[OC] Arbeitslosenquote in der Technologiebranche: Januar 2000 – Oktober 2024

Source: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU04032237](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU04032237)
Tool: R

There’s a lot of talk about how awful the labor market for tech is – particularly on places like cscareerquestions but I do not believe the data bears this out. The current period seems to be quite unremarkable in terms of tech unemployment. I think it’s likely the Reddit discourse is skewed by a very young population that is unfamiliar with the pre COVID labor market and is erroneously taking the 2022-2023 years as a baseline for how the market typically is.

YoY employment has increased but historically it’s no especially bad.

The tech industry goes in waves of rapid layoffs and rapid hirings as companies shift their interests every other year. They’ve done that for ages though. Recent rapid hirings are probably linked to the rapid rise of machine learning nonsense. I’m sure once half these companies realize that there isn’t that much to monetize they’ll all get laid off again and the cycle will repeat with something else.

People on the internet just complain about *everything all the time*, so everyone thinks *everything* is shit *all the time.*