Immaculate Disinflation Lives In Favorable JOLTS
There were more than half a million fewer US job openings on the final business day of October versus the prior month, the first of this week's key labor market data showed.
The decline, which was far larger than economists expected, looked all the more pronounced given a downward revision to September's headline JOLTS print.
At "just" 8.733 million, the total number of vacancies across the world's largest economy was the lowest since March of 2021. Consensus expected 9.3 million from the head
I’d love to see some sort of white collar vs. blue collar split on this data if any of the smart folks here have that. I suspect blue collar employment is holding up well, but white collar employment, especially in tech, is nearing it’s Wile E. Coyote moment.
Here: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t01.htm
Finance seems the standout there.
@dayjob, I don’t think tech will have a Wile E. Coyote moment. Sure, its trimming the fat, but AI is going to create more jobs, not less. There’s a large amount of investment going on in this space.
Uh, isn’t that contrary to the whole point of AI, through the eyes of businesses, the ultimate consumers of AI? Eventually AI has to pay its own way, just like a robot. Otherwise, why spend the money?
It could pay its own way by replacing other jobs than tech jobs (radiologists, paralegal, content creators and so on)
AI isn’t just for reducing jobs by cutting them out. I’m a coder. A middling coder, not a great one, not a lousy one. A great coder is ~10x faster than a middling one, and can handle more complex concepts and requests. AI is helping me dramatically improve my coding, it’s kinda like having another middling coder next to me, but one that has a lot of experience that I can ask questions all day. I’m faster now with my new co-worker, maybe 2x-3x faster on most days, and I’m handling more varied and complex concepts. I’m not great yet, but I’ve got a great new helper.
Btfl-thx for posting a real life situation where AI can positively assist humans.
So, your management will need fewer coders going forward. Beware the next round of “right-sizing” at your firm.
Stepping back, coding DOES appear to be a sector that is actually being impacted by AI. And I’ve noticed that that corner of the tech world is responsible for much of the market enthusiasm about it. Six months ago I spoke with a fund manager who was rabidly bullish on AI. He told me “Every person we talk to at every tech firm is gung-ho about it.” (Or something to that effect.) You also may notice where so many of the recent layoffs have been.
Can’t argue with that but to extrapolate that to every industry and every company will prove to be a mistake.
Similar to Btfl’s use case, we’ll see the same thing on the sales side of tech. It’s not that Sales will completely go away, but it’ll increase the capacity of your reps which will create major efficiency gains, especially since companies will keep their best reps who suddenly all have their own assistant.
And yes, if you are in tech, you will need to stay ahead of the curve because right-sizing will be coming in a big way and there will be a lot of long-term unemployed as a result. It’ll have much larger implications in other industries over the next few years. Blue collar jobs will be less impacted because AI can’t fix your house (but it might help you fix it yourself).