chat

Shipping volume is drying the fuck up.

Every drop-shipping business is going to be at death's door pretty soon thanks to tariffs.

Shelves are empty as fuck (this is like communism)

Morale at work is at an all-time low (logistics industry).

Mass layoffs are coming for everyone. There's just not enough economic activity to sustain the level of employment that we're at. And it's only going downhill from there. Spiking unemployment is just going to lower consumption even more, resulting in more unemployment.

But it's okay, we have anti-woke AI to guide us toward a post-woke future with big booba and no minorities.

I was laid off in 2008, 2020, and now again in mid 2025 (I work in industrial equipment manufacturing). Anecdotally, the job search process is feeling somewhat worse than 2008. Part of that seems to just be the absolute degenate state of job boards, but I think it's mostly just the collapsing availability of real job openings.

I was employed for the first half of 2025, and so I got to be privvy to my company's Q1 and preliminary Q2 results. They were... really bad, like sales dropped almost in half from an already kind of weak 2024. But I think the kicker was that a lot of people ended up getting pulled into tariff-mitigation work because of parts availability issues, so it's not like we were even working on cost-reduction projects or anything.

I think we're seeing a relatively slow crash because the 2020 COVID shocks were not that long ago, and so everyone got some practice with handling sudden unexpected supply chain shocks. But as I've said before, a lot of companies simply don't have a plan for what to do if Trump doesn't TACO on tariffs.

Warehouse and distribution center I do some side work for has legitimately considered closing its doors. It’s been around 50+ years with a fairly healthy cash flow. I guess that’s more abstractly indicative of a failing economy not a particular sector

Also inflation is also way way waaaay higher than reports ever indicate. Hedonic adjustment keeps adjusting for the quality of goods improving, when in reality most aren’t, and some are actively getting worse. Economists are so smart aren’t they

Everything is great!

Now if you excuse me I have to login to 50 casino websites

Multiple tech people I know are unemployed. For combined years at this point.

what happens if everyone is placed into a tight little false reality bubble and told everything is great? and every job loss, layoff, price spike, etc is just a personal failing or a personalized "dynamic price scheme"

the whole economy could collapse and everyone could just be tricked into thinking it's their own fault and they should just curl up in a ditch.

like legitimately we can't be more then a year or two from this being easy to pull off. forced "deaths of despair" but done en masse and weaponized, yet another tool in the exterminationists kit.

but yeah we have been in emergency mode for some time now. only spending on absolute necessities. prepping in various ways. only doing work on the house that will keep our home insurance from dropping us, so just exterior work cash only with a recommended handyman. interior remodel is low priority. our former guest room is just plastic shelves with shelf stable food, MREs, rice, beans, etc.

my sector (retail grocery) is still humming along, doing record sales, but we are being told no more OT and no work orders. my partner is in trucking and still making money but they are the top driver at their small co. (super safe and efficient) and get the best runs. so shit feels weird, waiting for the hammer to drop

been wondering how much longer power grid stability will last in the States.

my job is being outsourced piece by piece to cheaper labor sources in other countries, and what isn't being outsourced is being replaced by (very shitty) AI. everyone expects that in a month or so there won't be any reason to keep us around anymore and they'll drop the layoffs on us. the job market around here is so dry that I honestly expect I won't find anything, so I'll have to live on what I've saved for as long as I can and then just die, I guess?

it's extremely fuckin grim out here y'all

I had to get out of pure renewables and move to general energy efficiency. At least rising electricity costs give us some leg up, but only as long as industry has any capital to invest in itself.

I'm worried about my wife getting laid off from her quasi-government job. We want to have another kid but we already spend $1000 a month on day care. We have a big cushion of savings but who knows how long it can last - I'm not willing to invest it when a crash could come any minute.

Canada is in a lot of trouble with job market as well and being the liberals, they are following Labour in UK with gutting public services and they are also working on a destructive bill (C-2) that expands mass surveillence without warrants and opening more doors to US surveillence agencies as it would make changes to support US CLOUD act (which I don't know a whole lot about but can't think it's for any good) to name few examples. https://openmedia.org/press/item/over-300-organizations-unite-to-demand-complete-withdrawal-of-bill-c-2

Good number of my friends have been struggling to find work (including me) with some not being able to find anything since 2024.

Everything is well right?

UK job market is truly, immensely fucked. Very few jobs around, impossible to get into anything for young people. Older people with established careers also feeling the bite to some degree but largely able to take a step down into the positions that less experienced people would usually be able to take. Absolutely no government acknowledgement of this issue or any plan to fix it, instead forcing more people into the market by cutting the public sector and raising tax on employment (that latter thing is minor but still does have an impact on hiring practices). Rent and commodity prices (especially electricity) higher than ever and strangling smaller businesses, including many that survived previous crises. Fewer people have the money to spend on luxuries or on the high street, which is causing trouble even for sectors that were on a hiring spree post-pandemic, like hospitality. Death spiral which will probably end in war with Russia.

not american but i can visibly see the worriness/stress from acquaintances that work in corporate US. One has been working more than a decade in a certain multinational, a bonafide loyal employee, with a, i think, high managerial position and has told me they feel they're getting laid off anytime because sales are grim, they sell luxury goods so its kind of a tell when luxury goods sales are down it means people do not have the extra cash for these things. Tho tbf it could also mean their products have gotten terrible, which it could very well be the case.

Also these last 4-5 years, this city ive frequented throughout all my life is now filled with homeless, which it was not the case 10 years ago. This is not one of the big cities btw.

The giants of my industry are doing layoffs of thousands of people

It's grim

Food prices have gone up so much I can only cry-laugh at this point. My job is okay for now, but there was a very close call earlier this summer. Doesn't look good for next year rn though.

I've been seeing several posts online from young IT professionals complaining about how hard it is to get a job. I haven't seen that before.

I can’t give you any hot shot market data, but I can say:

I’m a person who, generally, likes to spend my money. I like ‘things’. It’s a part of who I am. But, I’ve noticed over the past 10 months, that my spending has gonna down to only buying the things I absolutely need. And even still, I’m finding myself with barely enough to reach the next pay day, if that.

Does anyone know where to find accurate numbers? Like, summaries made for economists and investors, that sort of thing

Honestly no idea what to do. My skills are limited. No college. Early in transition, red state. I have a part time job right now but no idea how I'll be able get a full time job or get enough money to move out.

Anecdata

And then we get Buttigieg I guess?

Probably with something squeezed thru the House and Senate called Buttigieg's Bureaucratic Banality, because apparently every presidency from here on out is going to have a BBB piece of legislation.

my wife has done loan servicing on some part of the pipeline for her whole life basically.

this week she starts down an entirely new career path doing admin for my friend who owns a mental health practice

its a microcosm of america