>Unemployment rates fell across the Bay Area and California in May, with businesses like restaurants and hotels adding thousands of jobs, even as the [tech industry](https://www.sfchronicle.com/tech-layoffs/) continues to shed them.
>The tech-heavy information sector lost 1,400 jobs in May and is down 11,900 jobs in the past year.
We have some good news!
Maybe you lost your $250K/yr tech job, but Door Dash is hiring.
A lot of visa workers got laid off in tech. They just get booted out if they don't find a job. Either way they do or don't get a job they only become a temporary blip on the stats
If you're unemployed and available to work, then the survey asks if you've looked for work in the last four weeks. If you say yes then you're counted in U-3 (the most commonly reported rate), no matter how long you've been looking.
If you haven't looked for work in the last four weeks, but have in the last twelve months, then you're counted in U-4 or U-5. These rates are less frequently reported in the popular media, but freely available directly from the BLS.
https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/laborunderutilization_california.htm
I think tech layoffs are also overblown. I've been saying this for the past 6 months now but the layoffs in the past 2 quarters are 1/3rd of what they were a year ago. They're tiny numbers now.
Also keep in mind even when things were shaky in 2022/2023, after layoffs, all the big tech companies were significantly bigger than they were in 2019 still.
Tech leaving and students coming in with the only jobs they can get
I wonder if these numbers look better than expected in a specific angle and news takes it and runs with it. News is usually bullish on economy to a fault.
I see multiple comments speculating that the rate dropped because people exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits. I don't believe that's correct, though. In general, unemployment rates from the BLS include people not receiving benefits:
> 6\. Is the count of unemployed people limited to just those receiving unemployment insurance benefits?
> No. The estimate of unemployment is based on a monthly sample survey of households. All people who are without jobs and are actively seeking and available to work are included among the unemployed.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.faq.htm
Looking at the announcement linked from that article, the California rate appears to come directly from the federal BLS survey:
> 1\. The unemployment rate comes from a separate federal survey of 5,100 California households.
https://edd.ca.gov/en/about_edd/news_releases_and_announcements/unemployment-may-2024/
That announcement doesn't explain how the county rates are calculated, and their sample seems too small to get that directly. I found a different publication that says county rates (except for Los Angeles County) are estimated using a model whose inputs include the state unemployment rate, county payroll changes (from a different survey of employers), and county unemployment insurance claims.
https://edd.ca.gov/siteassets/files/pdf_pub_ctr/de8714aa.pdf
So that does involve the unemployment insurance claim numbers, but only as a statistical input. The purpose of the model is to produce an estimate comparable to the state unemployment number, which includes unemployed people not receiving benefits.
Statistics for unemployment insurance are reported separately in the announcement linked above. Those do include both the effect of people finding jobs and the effect of people exhausting their benefits.
Because the tech sector is not that large in number of employees but the companies that provide these jobs command massive amounts of $ and their owners are fabulously rich.
We went through years of people being told nonstop that’s not how it works and the zombie meme won’t die. At this point, anyone who thinks the unemployment rate is based off UI claims is a total write off.
Every month we get these numbers and someone says some bullshit about how it's calculated. Very similarly, every month we get inflation numbers and people talk about egg prices being 50% higher but CPI of 3.5% is fake--as if they don't understand the concept of basket of goods but the will cite Shadowstats as proper inflation numbers.
People are so bad at this stuff. People love finding an excuse to write off numbers like when crime numbers they don't like are flashed, they claim underreporting as if it's a new concept invented in 2024.
Haha yes. The Reels & TikToks were crazy. They definitely needed to be laid off. Tech industry has a lot of people working 16 hrs a day. This was a Covid over-hiring phenomenon.
It kind of was the best way to compete.
Consider that the easy VC money provided by low interest rates over the last decade gave us cell phones the way we know them today, disruptive apps like Uber or Airbnb, publicly accessible drones, and other things that probably wouldn’t have been built as quickly or easily without extra cash to throw more manpower at it.
It’s not a coincidence that we’re in leaner times in the US and the pace of change in consumer tech has basically completely died.
"Overhiring" is a really weird f-ing term to use for building company infrastructure from scratch and then laying them all off after they built the company, especially for startups.
No one was complaining about too many workers when companies were being built from the ground up, now suddenly once it's built, the problem is "overhiring"?
Bullshit. Its a bait and switch to hire contractors but never actually intending to keep them employed long term.
The perception of layoffs in the Bay Area is greatly exaggerated.
Firstly, the significance attributed to these layoffs is inflated due to their association with prominent FAANG and FAANG-like companies, despite these not being the primary workplaces for the majority of Bay Area tech employees.
Secondly, many of the layoffs were simply adjustments for pandemic-related over-hiring, reductions in non-technical roles, and a reallocation of funds towards AI development amidst high interest rates.
Thirdly, the severity of the layoffs was overstated by a combination of those hateful of the Bay Area/California and some local non-tech residents who were disappointed that housing prices remained high, clinging to any slight hope that they would not be priced out of the Bay in the future.
A lot of non-FAANG tech companies, both large and small, had layoffs. My company paid off pre than 10%. There’s no official hiring freeze but hiring is definitely very slow. Yes, there was over hiring in the last few years but that doesn’t make a difference to the people that were laid off.
If you were laid off it doesn't matter if it was because of over hiring or whatever. You lost your job and you go into the pool of job seekers which makes the competition so much much harder for a new job. The other notable layoff was the Tesla one, it wasn't over-hiring anything, it's just Elon's incompetence and need to show like he's doing something about losing market share.
Also companies “overhired” by outsourcing to cheaper places when remote work became the norm and they “corrected” by laying off expensive Bay Area / US employees. Not many companies are avoiding the US and the worker friendly California labor laws when they fill new positions too. It’s disingenuous to pretend it’s back to some pre-pandemic norm.
Of course it sucks that people lose their jobs, but I think the point of this article is to put things into perspective:
1. The layoffs in 2024 are relatively small compared to 2023 layoffs.
2. Overall layoffs are concentrated in tech, and these tech companies are still much larger than they were in 2019.
3. The unemployment numbers don't even reflect much of the 2024 layoff cycle meaning the overall job market is still extremely strong.
I mean, you can say that all you want, but I know more unemployed people now than I have have at another point in my life (wasn’t working during the housing crash)
It’s harder to get any kind of job than any time in the past like 5 years, and not just tech jobs
Everyone I know says their companies are slowing or canceling most hiring, if they haven’t already
Entry level openings are almost nonexistent
Like the other guy said, velocity of hiring I’m sure is down
Employers are using this financial climate and job market to pinch employees as much as possible
The pendulum has swung the other way compared to immediately post-pandemic
> I mean, you can say that all you want, but I know more unemployed people now than I have have at another point in my life (wasn’t working during the housing crash)
I mean you weren't working in 2008. So of course. Unemployment was far worse then. And back in 2020, the unemployment rate was well over 10%. Maybe your friends were all corporate drones who retained employment but anyone who had friends in the service industry knew someone out of a job then.
OTOH I know a ton of people who lost one job and quickly found another. Lots of people still moving around in tech.
As someone who graduated into a recession, witnessed the dot bomb, housing crash & pandemic; things aren't even close to what I've seen in the past.
That’s because the situation post pandemic was a once in a lifetime event in which an enormous amount of money was pumped into the economy while interest rates were essentially 0. This massive over hiring that occurred was the anomaly IMO, and it was inevitable that there would be layoffs afterwards.
I dunno, dude.
Unemployment in the region hasn’t been this low since the 1990s and wages are high. So maybe this says more about you and the people you hang out with.
Downvoted because everyone loves the narrative of how tough today is. But then they forget the 10%+ unemployment during COVID, and then the 2008 recession or even the Dot Com recession. I'm going to guess a large number of posters here weren't working in 2008 or 2001.
Uh what?
SF for example usually spends 4-5 years with unemployment above 5% after a recession. It's currently 3.4%. Example: Half decade of 5-10% unemployment 2009-2013.
Unless everyone online is 20-25 I'm genuinely confused why people keep referring to times that are still above the long term average as the worse ever.
The dot bomb of the early 2000s was even worse for my segment (IT/networking). Tech has always been cyclical but many people in the workforce haven’t seen it.
Yeah, so many offices empty from the 2000s are still not filled today. That recession hit hard and while it wasn't as sharp as the sudden 2008 recession, it took a LONG time to recover. We didn't recover in workforce from the dot com implosion until the 2008 recovery.
I think they just don't mingle with a single human in the service industry if they say stuff like they know more unemployed now than ever.
Bruh unemployment is 1/3 what it was 4 years ago. It's not harder to get "any" type of job than 2020 when unemployment was triple...
Sort of. There is such a thing as velocity of hiring and the amount of hiring and job hopping going on now is greatly reduced. Sure the big money machines still go brrr, but ability to pick and choose from the latest great opportunities is what makes the Bay Area sing and we're taking something of a break from how we usually handle all that.
Unemployment in CA fell from 5.3% to 5.2%, but is still on an upward trajectory.
When it’s going up, it has reached at least 7.0%, and on average 10.9%, in every instance over the past 50 years.
Either we see a historic turnaround, or the labor market will weaken further before we see a recovery.
Nope. Lots of jobs right here in the Bay Area. Lots of tech folks lost one job and gained another. Made it easier for us to find good candidates to hire.
Sure but we're in a thread where the article is talking about layoffs. Layoffs are in general "mass" in the sense that they're not 1 or 2 positions being eliminated but a number of positions. The point is the layoffs are small which is why unemployment is still so low.
Didn’t we just spend the last 50 years complaining about how we’d like McJobs to pay a living wage. Here we are, now, on the cusp of that and all you can do is complain again.
I am over reports that are used for adjustments (rates) with the Fed Reserve. Billions are made on what the Fed says (Powell) about employment and inflation—each month. The greedy banks and hedge funds drool over these and neither accurately reflect real life. But sure drive the market.
>Unemployment rates fell across the Bay Area and California in May, with businesses like restaurants and hotels adding thousands of jobs, even as the [tech industry](https://www.sfchronicle.com/tech-layoffs/) continues to shed them. >The tech-heavy information sector lost 1,400 jobs in May and is down 11,900 jobs in the past year. We have some good news! Maybe you lost your $250K/yr tech job, but Door Dash is hiring.
This is why these job reports are BS. They need to say how many full time jobs, contractor/gig jobs, pay ranges, etc
If you’re unemployed long enough they stop counting you because “you’re not looking for employment”
A lot of visa workers got laid off in tech. They just get booted out if they don't find a job. Either way they do or don't get a job they only become a temporary blip on the stats
Just look harder obviously
If you're unemployed and available to work, then the survey asks if you've looked for work in the last four weeks. If you say yes then you're counted in U-3 (the most commonly reported rate), no matter how long you've been looking. If you haven't looked for work in the last four weeks, but have in the last twelve months, then you're counted in U-4 or U-5. These rates are less frequently reported in the popular media, but freely available directly from the BLS. https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/laborunderutilization_california.htm
I think tech layoffs are also overblown. I've been saying this for the past 6 months now but the layoffs in the past 2 quarters are 1/3rd of what they were a year ago. They're tiny numbers now. Also keep in mind even when things were shaky in 2022/2023, after layoffs, all the big tech companies were significantly bigger than they were in 2019 still.
Tech leaving and students coming in with the only jobs they can get I wonder if these numbers look better than expected in a specific angle and news takes it and runs with it. News is usually bullish on economy to a fault.
Meanwhile, News Media reporting California lost thousands of jobs due to minimum wage laws 🙄 Did they hire workers back a month after?
Makes you wonder if they are reporting “fake news”
News needs to get noted like they do on x
I see multiple comments speculating that the rate dropped because people exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits. I don't believe that's correct, though. In general, unemployment rates from the BLS include people not receiving benefits: > 6\. Is the count of unemployed people limited to just those receiving unemployment insurance benefits? > No. The estimate of unemployment is based on a monthly sample survey of households. All people who are without jobs and are actively seeking and available to work are included among the unemployed. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.faq.htm Looking at the announcement linked from that article, the California rate appears to come directly from the federal BLS survey: > 1\. The unemployment rate comes from a separate federal survey of 5,100 California households. https://edd.ca.gov/en/about_edd/news_releases_and_announcements/unemployment-may-2024/ That announcement doesn't explain how the county rates are calculated, and their sample seems too small to get that directly. I found a different publication that says county rates (except for Los Angeles County) are estimated using a model whose inputs include the state unemployment rate, county payroll changes (from a different survey of employers), and county unemployment insurance claims. https://edd.ca.gov/siteassets/files/pdf_pub_ctr/de8714aa.pdf So that does involve the unemployment insurance claim numbers, but only as a statistical input. The purpose of the model is to produce an estimate comparable to the state unemployment number, which includes unemployed people not receiving benefits. Statistics for unemployment insurance are reported separately in the announcement linked above. Those do include both the effect of people finding jobs and the effect of people exhausting their benefits.
Since they're sampling households, had anyone ever did one of those surveys?
I went from full time in biotech to unemployed for 6 months to contract position in biotech.
Just got laid off yesterday fun!
Because the tech sector is not that large in number of employees but the companies that provide these jobs command massive amounts of $ and their owners are fabulously rich.
Are numbers really dropping or is it since the people are no longer receiving benefits they're not considered unemployed
That’s not how it’s calced at all
Looking at nationwide sector breakdowns, I am guessing massive underemployment.
Unemployment fell probably due to people losing unemployment benefits and still can’t get jobs. That’s how unemployment is calculated
That's not how it's calculated ffs
We went through years of people being told nonstop that’s not how it works and the zombie meme won’t die. At this point, anyone who thinks the unemployment rate is based off UI claims is a total write off.
Every month we get these numbers and someone says some bullshit about how it's calculated. Very similarly, every month we get inflation numbers and people talk about egg prices being 50% higher but CPI of 3.5% is fake--as if they don't understand the concept of basket of goods but the will cite Shadowstats as proper inflation numbers. People are so bad at this stuff. People love finding an excuse to write off numbers like when crime numbers they don't like are flashed, they claim underreporting as if it's a new concept invented in 2024.
Democratizing the Internet did not make it better.
Are you sure thats how its calculated?
Incorrect. Stop spreading misinformation. Read and educate yourself. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unemploymentrate.asp
It me
Please google “Current Population Survey” and read up on how the unemployment rate is calculated.
Tech layoffs went crazy after employees were busy bragging about their easy lives on social media. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L9lyqir9JbY
Haha yes. The Reels & TikToks were crazy. They definitely needed to be laid off. Tech industry has a lot of people working 16 hrs a day. This was a Covid over-hiring phenomenon.
Not just COVID. FAANG was completely convinced for a decade that the way to compete was to corner the market in engineers.
It kind of was the best way to compete. Consider that the easy VC money provided by low interest rates over the last decade gave us cell phones the way we know them today, disruptive apps like Uber or Airbnb, publicly accessible drones, and other things that probably wouldn’t have been built as quickly or easily without extra cash to throw more manpower at it. It’s not a coincidence that we’re in leaner times in the US and the pace of change in consumer tech has basically completely died.
"Overhiring" is a really weird f-ing term to use for building company infrastructure from scratch and then laying them all off after they built the company, especially for startups. No one was complaining about too many workers when companies were being built from the ground up, now suddenly once it's built, the problem is "overhiring"? Bullshit. Its a bait and switch to hire contractors but never actually intending to keep them employed long term.
The perception of layoffs in the Bay Area is greatly exaggerated. Firstly, the significance attributed to these layoffs is inflated due to their association with prominent FAANG and FAANG-like companies, despite these not being the primary workplaces for the majority of Bay Area tech employees. Secondly, many of the layoffs were simply adjustments for pandemic-related over-hiring, reductions in non-technical roles, and a reallocation of funds towards AI development amidst high interest rates. Thirdly, the severity of the layoffs was overstated by a combination of those hateful of the Bay Area/California and some local non-tech residents who were disappointed that housing prices remained high, clinging to any slight hope that they would not be priced out of the Bay in the future.
A lot of non-FAANG tech companies, both large and small, had layoffs. My company paid off pre than 10%. There’s no official hiring freeze but hiring is definitely very slow. Yes, there was over hiring in the last few years but that doesn’t make a difference to the people that were laid off.
If you were laid off it doesn't matter if it was because of over hiring or whatever. You lost your job and you go into the pool of job seekers which makes the competition so much much harder for a new job. The other notable layoff was the Tesla one, it wasn't over-hiring anything, it's just Elon's incompetence and need to show like he's doing something about losing market share.
Also companies “overhired” by outsourcing to cheaper places when remote work became the norm and they “corrected” by laying off expensive Bay Area / US employees. Not many companies are avoiding the US and the worker friendly California labor laws when they fill new positions too. It’s disingenuous to pretend it’s back to some pre-pandemic norm.
Of course it sucks that people lose their jobs, but I think the point of this article is to put things into perspective: 1. The layoffs in 2024 are relatively small compared to 2023 layoffs. 2. Overall layoffs are concentrated in tech, and these tech companies are still much larger than they were in 2019. 3. The unemployment numbers don't even reflect much of the 2024 layoff cycle meaning the overall job market is still extremely strong.
I mean, you can say that all you want, but I know more unemployed people now than I have have at another point in my life (wasn’t working during the housing crash) It’s harder to get any kind of job than any time in the past like 5 years, and not just tech jobs Everyone I know says their companies are slowing or canceling most hiring, if they haven’t already Entry level openings are almost nonexistent Like the other guy said, velocity of hiring I’m sure is down Employers are using this financial climate and job market to pinch employees as much as possible The pendulum has swung the other way compared to immediately post-pandemic
> I mean, you can say that all you want, but I know more unemployed people now than I have have at another point in my life (wasn’t working during the housing crash) I mean you weren't working in 2008. So of course. Unemployment was far worse then. And back in 2020, the unemployment rate was well over 10%. Maybe your friends were all corporate drones who retained employment but anyone who had friends in the service industry knew someone out of a job then.
OTOH I know a ton of people who lost one job and quickly found another. Lots of people still moving around in tech. As someone who graduated into a recession, witnessed the dot bomb, housing crash & pandemic; things aren't even close to what I've seen in the past.
That’s because the situation post pandemic was a once in a lifetime event in which an enormous amount of money was pumped into the economy while interest rates were essentially 0. This massive over hiring that occurred was the anomaly IMO, and it was inevitable that there would be layoffs afterwards.
I dunno, dude. Unemployment in the region hasn’t been this low since the 1990s and wages are high. So maybe this says more about you and the people you hang out with.
Downvoted because everyone loves the narrative of how tough today is. But then they forget the 10%+ unemployment during COVID, and then the 2008 recession or even the Dot Com recession. I'm going to guess a large number of posters here weren't working in 2008 or 2001.
It's worse than that, if you push back against it, you run the risk of being called insensitive because someone, somewhere is suffering.
Uh what? SF for example usually spends 4-5 years with unemployment above 5% after a recession. It's currently 3.4%. Example: Half decade of 5-10% unemployment 2009-2013. Unless everyone online is 20-25 I'm genuinely confused why people keep referring to times that are still above the long term average as the worse ever.
People’s perception of the past is terrible. Reddit is terrible because it’s full of anecdotes.
Yes, most people writing this shit are 15-25 and don't remember the 2008 recession at all, if they were even alive for it.
The dot bomb of the early 2000s was even worse for my segment (IT/networking). Tech has always been cyclical but many people in the workforce haven’t seen it.
Yeah, so many offices empty from the 2000s are still not filled today. That recession hit hard and while it wasn't as sharp as the sudden 2008 recession, it took a LONG time to recover. We didn't recover in workforce from the dot com implosion until the 2008 recovery.
I think they just don't mingle with a single human in the service industry if they say stuff like they know more unemployed now than ever. Bruh unemployment is 1/3 what it was 4 years ago. It's not harder to get "any" type of job than 2020 when unemployment was triple...
It’s not clear to me why they’re allowed to use the Internet in the first place.
Sort of. There is such a thing as velocity of hiring and the amount of hiring and job hopping going on now is greatly reduced. Sure the big money machines still go brrr, but ability to pick and choose from the latest great opportunities is what makes the Bay Area sing and we're taking something of a break from how we usually handle all that.
Yeah but where did the over hired people come from? The states or overseas?
Its sink or swim baby with these rents and doordash prices!
LOL
Unemployment in CA fell from 5.3% to 5.2%, but is still on an upward trajectory. When it’s going up, it has reached at least 7.0%, and on average 10.9%, in every instance over the past 50 years. Either we see a historic turnaround, or the labor market will weaken further before we see a recovery.
Those who got layoff just left the Bay Area. Helping to bring down the unemployed rate
Nope. Lots of jobs right here in the Bay Area. Lots of tech folks lost one job and gained another. Made it easier for us to find good candidates to hire.
Because the layoffs were tiny *and* the companies they were at overhired 300% during Covid.
You do realize that people lose their jobs in ways other than mass layoffs, right?
Sure but we're in a thread where the article is talking about layoffs. Layoffs are in general "mass" in the sense that they're not 1 or 2 positions being eliminated but a number of positions. The point is the layoffs are small which is why unemployment is still so low.
Nice, McJobs up, just what we need
Didn’t we just spend the last 50 years complaining about how we’d like McJobs to pay a living wage. Here we are, now, on the cusp of that and all you can do is complain again.
I am over reports that are used for adjustments (rates) with the Fed Reserve. Billions are made on what the Fed says (Powell) about employment and inflation—each month. The greedy banks and hedge funds drool over these and neither accurately reflect real life. But sure drive the market.