U.S. jobs disappear at fastest January pace since great recession

Posted by alephnerd 8 hours ago

U.S. jobs disappear at fastest January pace since great recession(www.forbes.com)

286 points | 231 commentspage 2

nxm 4 hours ago||

It's more nuanced as usual.

Trump had a booming economy right before Covid, and took the brunt of the jobs cuts in 2020. Biden next year "created" the jobs per the numbers there.

Also, what's the breakdown between public & private sector jobs? Spending taxes on government jobs in not something to celebrate.

nullocator 2 hours ago|

Rephrased: Trump inherited a strong economy, did not know how to govern or appropriately wield the power of his office (zero experience), did not have a good relationship with congress so made no progress there unlike most presidents, and was constrained from his worst impulses by his own staff. Finally when Covid occurred and he was actually required to lead it all came crashing down because he was and is incapable. A geriatric democrat had to come and right the ship again immediately after.

phendrenad2 6 hours ago||

Yet housing costs keep increasing. The working class is being squeezed between employers who are suffering lost revenue and can't pay US wages, and landlords and mega-corp shareholders who won't budge on price. I foresee a slow protracted "collapse" (or really renegotiation) that will bankrupt stuck-in-the-mud billionaires (like Elon) as their means of recourse - law enforcement and the military - come under such powerful social coercion that no amount of money will stop them from siding with working-class-friendly new leadership like Mamdani, as the workers (who, despite what Elon tells himself in his robot fantasies, are still needed en masse), use their REAL voting power - moving their home to jurisdictions that are working-class-friendly.

betaby 5 hours ago|

I don't see any signs of that

kurtis_reed 7 hours ago||

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toomuchtodo 7 hours ago|

[flagged]

swagasaurus-rex 7 hours ago|||

can we also blame the DNC for not holding an election for who would run against trump?

Or the DNC for throwing Bernie under the bus in 2016 (he would have beaten trump)?

Maybe the two party system has grown rotten to the core

themacguffinman 7 hours ago|||

No, DNC picking a bad candidate should be responsible for a D electoral loss, it is not responsible for Trump's electoral win. A lot of people seem to think only the DNC has agency in elections, only they should be responsible for outcomes.

direwolf20 7 hours ago||||

You can blame the DNC for all the badness of Harris (the minimum badness you were able to choose in the election). You can't blame the DNC for all the difference between Kamala and Trump. That was entirely up to you.

toomuchtodo 7 hours ago||||

No. You had a choice. I voted for Harris (who I do not like as a progressive) instead of chaos and destruction, others had the same choice. To not vote out of protest was a vote for this.

Better luck next time. ~2M voters 55+ age out every year. Can we do better? Remains to be seen.

verdverm 4 hours ago||||

1/3 are D and voted Harris

1/3 are R and voted Trump

1/3 are I and voted their wallet

handwavy, but not inaccurate

toomuchtodo 4 hours ago||

If you’re voting for your wallet, I don’t take offense, simply vote for someone with a plan grounded in reality, and at least some history of success. This is not what has happened.

GM prepares for economic downturn: 'It's coming,' CFO says - https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/general-mot... | https://archive.today/P8WUE - February 5th, 2026

enterprisetalk 6 hours ago|||

[flagged]

voxl 7 hours ago|||

I voted for Bernie in the primary, for Hilary; Biden; and Harris in the general elections. At no point did I think to myself "Now is the time to be an idealist about the DNC, right when we're combating fascism"

The DNC is an embarrassment, the two party system is a democratic disaster, but accelerationists? They're evil.

verdverm 7 hours ago|||

That's rather reductionist for such a complex set of circumstances and events that led to the eventual results

bonsai_spool 6 hours ago||

> That's rather reductionist for such a complex set of circumstances and events that led to the eventual results

I think this is usually true, but there hasn't really been a global shock of the sort we had in 2020 or 2008 or 2001.

What would you say are the salient circumstances now?

erxam 6 hours ago|||

It's not a shock, it's a natural consequence of the rot continuing its course.

The USA is an empire founded in bloodshed and hatred, and it is only becoming more so as it decays. Until you rewrite what the USA means, this will only continue.

verdverm 4 hours ago|||

now is not 2024, when people felt the sting of inflation and the collective trauma of covid

now is still largely the the same, top 2-3 issues are related to money, cultural or societal issues are on the rise and shifting in polls, a welcomed sign

alephnerd 6 hours ago||

[flagged]

axpy906 6 hours ago||

The scariest party is the uniparty.

seneca 6 hours ago|||

Every post you make on this site is essentially the exact same H1B propaganda. It's tiresome to watch someone use this community like this.

sunshowers 5 hours ago|||

Migrating to a place where people can contribute more to society is both a core tenet of individual liberty and one of the most positive-sum things any human being can do.

But given that you both feign concern over visa holders' working conditions [1], while at the same time advocating for policies that lead to worse working conditions [2], perhaps you just hate freedom and were never acting in good faith in the first place.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45656527

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323501

alephnerd 5 hours ago||

It's just the process of learning the hard way that not heeding the warnings everyone gave is painful.

Now that they're facing consequences which we warned about (and prepped for as a result) they want to ignore it thinking that the monsters under the bed will go away.

Brain drain somewhere is brain gain elsewhere.

alephnerd 6 hours ago||||

Barely a couple weeks ago resorting to H1B bashing was the norm on HN. Now that the chickens have come home to roost you want to ignore it.

seneca 6 hours ago|||

I don't want to ignore anything. The H1B fee changes were a half-measure that didn't go nearly far enough.

alephnerd 6 hours ago|||

And my point is those "half measures" have already incentivized us to offshore even more than before. Going with "full measures" will only further incentivize us to go ExAmerica.

seneca 5 hours ago||

That assumes that policies can't be put in place to control the incentives such that they prioritize American companies hiring American employees.

alephnerd 5 hours ago|||

What policies lol.

We lobbied where we needed to. Now we're bankrolling Trump's Venezuela [0] and "Drill Baby Drill" [1] policy and bankrolling Iowa [2] and Montana GOP's [3] agricultural exports. We also greenlit multiple Trump Towers projects [4][5][6][7].

This is how a trade war is fought.

Policymaking is always secondary to politics. That's why I left the policy space to climb the ladder in business.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indias-reliance-talk...

[1] - https://www.livemint.com/companies/ongc-exxonmobil-collabora...

[2] - https://governor.iowa.gov/press-release/2025-09-16/gov-reyno...

[3] - https://www.daines.senate.gov/2026/01/20/daines-travels-to-i...

[4] - https://www.trump.com/residential-real-estate-portfolio/trum...

[5] - https://www.trump.com/residential-real-estate-portfolio/trum...

[6] - https://www.trump.com/residential-real-estate-portfolio/trum...

[7] - https://www.trump.com/residential-real-estate-portfolio/trum...

sunshowers 5 hours ago|||

[flagged]

seneca 5 hours ago||

What a childish argument.

sunshowers 5 hours ago||

I need you to understand that immigration controls are fundamentally and inherently antithetical to freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and freedom of association. And this applies both to immigrants and to citizens.

Imagine if you needed government approval to live with the one you love! What a completely unreasonable intervention into the private lives of ordinary people. Oh wait, that's the actual reality immigrants live in.

seneca 3 hours ago||

Yes, I see, you don't believe in countries or borders. I disagree with you, fundamentally, as do basically all Americans.

sunshowers 3 hours ago||

I believe that countries and borders exist as a descriptive fact about the world. But I also believe that it's impossible to square immigration control regimes with any robust notion of freedom and liberty, and also that there isn't room for much disagreement on this specific point once you understand the intrinsic nature of such regimes. See Kukathas, Immigration and Freedom for more.

I know most people (of any nationality, not just Americans) don't understand this, but you and I are not most people. I believe things because it is correct to believe them, not because most people believe them (or not).

edit: to be clear, you can say "immigration control lessens freedom, but I'm willing to give up freedom—both yours and mine—because I value certain things more". That is a reasonable point, though I might as a follow-up probe into the motivation behind that. "I think the government gets to stop you from living with your spouse, but I'm okay with that because XYZ" better have a pretty robust XYZ behind it!

churchill 5 hours ago|||

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apapkka 4 hours ago|||

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dyauspitr 4 hours ago|||

Really? With all the H1B discussion on this site you prefer if it were completely one sided?

leosanchez 6 hours ago||

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dyauspitr 4 hours ago|||

It’s not irrelevant to this discussion considering 50% of our unicorns are immigrant founded.

alephnerd 6 hours ago|||

When you are Asian American, the conversation is deeply personal.

And I feel pointing out how a commonly repeated trope in our industry is backfiring is important.

Alternatively, you can bury your heads into the deeper and deeper hole that is being dug.

mono442 6 hours ago||

For me, it seems like a logical consequence of overheating the economy by cutting interest rates to zero during the COVID period.

duxup 5 hours ago||

I recall similar predictions from stimulus from the mortgage crisis. Things did not seem to play out predictably, I'm not sure all the old rules are as hard and fast anymore as people think.

jaybrendansmith 6 hours ago|||

You are off by several years on the interest rates, which have an 18-24 month impact. Also we have this idiotic and unlawful tariff war the US administration is currently perpetrating. But I'm certain AI is having a huge impact as well.

ghaff 6 hours ago||

I'm unconvinced of the AI impact outside of the tech sector. But there's certainly a lot of uncertainty generally. Probably more senior people with reputations are in a better position but likely tougher for people with no records.

lazyasciiart 6 hours ago|||

Graphic design and copywriting are possibly affected even worse than the tech sector, for one.

squibonpig 5 hours ago|||

There's a lot of reason to think companies citing AI as the reason for their layoffs are just lying because it looks better to shareholders, and that AI kinda sucks and isn't used for much yet. https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/evaluating-impact-ai-lab...

ghaff 6 hours ago|||

I don't have much involvement with graphic design but I agree that the impact on journalism and adjacent is pretty awful. Not sure how much is AI per se but certainly the economics have been pretty unfavorable. I'm not convinced it's just AI slop but but quantity can displace quality.

duxup 5 hours ago|||

I agree generally as far as immediate losses. But I think longer term with AI soaking up a lot of investment dollars we see other places not seeing investment or hiring growth.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4 hours ago|||

Combined with stimulus and PPP

scoofy 2 hours ago||

So, we're just doing whatever it takes to blame the Democratic Party, huh?

Cutting interest rates during a period of time when people were literally locked in their homes waiting for a vaccine to be manufactured? I mean, yea, there were mistakes made, and the PPP and Biden stimulus were very obviously bad decisions, but pretending that tariffs and literally threatening allies has nothing to do with this economy is just lunacy. Just look at what's happening to the American tourism sector. It's falling apart.

I'm a liberal guy, but this take is ridiculous.

esbranson 6 hours ago||

Chicken Little already told us. Armageddon is also coming, don't forget about that.

JOLTS data for January 2026 has been delayed, but don't expect those tea leaves to change your opinion about what the future holds.

stevetron 7 hours ago|

I hear that the Washington Post just fired 1/3 of all of it's reporters.

Otherwise, if so many jobs have disappeared, does that mean that my garbage company no longer needs to employ a staf on every truck to drive it and empty my trash recepticle into the truck?

sixothree 6 hours ago||

Is that an argument of some sort? I can't quite identify the point.

downboots 6 hours ago||

I feel the same way about the article

warkdarrior 6 hours ago|||

No, but the garbage will need fewer pickups if consumption drops. Fewer pickups means fewer trucks means free drivers.

mcphage 6 hours ago||

> does that mean that my garbage company no longer needs to employ a staf on every truck to drive it and empty my trash recepticle into the truck?

Do… do you not want them to do this?