Making Sense of the Job Market Amid Massive Tech Layoffs

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Major Bay Area employers including Salesforce, Amazon, Google parent company Alphabet and Facebook parent company Meta have all cut thousands of workers in the last few months. The headlines are startling, but economists say the job market remains in relatively good shape. Unemployment in California hovers near 4 percent down from 16 percent in April 2020, and many industries are still experiencing a worker shortage. Forum talks about layoffs, the job market and what could happen next. Guests: Jennie Brand, professor of sociology and statistics, director of the California Center for Population Research and co-director of the Center for Social Statistics, Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles Kathryn Minshew, CEO and founder, The Muse, a career platform, and Fairygodboss, a career community for women Sinem Buber, lead economist, ZipRecruiter - online employment marketplace Parul Koul, software engineer, Google; executive chair, Alphabet Workers Union Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for Key QBD Podcasts comes from San Francisco International Airport.
0:05.1	At SFO, you can shop, dine, and unwind before your flight.
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0:32.2	From KKudy in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:48.3	The tech company layoffs keep coming from alphabet to Zendesk after years of hiring and hiring and hiring.
0:55.5	It's all a bit of a shock.
0:57.0	But like everything else in the job market these days, the message of these layoffs is a bit muddled.
1:02.0	The big tech companies have huge cash stockpiles and remain profitable.
1:06.0	They're doing just fine.
1:08.0	As for the job market generally, it's also doing just fine. Despite the Fed
1:12.4	raising interest rates, the economy has kept chugging along, and there are persistent cries from
1:17.0	different industries that they can't find enough people to do the work they need at the salaries
1:21.4	they want to pay. We'll talk all about the tech layoffs, the strangeness of the job market,
1:25.1	and hear your stories about finding and losing work.
1:27.9	That's all coming up next after this news.
1:36.3	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Job market's strange out there, isn't it? I feel like I see
	...

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