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U.S. unemployment rate is steady at ~4% and we are now almost 4 years after the release of ChatGPT. The Jobs Apocalypse seems to be always on the horizon. UBI i

U.S. unemployment rate is steady at ~4% and we are now almost 4 years after the release of ChatGPT. The Jobs Apocalypse seems to be always on the horizon. UBI is being pushed by college educated workers burnt out of white collar work (understandably), but when you suggest to them working construction, teaching school, or working in a hospital, they deflect and go quiet.

tsunamifury 16d ago
You realize that this number has been 'kept' at 4% by continuiously qualifying the unemployed as "not looking". Real unemployment has been steadily growing along U6 numbers
schmidtleonard 16d ago
No, that's not the usual response, because people in this situation have evaluated those alternatives and will be easily able to articulate what is wrong with them (pay). Also, the 4% figure treats doordash as employment. In a parallel universe where the pay was decent, that could be reasonable. In this universe, not so much. These are boomer-tier talking points and if you bring them up to a kid stuck in this position you will get dunked on and you will deserve it. Unless you found a shy kid, in which case: congratulations on your new title as undefeated shadowboxing champion.
- albedoa 16d ago
  > These are boomer-tier talking points Add to your excellent takedown the implication that any of us can walk into a school with our résumé and ask for a teaching interview. It's the most meme-ified of the boomer memes presented unironically.
- bewareofscams 16d ago
  >dunked on Slapped (or beaten) would be fair-er.
random3 16d ago
your argument suggests there's an opportunity for a trading strategy. It's also very common as a "technical analysis" investment strategy for any gullible person on the internet. The problem is it looks "backwards" and tries to make the point something (in this case the argument made in the paper) is false because the backwards data doesn't support it. All while completely failing to address the crux of the point being made.
moffers 16d ago
But total unemployment is going up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE
- nateb2022 16d ago
  Correlation isn't causation; in the last few years we've experienced some significant economic headwinds like COVID and the current oil crisis. AI rollout is not happening in a vacuum.
  - deleted 16d ago
    [deleted]
  - stymaar 16d ago
    Sure but you can't say “the numbers are flat hence nothing is happening” when the numbers aren't in fact flat. Maybe it's trending up for completely unrelated reasons, as it's very hard in economics to derive the actual causal relationship, but a blanket refusal is unwarranted and should be counted as the unsubstantiated opinion it is.
    - nateb2022 16d ago
      Yeah, I would be impressed by an economist talented enough to discern a defensible signal on the impact of AI on real job growth. I think the next best thing we have is to observe the tendencies of supply/demand; if people were actively being replaced by AI, that large demand would be being enabled by some pretty wealthy companies providing AI laborers, white collar desk job perhaps; however the companies providing such a service still involve a lot of human-in-the-loop type stuff, like those startups offering "AI coworkers" through a Slack or Teams interface. Those companies though are not nearly as successful as OpenAI/Anthropic last I checked, which are supplying a lot of consumer AI/ AI being used by humans rather than AI doing what humans do, independently. And I'm pretty sure the majority of AI token burn is not replacing humans; it's building software under the direction of humans.
- rmah 16d ago
ikrenji 16d ago
by some measures unemployment is at 25% and this aligns with my personal experience much better than frankly the bs 4% rate that is being pushed by this admin https://www.lisep.org/tru https://www.lisep.org/tru
- bwhiting2356 16d ago
  in your link, the "true rate" has also not risen since the rise of AI, was higher in 1995
- mc32 16d ago
  4% may be optimistic but 25% is great depression levels of unemployment and it’s nowhere near that. We could be at 6%.
- rmah 16d ago
  According to their numbers the TRU rate of unemployment between 2022 and 2026 is the lowest it's been in 30 years.
  - ikrenji 16d ago
    hm, you're right. looks like they just take the official figure and slap a constant on it. regardless, I still think the official figure is fundamentally flawed and doesn't reflect the health of the job market ~ underemployment, workers that gave up looking, etc
jvanderbot 16d ago
I have two ideas you might like: 1) initial signs of AI adoption harming job growth got the signal backwards: It's not that we didn't hire Jrs because we had AI now, its that we didn't hire Jrs because they used AI now, and it was hard to reconcile this with our standing hireability signals: code quality, side projects, portfolio, etc. 2) The TAM argument for AI replacing all work is not even required. Anthropic and company (and several future companies) can become fantastically wealthy beyond anyone's dreams just by following claude code subscription model to make life easier for workers, who in turn gladly pay for the subcription. both are here with more details, apologies for links to personal (ad-free) blog https://jodavaho.io/posts/ai-signalling.html https://jodavaho.io/posts/ai-signalling.html https://jodavaho.io/posts/ai-jobpocolypse.html https://jodavaho.io/posts/ai-jobpocolypse.html
- dudefeliciano 16d ago
  > Anthropic and company (and several future companies) can become fantastically wealthy beyond anyone's dreams just by following claude code subscription model isn't the claude code subscription model heavily subsized and not profitable on its own?
francisofascii 16d ago
hospital and construction works get about $20/hour. Being a teacher will require going back for a 2nd degree. Is that the alternative for knowledge worker when getting laid off?
- bwhiting2356 16d ago
  Yes (and many more options). The alternative is having all the construction workers, teachers, janitors continue to labor and pay taxes while the former knowledge workers sit on the sidelines, which would be deeply unfair.
  - francisofascii 16d ago
    So the vast majority of the population goes down to the lower class. The middle class disspears. After being told to work hard in school and college, we are stuck with back breaking construction work? Is that progress? Does that really sound right to you?
    - paisawalla 16d ago
      "middle class" shouldn't be synonymous with "knowledge worker". And that latter itself has become conflated with "credentialed" increasingly, I'd argue. My fundamental observation is that there are a lot of people who are not particularly suited for knowledge work, but are funneled/attracted to it because it's the only viable path to a reasonable effort:outcome lifestyle ratio. Therefore, my fundamental hope is that yes, I want there to be fewer knowledge workers. In place, I want AI that enables people of various competencies to succeed. I'd much rather see AI make my carpenter friend, who made an awesome desk for me, be empowered to compete as a solo/SMB against big retailers: perhaps by automating his marketing, streamlining his ops, participating in design, and so on. Uncharitably, is your complaint "a lot of people will have to labor with their bodies and minds differently, and it's easier to sit down"? I'd ask you: is butt flattening really all that "must preserve knowledge work" has to recommend it? Because your comment doesn't hinge on anything else except that construction work is back breaking. Well, construction is a diverse field, and it can benefit from the inclusion of intelligent and motivated people, just like many others.
kingstnap 16d ago
I think the jobs thing will be a slowly then all at once thing. Firstly, AI is sort of like this to begin with. It's useless for something until it gets hill climbed and is useful for something. AI agents for chip design was an idiotic idea just a year ago but now AI is writing RTL everywhere. Secondarily jobs are like this as well. When the marginal shitty gig work goes from 0.1 return on investment to 0 return on investment due to oversaturated workers only then do the flood gates of having nothing to do open. Thirdly market crashes always happen suddenly and chaotically. And such a AI market crash would cause serious divesment and job losses for blue and white collar workers. Its hard to understate the blast radius. Lastly if you are talking about the US unemployment rate in particular that one will be cooked until the evidence is undeniable. There are enormous financial and political stakes on that particular number.

tsunamifury 16d ago

You realize that this number has been 'kept' at 4% by continuiously qualifying the unemployed as "not looking". Real unemployment has been steadily growing along U6 numbers

schmidtleonard 16d ago

No, that's not the usual response, because people in this situation have evaluated those alternatives and will be easily able to articulate what is wrong with them (pay). Also, the 4% figure treats doordash as employment. In a parallel universe where the pay was decent, that could be reasonable. In this universe, not so much. These are boomer-tier talking points and if you bring them up to a kid stuck in this position you will get dunked on and you will deserve it. Unless you found a shy kid, in which case: congratulations on your new title as undefeated shadowboxing champion.

albedoa 16d ago
> These are boomer-tier talking points Add to your excellent takedown the implication that any of us can walk into a school with our résumé and ask for a teaching interview. It's the most meme-ified of the boomer memes presented unironically.
bewareofscams 16d ago
>dunked on Slapped (or beaten) would be fair-er.

random3 16d ago

your argument suggests there's an opportunity for a trading strategy. It's also very common as a "technical analysis" investment strategy for any gullible person on the internet. The problem is it looks "backwards" and tries to make the point something (in this case the argument made in the paper) is false because the backwards data doesn't support it. All while completely failing to address the crux of the point being made.

moffers 16d ago

But total unemployment is going up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE

nateb2022 16d ago
Correlation isn't causation; in the last few years we've experienced some significant economic headwinds like COVID and the current oil crisis. AI rollout is not happening in a vacuum.
- deleted 16d ago
  [deleted]
- stymaar 16d ago
  Sure but you can't say “the numbers are flat hence nothing is happening” when the numbers aren't in fact flat. Maybe it's trending up for completely unrelated reasons, as it's very hard in economics to derive the actual causal relationship, but a blanket refusal is unwarranted and should be counted as the unsubstantiated opinion it is.
  - nateb2022 16d ago
    Yeah, I would be impressed by an economist talented enough to discern a defensible signal on the impact of AI on real job growth. I think the next best thing we have is to observe the tendencies of supply/demand; if people were actively being replaced by AI, that large demand would be being enabled by some pretty wealthy companies providing AI laborers, white collar desk job perhaps; however the companies providing such a service still involve a lot of human-in-the-loop type stuff, like those startups offering "AI coworkers" through a Slack or Teams interface. Those companies though are not nearly as successful as OpenAI/Anthropic last I checked, which are supplying a lot of consumer AI/ AI being used by humans rather than AI doing what humans do, independently. And I'm pretty sure the majority of AI token burn is not replacing humans; it's building software under the direction of humans.
rmah 16d ago

ikrenji 16d ago

by some measures unemployment is at 25% and this aligns with my personal experience much better than frankly the bs 4% rate that is being pushed by this admin https://www.lisep.org/tru https://www.lisep.org/tru

bwhiting2356 16d ago
in your link, the "true rate" has also not risen since the rise of AI, was higher in 1995
mc32 16d ago
4% may be optimistic but 25% is great depression levels of unemployment and it’s nowhere near that. We could be at 6%.
rmah 16d ago
According to their numbers the TRU rate of unemployment between 2022 and 2026 is the lowest it's been in 30 years.
- ikrenji 16d ago
  hm, you're right. looks like they just take the official figure and slap a constant on it. regardless, I still think the official figure is fundamentally flawed and doesn't reflect the health of the job market ~ underemployment, workers that gave up looking, etc

jvanderbot 16d ago

I have two ideas you might like: 1) initial signs of AI adoption harming job growth got the signal backwards: It's not that we didn't hire Jrs because we had AI now, its that we didn't hire Jrs because they used AI now, and it was hard to reconcile this with our standing hireability signals: code quality, side projects, portfolio, etc. 2) The TAM argument for AI replacing all work is not even required. Anthropic and company (and several future companies) can become fantastically wealthy beyond anyone's dreams just by following claude code subscription model to make life easier for workers, who in turn gladly pay for the subcription. both are here with more details, apologies for links to personal (ad-free) blog https://jodavaho.io/posts/ai-signalling.html https://jodavaho.io/posts/ai-signalling.html https://jodavaho.io/posts/ai-jobpocolypse.html https://jodavaho.io/posts/ai-jobpocolypse.html

dudefeliciano 16d ago
> Anthropic and company (and several future companies) can become fantastically wealthy beyond anyone's dreams just by following claude code subscription model isn't the claude code subscription model heavily subsized and not profitable on its own?

francisofascii 16d ago

hospital and construction works get about $20/hour. Being a teacher will require going back for a 2nd degree. Is that the alternative for knowledge worker when getting laid off?

bwhiting2356 16d ago
Yes (and many more options). The alternative is having all the construction workers, teachers, janitors continue to labor and pay taxes while the former knowledge workers sit on the sidelines, which would be deeply unfair.
- francisofascii 16d ago
  So the vast majority of the population goes down to the lower class. The middle class disspears. After being told to work hard in school and college, we are stuck with back breaking construction work? Is that progress? Does that really sound right to you?
  - paisawalla 16d ago
    "middle class" shouldn't be synonymous with "knowledge worker". And that latter itself has become conflated with "credentialed" increasingly, I'd argue. My fundamental observation is that there are a lot of people who are not particularly suited for knowledge work, but are funneled/attracted to it because it's the only viable path to a reasonable effort:outcome lifestyle ratio. Therefore, my fundamental hope is that yes, I want there to be fewer knowledge workers. In place, I want AI that enables people of various competencies to succeed. I'd much rather see AI make my carpenter friend, who made an awesome desk for me, be empowered to compete as a solo/SMB against big retailers: perhaps by automating his marketing, streamlining his ops, participating in design, and so on. Uncharitably, is your complaint "a lot of people will have to labor with their bodies and minds differently, and it's easier to sit down"? I'd ask you: is butt flattening really all that "must preserve knowledge work" has to recommend it? Because your comment doesn't hinge on anything else except that construction work is back breaking. Well, construction is a diverse field, and it can benefit from the inclusion of intelligent and motivated people, just like many others.

kingstnap 16d ago

I think the jobs thing will be a slowly then all at once thing. Firstly, AI is sort of like this to begin with. It's useless for something until it gets hill climbed and is useful for something. AI agents for chip design was an idiotic idea just a year ago but now AI is writing RTL everywhere. Secondarily jobs are like this as well. When the marginal shitty gig work goes from 0.1 return on investment to 0 return on investment due to oversaturated workers only then do the flood gates of having nothing to do open. Thirdly market crashes always happen suddenly and chaotically. And such a AI market crash would cause serious divesment and job losses for blue and white collar workers. Its hard to understate the blast radius. Lastly if you are talking about the US unemployment rate in particular that one will be cooked until the evidence is undeniable. There are enormous financial and political stakes on that particular number.