy for their own "Vulture Capitalist" looter gains; dumping large amounts of workers out into the marketplace is a great way to raise unemployment numbers and deflate wages.
Also, look at the places he's targeting the most, and consider: why do Trump/Musk's every move align with Russian interests?
A great example is USAID - one of the core pillars of American diplomacy. Destroying it is something Putin's wanted to do for years. It leaves American allies in the lurch and ripe for the communist dictatorship countries (Russia & China) to come in and establish their own world hegemony. Who but an absolute traitor to the USA would literally be doing things that only benefit our enemies?
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The goal, since this is driven by Heritage Foundation, is to dismantle the government entirely. Leave literally everything to the states, thus effectively winning the civil war 150 years after the fact. They target the smaller departments first because those are easier to start disrupting. Then encourage fed workers to quit (it's not legal to offer a buyout) meaning the departments they used to work for are now less efficient, making citizens annoyed with them, and thus less likely to oppose efforts to ju
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The problem with returning the USA to the 1700s, is industrialization. Manufacturing and thus, employment is lumpy. It's so lumpy that some states can't pay for their infrastructure. With the US federal government dismantled, those states lose their main source of revenue. Such states must either join a profitable state (Why would a profitable state 'buy' a cost-centre?), or become pirate fiefdoms, stealing from their neighbours. Factor-in Project 2025's dependence on religion, and the rise of a Christ
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"The republicans" haven't had power for 2 weeks in DC yet - and you say they're tanking the economy?
The dow is up, crypto is up significantly - both since early January, election, and the beginning of 2024.
That said, we won't know the impact of this administration on the actual economy at large - inflation, cost of living, and so on - for 6 months, probably. It could get bad.
But cutting costs and eliminating government bloat that was hampering economic outcomes is hardly going to negatively impact the econo
Re: Federal hopping (Score:2)
"cutting costs and eliminating government bloat that was hampering economic outcomes is hardly going to negatively impact the economy"
This is of course at best an ignorant take. People always think the stuff the feds are doing that costs money isn't useful to them until they stop doing it.
"What one thing has Trump done which "aligns with Russian interests"? That's nuts man."
Now I know you're either arguing in bad faith or don't know shit about shit. Start with cutting aid to Ukraine. Killing USAID, too, obv
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The market is shit, companies don't like paying, and half the job postings are fake.
And don't forget, for the last two plus years companies have been getting told they'll be able to replace most of their staff with AI in less than five years. Why hire when you'll just be able to get rid of them all that quickly? It doesn't matter if it's not true. It only matters if the C Suite believes it and can convince the rest of the management team.
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1) lay off employees
2) wait 5 years for AI workers
3) ???
4) Profit!
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The vast majority of fake job offers are based on 2 plans.
Plan 1 - Offshoring. Claim they "can't find American workers, we need to outsource this to China/India/Wherever."
Plan 2 - H1B Fraud. They deliberately make the qualification requirements stupid (like back in the mid- 2000s when they would ask for 20 years of experience coding .Net, which had only existed since 2002) so that they can claim they "didn't find" Americans who were "qualified." Once they get the H1B it's basically slave labor, since th
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What leads you to believe helping was the intent?
Re: You Don't Say (Score:2)
The jobs aren't with slashdot, they are with B!zX. Exclamation point used because they put their company name in the word filter to discourage us from talking about them when we complain that the site is going to shit more and more day by day as they entwitterfy it. They are cryptocurrency pushers. That's what this place is for now.
I doubt they are hiring either though, the more people you bring into a scam, the smaller the shares
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Umm... the IT job market has been total crap for at least a year now. This has little do to with Trump (but he certainly isn't helping), but with Big Tech CEO's starting to believe their own marketing materials about how AI can generate all of your code and documentation for you. They've convinced themselves that you don't as need many real people anymore to get projects complete anymore.
The economy was just barely starting to recover (Score:5, Insightful)
We need more collective bargaining, more antitrust law enforcement, more direct investment in communities and less corporate welfare. Plus we need more education so that we can maintain the productivity we've gotten used to.
Now instead of 8 years of relative stability and repair we barely got three and two of those the republican-led Congress spent sabotaging anything and everything they could.
Meanwhile we've got a guy illegally seizing control of the Treasury department and another guy starting trade wars Willy nilly and a whole bunch of necessary government organizations are being shut down or replaced with cronies.
Without the usual 8 years of stability to weather that storm things are going to get rough. Forget about job hopping you'll be lucky if you're not homeless than 4 years.
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Economy was barely recovering from what?
It has been practically non stop growth from 2013 to 2024, mostly because of a money printer ran by both democrats and republicans.
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A certain man in a tan suit had a pandemic happened under his watch, H1N1. Somehow or another he kept it contained overseas while a certain man of orange couldn't do that. It's just a good thing that pandemics can no longer happen because of reasons...
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First of all the reproduction number for h1n1 is around 1.5. For COVID19 it was around 3.5. Completely different beast to contain.
Also, the economy was going through the roof throughout COVID - purely because of printing money by both sides. There was nothing to 'recover from'. Unemployment was the highest there ever was. If anything what we are recovering from now is economic overheating, the 'everything bubble' and overhiring: ie. too much money.
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Sorry unemployment was the lowest there ever was rather, after a short initial wave of layoffs.
Re: The economy was just barely starting to recove (Score:2)
It probably wasn't either thing, because the primary reported unemployment rate (U-2) doesn't count people who have been unemployed very long, and the other rates aren't much better because of the data sources. The worse the situation gets (the longer people have been unable to find work) the bigger the lie gets automatically.
The stock market was doing great, but people weren't, and many still aren't.
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A certain man in a tan suit had a pandemic happened under his watch, H1N1.
Somehow or another he kept it contained overseas while a certain man of orange couldn't do that.
To be clear, that latter man could have if he had put the welfare of the country and its people ahead of his ego -- like a President is suppose to do.
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Focusing on voter suppression just allows us to pretend the problem wasn't the party, platform, and candidate. It's coping.
Who could go against Trump, a corrupt unamerican ungodly posturing idiot whose only strength is "owning the libs", and lose *twice*?
Even if voter suppression actually impacted the election (I'm not convinced it did, but I'm interested if you have data), this is still the bigger problem.
Bitching about the party platform (Score:1)
Yelling at Democrats to be better is a hell of a lot easier than dealing with systemic voter suppression.
I will Grant even with everything the Republican party did, outspending the Democrats three to one, all the voters suppression, taking over the news media and sane washing Trump, etc etc. Even with all that it's possible the Democrats could have just barely squeaked out a win... If they had run a str
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Just allows us to pretend the Republican parties and preventing us from voting in the first place.
And how, exactly, did they do that? The National Voter Registration Act in 1993 ("motor voter") required states to offer registration when IDs were issued or renewed. Likewise for public assistance, some other things, plus ability to mail in if desired. As you would be hard pressed to survive without an ID these days I think registration is covered.
That leaves ability. Are you saying that Democrats are incapable of finding and then making there way to a poll site, but Republicans can? Broken/insufficie
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Let me guess, did they use gerrymandering maps to suppress democrat votes by any chance?
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The debt isn't always that bad a thing. These aren't about the US buying a mortgage that it can't afford, instead the US is selling bonds. Bonds are the debt. Most states also sells them, and many municipalities. It's how to get money now to buy stuff that is needed now. Bonds helped us win WWII.
Then look at misunderstandings of basic economics: Trump claims we're subsidizing Canada which is utterly ludicrous. Because we have a trade deficit. But that trade deficit isn't bad, it just means we buy more
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You have it partially backwards in places too. Inflation was going up before Biden took office. Inflation is not controlled by a simple lever in the white house. The economy is like a giant rhinocerus and the president is a small boy with a pointy stick - there's only so much you can do to do try and make the rhinocerus move the direction you want it to go. You CAN make that rhinocerus very very angry and have it trample lots of things, say by poking it too hard with lots of tariffs, but you're not going
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DEI is not insanity but the pronoun thing does go pretty far but is not really a major issue in Democrat circles. Really, you won't see a damn thing in the Democratic party platform mentioning pronouns. DEI on the other hand is necessary to make job worker demographics match residents demographics - get people hired on merit even if they happen to not be white males. If republicans really are concerned that merit hiring is best, then why are there so many incompetent idiots being approved for cabinet pos
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The "economy" has gotten markedly worse since Biden took office. Just look at Amazon, as a 'for instance': they're not hiring, paying as well, and have more control of their employees. People are not quitting jobs now, whereas at the end of the Trump economy we had amazing career mobility.
The Middle Ground (Score:5, Interesting)
Treating employees as replaceable and disposable cogs is a poor strategy for employers. Treating jobs as temporary layovers is a bad strategy for employees. Some jobs deserve to be vacant because of the behaviour of those offering them. Some do not. Stability favours both camps. Especially if you are skilled labour. You get to mentor, for one thing, and that really matters. And quitting over minor stuff like not liking your boss is just dumb. Unless there's toxicity, suck it up.
I think it's perfectly reasonable for duration of previous positions to be a significant factor in hiring decisions. Works both ways, of course, a consultancy may love seeing many engagements,
That 1.1 ratio of seekers to jobs is meaningless. The skew by industry is more important.
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You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth on this.
"Treating jobs as temporary layovers is a bad strategy for employees." vs "Some jobs deserve to be vacant because of the behaviour of those offering them."
It's simple as this: in order to simply maintain the same standard of living a person needs to make an average of 3% more every year (assuming you buy the government's - bullshit low - inflation numbers). In reality, it's closer to 7-12% - both by alternative measurements, and my own calculations on
They call it urology, but it's not MY ology. (Score:1)
Re:They call it urology, but it's not MY ology. (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed, many aspects of work have just gotten slowly and steadily worse. The amount of technology noise is wearying, dozens of different portals to log into a few times a year. No offense to the WFH crowd, but mixed in-person with remote meetings just exhaust me. Being in an office when half the people around you are on a conference call from their cubes is maddening if like me you don’t really want to live inside your noise canceling headphones. All the administrivia what used to be handled by an admin is a chore shoved back onto the worker bees, usually in the form of so e portal you flail around with a few times a year after work travel or for minor reimbursement.
Monitoring has so far not hit me, but constant paranoia has got to be exhausting. Hard to be creative and do deep work with HAL constantly staring over your shoulder.
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Re:They call it urology, but it's not MY ology. (Score:4)
I've been in the same job aver 15 years :-) Closer to retirement it gets harder to leave, and there's inertia. A close relative has been trying to job hop in the last few years, and is quite qualified with a lot of experience, but there appear to be age issues. Ageism is alive and well. "If you're that old, why aren't you a manager yet?"
Also, what do I get with a new job? More work and longer hours for slightly more pay am? I'm happy where I am. My boss treats me well, gives me plenty of time off to deal with family issues.
Also the work environment out there has changed. Nobody wants good programmers in the US, when they can hire 5 mediocre workers overseas to do a crappy job (that they then hire more workers to fix, more workers to document, etc. I am seeing this happen.
My saving grace is that I'm doing low level embedded programming and design, and you can't replace that with low-code/no-code/ai-code.
Jerome Powell got what he wanted (Score:3)
which was to bring the labor market to heel (i.e. undermine workers and their value). He just got it a bit late.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/f... [cbsnews.com]
End of an era (Score:3, Interesting)
With the installment of cronies at the NLRB. You will not find these companies very amenable to promoting positive labor relations. If you find yourself at a toxic workplace, there will soon be little you can do about it. Because even quitting isn't going to prevent retaliation under the new regime.
The corporate hegemony is here. America is a vassal of the kingdoms of FAANG (or whatever acronym we use for big tech now).
Less Reason to Hop (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing lost of the explanations offered is the decline in inflation. Most large employers work hard to keep a lid on compensation increases. Simply keeping up with inflation is rare in the best of times. I was at the same job from 2013 to 2022 and despite getting raises most years and being promoted twice, I did the math and saw that my real wages had declined over the period. Because of corporate resistance to meaningful raises, the only way to get a big raise is to switch employers. In 2022-23, inflation was running close to double digits and the only way to keep up was to look for another job. Even though I actually liked my employer, I went ahead and got another offer for 20% more, which finally got me back up to market rates for my position. Today, inflation has cooled to just over the fed target, and it's actually possible to get raises that at least keep up with inflation. There's no longer the same imperative to find another job just to keep up with inflation.
For what it's worth, the labor market is no longer-red hot, but it's not ice cold except for certain locations/industries (unfortunately, it's most cold in industries frequented by slashdotters). I was pleasantly surprised to have a very easy job seeking experience when I looked this last fall due to a corporate buyout (I am not in tech). It was five applications, two full interviews (two rounds each), and a reasonable offer in a period of six weeks.
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What was your average annual raise?
I've done the math, and I've gotten about 6.5% y/y raises by jumping jobs. Not great, but I've also got some levity in picking which jobs I want to do and who I want to work with - it keeps things fresh and interesting. Even still, I've struggled to maintain the same quality of living I had years ago due to real inflation outpacing the published number (significantly so).
If I'd ever gotten a cost of living increase that matched the actual cost of living I'd have stayed...
It's not just because of jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
The housing market makes it difficult to move, so no one wants to do that
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It's not just the interest rate, it's the cost. And that's just since 2021.
We've seen $200k houses balloon to $500k; $500k balloon to $2m in most markets.
You still can't build a new house for the cost of a used house, in most markets: so all new houses are more expensive still.
A 200k house at 3% is a mile of difference from even a 200k house at 7% - and those 2020 housing prices were comparably high historically to what our fathers and their fathers had available to them, vs income. Just forget a 2m house a
Looks Towards The Future (Score:2)
[shakes Magic 8-Ball]
Better not tell you now
George Carlin (Score:2)
This rant is about why education sucks in the U.S. but seems pertinent here as it relates to oppression of the workers by our rich, corporate owners -- i.e. oligarchs, or more recently "broligarchs" -- and may be more accurate and depressing now than when Carlin first said this.
Why Education Sucks: video [youtube.com], transcript [goodreads.com].