A lot of layoffs are going on...

[Open Source Intelligence]

My company announced roughly 2500 layoffs this month. Tesla announced today they are laying off 14000. Tech have announced a bunch of layoffs as a group the last year (link: https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/15/tech-layoffs-2023-list/ ). I'm aware of it happening in orthopedics, pharma, and biotech. We've never had more war going on in the world post-Cold War than now and Lockheed and Northrop Grumman are doing it.

I'm a little perplexed on cause. My company was a bit of a shock as we'd been publicly running gangbusters for a few years. Now all of a sudden out of the blue layoffs. The only thing plausible to me to is they see something bad coming.

[Yoda]

My company announced roughly 2500 layoffs this month. Tesla announced today they are laying off 14000. Tech have announced a bunch of layoffs as a group the last year (link: https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/15/tech-layoffs-2023-list/ ). I'm aware of it happening in orthopedics, pharma, and biotech. We've never had more war going on in the world post-Cold War than now and Lockheed and Northrop Grumman are doing it.

I'm a little perplexed on cause. My company was a bit of a shock as we'd been publicly running gangbusters for a few years. Now all of a sudden out of the blue layoffs. The only thing plausible to me to is they see something bad coming.

Ya sure about that?

[Yoda]

My company announced roughly 2500 layoffs this month. Tesla announced today they are laying off 14000. Tech have announced a bunch of layoffs as a group the last year (link: https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/15/tech-layoffs-2023-list/ ). I'm aware of it happening in orthopedics, pharma, and biotech. We've never had more war going on in the world post-Cold War than now and Lockheed and Northrop Grumman are doing it.

I'm a little perplexed on cause. My company was a bit of a shock as we'd been publicly running gangbusters for a few years. Now all of a sudden out of the blue layoffs. The only thing plausible to me to is they see something bad coming.

The most likely explanation is that the shareholders demanded higher profit margins. Tale as old as time, not sure why you're so perplexed by it. They've made the same decision corporate boards always make; pile more work on fewer employees to increase margins and free up capital for stock buybacks. You said it yourself: they're going gangbusters. Meanwhile, the chance of the US going into recession this year just DECREASED according to economists, so it's highly unlikely they see something bad coming.

[Dan the Roman]

1. Consulting/Tech/Law took on FAR too many recruits during Covid19 as money was effectively free. The result was a lot of speculative hires who it turns out are not needed.

2. Many of those hired during Covid are not gelling with the return to office work. This means that teams are being downsized

3. There has been an almost unprecedented degree of managerial turnover as a lot of 50+ are cashing out early post-covid. This has knock-on effects if many of the hires made in 2021-2022 were for new initiatives or projects that lost their patrons half-way through the startup phase and face a new managment which neither understands their purpose or has any interest.

I watched all of these play out at a major hedge fund.

This is a correction which has little to nothing to do with the overall health of the economy or the companies in question. The old managment went on ill-considered hiring sprees then bailed much like Elon did by purchasing Twitter on a whim.

For those who are 24-28 who face a surplus in their cohorts and those in their 40s who are being thrown out the door rather than being eased out over the next five years, this is going to be unpleasant. All.the more so because it is likely that demand for professional services will shrink rather than grow.

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

Maybe they haven't seen this, and I don't want to mention names because I don't want to make this anything personal, but I do find it interesting that all the people who say to me when I bring up 'paranormal claims' that I'm just citing anecdotes haven't said that here, because that's exactly what all these reports of layoffs are.

How do we know that there aren't a handful of companies similarly hiring thousands of workers, or tens of thousands of companies each hiring a handful of workers?

Of course, these aren't anecdotes to those laid off, but until we see actual jobs data, these reports are nothing more than anecdotes.

[Open Source Intelligence]

My company announced roughly 2500 layoffs this month. Tesla announced today they are laying off 14000. Tech have announced a bunch of layoffs as a group the last year (link: https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/15/tech-layoffs-2023-list/ ). I'm aware of it happening in orthopedics, pharma, and biotech. We've never had more war going on in the world post-Cold War than now and Lockheed and Northrop Grumman are doing it.

I'm a little perplexed on cause. My company was a bit of a shock as we'd been publicly running gangbusters for a few years. Now all of a sudden out of the blue layoffs. The only thing plausible to me to is they see something bad coming.

Ya sure about that?

Yes. When you consider everyone currently fighting and everyone supplying one side or the other war is very globalized at the moment.

[DaleCooper]

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

This is mostly bullsh-t, by the way. Your average plumber is absolutely f-cking not making six figures, lmao. No clue where this lie came from.

[Open Source Intelligence]

1. Consulting/Tech/Law took on FAR too many recruits during Covid19 as money was effectively free. The result was a lot of speculative hires who it turns out are not needed.

2. Many of those hired during Covid are not gelling with the return to office work. This means that teams are being downsized

3. There has been an almost unprecedented degree of managerial turnover as a lot of 50+ are cashing out early post-covid. This has knock-on effects if many of the hires made in 2021-2022 were for new initiatives or projects that lost their patrons half-way through the startup phase and face a new managment which neither understands their purpose or has any interest.

I watched all of these play out at a major hedge fund.

This is a correction which has little to nothing to do with the overall health of the economy or the companies in question. The old managment went on ill-considered hiring sprees then bailed much like Elon did by purchasing Twitter on a whim.

For those who are 24-28 who face a surplus in their cohorts and those in their 40s who are being thrown out the door rather than being eased out over the next five years, this is going to be unpleasant. All.the more so because it is likely that demand for professional services will shrink rather than grow.

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

I agree with #1 to a point. Word from managment for a couple years is we have to hire like mad and more than one person has stated privately "where's all this work we're giving these people?" We did have a lot of new work that justified the hiring, but they went overkill.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

I am glad I don't have to work the idea of getting a Bachelor's degree and getting a skilled job is hogwash and it's entanglement with the Student loan crisis instead of College being free we took out loans and not paying them back, I haven't paid one penny back

[Dan the Roman]

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

This is mostly bullsh-t, by the way. Your average plumber is absolutely f-cking not making six figures, lmao. No clue where this lie came from.

Tbf I was basing that on a former vacation area in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire which is booming from WFH of management from Boston. There is also a three month backlog of renovation orders in the area.

But around there it is interesting to contrast the prospects of people who went to BU/BC/Northeastern with those who stuck around and got apprenticeships. And its the first generation in my lifetimr where the latter seem to uniformly be doing a lot better than the former .

Probably is different in places where you have fewer expensive properties and a more corporate structure. 

[Dan the Roman]

1. Consulting/Tech/Law took on FAR too many recruits during Covid19 as money was effectively free. The result was a lot of speculative hires who it turns out are not needed.

2. Many of those hired during Covid are not gelling with the return to office work. This means that teams are being downsized

3. There has been an almost unprecedented degree of managerial turnover as a lot of 50+ are cashing out early post-covid. This has knock-on effects if many of the hires made in 2021-2022 were for new initiatives or projects that lost their patrons half-way through the startup phase and face a new managment which neither understands their purpose or has any interest.

I watched all of these play out at a major hedge fund.

This is a correction which has little to nothing to do with the overall health of the economy or the companies in question. The old managment went on ill-considered hiring sprees then bailed much like Elon did by purchasing Twitter on a whim.

For those who are 24-28 who face a surplus in their cohorts and those in their 40s who are being thrown out the door rather than being eased out over the next five years, this is going to be unpleasant. All.the more so because it is likely that demand for professional services will shrink rather than grow.

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

I agree with #1 to a point. Word from managment for a couple years is we have to hire like mad and more than one person has stated privately "where's all this work we're giving these people?" We did have a lot of new work that justified the hiring, but they went overkill.

Everything in my most is an oversimplification and not everywhere is having all three of these or even one but in my experience most large firms are suffering are having at least one.

#3 also seems somewhat common. A number of senior folks near retirement who went WFH from vacation homes have never returned to the office meaning the hiring decisions were inherited by a new generation who weren't party to that strategic plan and whose first task is rationalizing.

I do want to stress this seems focused near the top end of the professional sector and 80% of Americans are probably doing quite well. But that 15-20% is loud

[MasterJedi]

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

This is mostly bullsh-t, by the way. Your average plumber is absolutely f-cking not making six figures, lmao. No clue where this lie came from.

Conservative lies to cut down on people going to college. To pull that kind of money in trades for something that is not immediately highly skilled trade it will take many years, a lot of OT and hard work and/or starting your own business, which the average American has no desire to do. The tradeoff is most tradesman’s bodies are falling apart by the time they retire if they didn’t transition into management/ownership. They just say “you don’t need to bo go college” without the nuances.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Just got hired by tesla, weird.

[Sir Mohamed]

Aren't more or less layoffs happening all the time? Especially big corporations have a high fluctuation of employees. Some business segments gets sold or people laid off while others get hired.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

Aren't more or less layoffs happening all the time? Especially big corporations have a high fluctuation of employees. Some business segments gets sold or people laid off while others get hired.

Yes, the economy grows through what one of the great economists Joseph Schumpeter called 'creative destruction.'  Of course layoffs can be a sign of an upcoming recession, but the time to worry about an economy is when there are no layoffs because it also means there's no economic growth.

[jojoju1998]

1. Consulting/Tech/Law took on FAR too many recruits during Covid19 as money was effectively free. The result was a lot of speculative hires who it turns out are not needed.

2. Many of those hired during Covid are not gelling with the return to office work. This means that teams are being downsized

3. There has been an almost unprecedented degree of managerial turnover as a lot of 50+ are cashing out early post-covid. This has knock-on effects if many of the hires made in 2021-2022 were for new initiatives or projects that lost their patrons half-way through the startup phase and face a new managment which neither understands their purpose or has any interest.

I watched all of these play out at a major hedge fund.

This is a correction which has little to nothing to do with the overall health of the economy or the companies in question. The old managment went on ill-considered hiring sprees then bailed much like Elon did by purchasing Twitter on a whim.

For those who are 24-28 who face a surplus in their cohorts and those in their 40s who are being thrown out the door rather than being eased out over the next five years, this is going to be unpleasant. All.the more so because it is likely that demand for professional services will shrink rather than grow.

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

This is mostly bullsh-t, by the way. Your average plumber is absolutely f-cking not making six figures, lmao. No clue where this lie came from.

Conservative lies to cut down on people going to college. To pull that kind of money in trades for something that is not immediately highly skilled trade it will take many years, a lot of OT and hard work and/or starting your own business, which the average American has no desire to do. The tradeoff is most tradesman’s bodies are falling apart by the time they retire if they didn’t transition into management/ownership. They just say “you don’t need to bo go college” without the nuances.

Don't most trades nowadays require a level of education that is comparable to a 4 year college degree ? Most apprenticeships are not going to take in simpletons for the sake of it. http://www.ualocal447.org/

You can even get college credit !! And then build up your college credit, to get a construction management degree.

They even have CAD programs now.

The irony is the skilled trade jobs that are six figures are all in Unions....

[jojoju1998]

Even for CNC Programmers/Machinists ( another trade ), you can get an associate's degree ! https://deanza.elumenapp.com/catalog/2023-2024/program/cnc-machinist-fall-2022v2


And then use, those credits as a segue way to a management degree or something.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Trump isn't gonna do anything about it except keep giving Corporations tax cuts

[Electric Circus]

Higher interest rates aren't going away soon. That seems to be the biggest recent shift in expectations among the people making these decisions.

I know someone who was caught up in IBM's most recent round of layoffs. This person worked in the international shared services center in Slovakia. IBM's earnings statement said that the decision was "driven by increases in productivity." A lot of organizations seem to be realizing that they can shed a lot of white collar workers without affecting their current operations.

[Electric Circus]

Aren't more or less layoffs happening all the time? Especially big corporations have a high fluctuation of employees. Some business segments gets sold or people laid off while others get hired.

Early 2023 was big for layoffs in certain sectors, especially tech and media, which get disproportionate attention. See here.

Some of this has continued into 2024, but it's not as much as last year. This tracker is limited to tech companies but has plenty of interesting data.

[Skill and Chance]

1. Consulting/Tech/Law took on FAR too many recruits during Covid19 as money was effectively free. The result was a lot of speculative hires who it turns out are not needed.

2. Many of those hired during Covid are not gelling with the return to office work. This means that teams are being downsized

3. There has been an almost unprecedented degree of managerial turnover as a lot of 50+ are cashing out early post-covid. This has knock-on effects if many of the hires made in 2021-2022 were for new initiatives or projects that lost their patrons half-way through the startup phase and face a new managment which neither understands their purpose or has any interest.

I watched all of these play out at a major hedge fund.

This is a correction which has little to nothing to do with the overall health of the economy or the companies in question. The old managment went on ill-considered hiring sprees then bailed much like Elon did by purchasing Twitter on a whim.

For those who are 24-28 who face a surplus in their cohorts and those in their 40s who are being thrown out the door rather than being eased out over the next five years, this is going to be unpleasant. All.the more so because it is likely that demand for professional services will shrink rather than grow.

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

This is mostly bullsh-t, by the way. Your average plumber is absolutely f-cking not making six figures, lmao. No clue where this lie came from.

Conservative lies to cut down on people going to college. To pull that kind of money in trades for something that is not immediately highly skilled trade it will take many years, a lot of OT and hard work and/or starting your own business, which the average American has no desire to do. The tradeoff is most tradesman’s bodies are falling apart by the time they retire if they didn’t transition into management/ownership. They just say “you don’t need to bo go college” without the nuances.

Don't most trades nowadays require a level of education that is comparable to a 4 year college degree ? Most apprenticeships are not going to take in simpletons for the sake of it. http://www.ualocal447.org/

You can even get college credit !! And then build up your college credit, to get a construction management degree.

They even have CAD programs now.

The irony is the skilled trade jobs that are six figures are all in Unions....

There really are a lot of plumbers and especially welders out there making 6 figures.  In some cases, they are making 6 figures and 1st number isn't 1.  However, where the discussion often gets sidetracked is where they have to be training and experience wise to get that.  The comparison is often made to a 22-year-old just graduating college or a 26-year-old coming out of grad school.  The plumbers and welders aren't making that much money that early in life. 

If you want to compare mid career skilled trades business owners making 6 figures to people with grad degrees who are similarly far along the path to business ownership, the more accurate anchoring point would be to practice-owning physicians or biglaw partners or senior investment bankers.  The latter group often make 7 figures.  However, small towns need plumbing companies a lot more than they need management consultants, so the plumber's cost of living can be meaningfully lower.  Probably not by enough to make up the difference, though.

[DaleCooper]

If you want to compare mid career skilled trades business owners making 6 figures . . .

Okay, that's the problem right here. No one thinks they're talking about "business owners" when they brag about how plumbers are becoming millionaires, and the ones that know what they're talking about are deliberately lying (for reasons I don't understand) in order to trick men into thinking that if they drop out of school and become tradesmen, they'll get buried in easy money. As if someone who can't make it through speech class 101 is going to be able to run a successful business anyway, or for that matter make it through trade school, which everyone is assuming will be easy and require no discipline.

Being a maintenance man is not easy, it's not glamorous work, and it does not pay well. The men that fall for this lie are going to be very bitter and angry in the future.

[Open Source Intelligence]

If you want to compare mid career skilled trades business owners making 6 figures . . .

Okay, that's the problem right here. No one thinks they're talking about "business owners" when they brag about how plumbers are becoming millionaires, and the ones that know what they're talking about are deliberately lying (for reasons I don't understand) in order to trick men into thinking that if they drop out of school and become tradesmen, they'll get buried in easy money. As if someone who can't make it through speech class 101 is going to be able to run a successful business anyway, or for that matter make it through trade school, which everyone is assuming will be easy and require no discipline.

Being a maintenance man is not easy, it's not glamorous work, and it does not pay well. The men that fall for this lie are going to be very bitter and angry in the future.

I feel like everyone arguing about this for transparency should state what their career is. "Glamorous work" is eye of the beholder. Being in a cubicle for 10 hours every day is hardly a dream for most people. Yet a lot of people do it and you can get paid well in some jobs. It's a cultural choice. In a previous job I was a mechanical engineer developing mostly single-handedly a new system for trash trucks and I spent some Friday evenings at the dump as part of my in-field R&D testing making my design work and fixing the problems. That's part of the job and what I had to do to succeed. It's part of any job. Don't ever provide me a college grad looking for a job even in a mostly white-collar desk field of engineering that expects their job to be easy, glamorous, and pays well before they've accomplished anything in life and think I'll hire them.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

1. Consulting/Tech/Law took on FAR too many recruits during Covid19 as money was effectively free. The result was a lot of speculative hires who it turns out are not needed.

2. Many of those hired during Covid are not gelling with the return to office work. This means that teams are being downsized

3. There has been an almost unprecedented degree of managerial turnover as a lot of 50+ are cashing out early post-covid. This has knock-on effects if many of the hires made in 2021-2022 were for new initiatives or projects that lost their patrons half-way through the startup phase and face a new managment which neither understands their purpose or has any interest.

I watched all of these play out at a major hedge fund.

This is a correction which has little to nothing to do with the overall health of the economy or the companies in question. The old managment went on ill-considered hiring sprees then bailed much like Elon did by purchasing Twitter on a whim.

For those who are 24-28 who face a surplus in their cohorts and those in their 40s who are being thrown out the door rather than being eased out over the next five years, this is going to be unpleasant. All.the more so because it is likely that demand for professional services will shrink rather than grow.

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

This is mostly bullsh-t, by the way. Your average plumber is absolutely f-cking not making six figures, lmao. No clue where this lie came from.

Conservative lies to cut down on people going to college. To pull that kind of money in trades for something that is not immediately highly skilled trade it will take many years, a lot of OT and hard work and/or starting your own business, which the average American has no desire to do. The tradeoff is most tradesman’s bodies are falling apart by the time they retire if they didn’t transition into management/ownership. They just say “you don’t need to bo go college” without the nuances.

Don't most trades nowadays require a level of education that is comparable to a 4 year college degree ? Most apprenticeships are not going to take in simpletons for the sake of it. http://www.ualocal447.org/

You can even get college credit !! And then build up your college credit, to get a construction management degree.

They even have CAD programs now.

The irony is the skilled trade jobs that are six figures are all in Unions....

There really are a lot of plumbers and especially welders out there making 6 figures.  In some cases, they are making 6 figures and 1st number isn't 1.  However, where the discussion often gets sidetracked is where they have to be training and experience wise to get that.  The comparison is often made to a 22-year-old just graduating college or a 26-year-old coming out of grad school.  The plumbers and welders aren't making that much money that early in life. 

A 26 year-old graduating in an engineering field will almost certainly be able to outearn the trade-school electrical or plumber and will also be able to found their own business or move into consulting.

[Skill and Chance]

1. Consulting/Tech/Law took on FAR too many recruits during Covid19 as money was effectively free. The result was a lot of speculative hires who it turns out are not needed.

2. Many of those hired during Covid are not gelling with the return to office work. This means that teams are being downsized

3. There has been an almost unprecedented degree of managerial turnover as a lot of 50+ are cashing out early post-covid. This has knock-on effects if many of the hires made in 2021-2022 were for new initiatives or projects that lost their patrons half-way through the startup phase and face a new managment which neither understands their purpose or has any interest.

I watched all of these play out at a major hedge fund.

This is a correction which has little to nothing to do with the overall health of the economy or the companies in question. The old managment went on ill-considered hiring sprees then bailed much like Elon did by purchasing Twitter on a whim.

For those who are 24-28 who face a surplus in their cohorts and those in their 40s who are being thrown out the door rather than being eased out over the next five years, this is going to be unpleasant. All.the more so because it is likely that demand for professional services will shrink rather than grow.

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

On the other hand, plumbers and electricians can easily pull six figures.

This is mostly bullsh-t, by the way. Your average plumber is absolutely f-cking not making six figures, lmao. No clue where this lie came from.

Conservative lies to cut down on people going to college. To pull that kind of money in trades for something that is not immediately highly skilled trade it will take many years, a lot of OT and hard work and/or starting your own business, which the average American has no desire to do. The tradeoff is most tradesman’s bodies are falling apart by the time they retire if they didn’t transition into management/ownership. They just say “you don’t need to bo go college” without the nuances.

Don't most trades nowadays require a level of education that is comparable to a 4 year college degree ? Most apprenticeships are not going to take in simpletons for the sake of it. http://www.ualocal447.org/

You can even get college credit !! And then build up your college credit, to get a construction management degree.

They even have CAD programs now.

The irony is the skilled trade jobs that are six figures are all in Unions....

There really are a lot of plumbers and especially welders out there making 6 figures.  In some cases, they are making 6 figures and 1st number isn't 1.  However, where the discussion often gets sidetracked is where they have to be training and experience wise to get that.  The comparison is often made to a 22-year-old just graduating college or a 26-year-old coming out of grad school.  The plumbers and welders aren't making that much money that early in life. 

A 26 year-old graduating in an engineering field will almost certainly be able to outearn the trade-school electrical or plumber and will also be able to found their own business or move into consulting.

Yes, but the marginal "should I go to college or not" students on the borderline almost surely wouldn't perform well enough in engineering classes to a. complete the degree and b. compete for a job in an engineering field. 

I'm unsure what the right comparison is, but it probably isn't between skilled trades and engineering.  Probably it's between skilled trades and generic "business" degrees, which generally lead to a ~$65K cubicle job for most of your 20's.  Average results for a plumber or welder or electrician probably can "beat" that. 

On the other end of the spectrum, the ceiling is lower for a skilled trades entrepreneur than a postgrad entrepreneur (lawyers, medical doctors, AI researchers, etc.), but the competition is probably less severe and lifestyle less intense.  Every local geographic area with a significant population needs skilled trades firms.