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.

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

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-jobpocolypse.html

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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