Seattle's tech industry blues

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

Business, News

4.6 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2026

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Recently, Seattle’s tech workforce has been hit by wave after wave of layoffs. Some company execs say it’s AI’s fault. KUOW’s Monica Nickelsburg joins Kimberly on today’s show to share what she’s hearing from tech workers. And, we’ll get into another side of the AI boom: the push to build more data centers and the pushback from locals. Plus, a round of Seattle trivia!

Here’s everything we talked about today:

"Booming" from KUOW
Why Seattle tech companies are still laying off workers from The Seattle Times
"From coder to shuttle driver: Where Seattle's laid off tech workforce is now" from KUOW
"A small town in Central Washington is Microsoft's answer to the data center backlash" from KUOW
"What produce prompted the creation of the Market?" from the Pike Place Market Foundation
"Seattle doesn't have many unicorns. Does it matter?" From GeekWire
"Scents from a Mall: The Sticky, Untold Story of Cinnabon" from Seattle Met
"Seattle area expected to generate $845 million from FIFA World Cup" from Fox 13 Seattle

We love hearing from you. Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email makemesmart@marketplace.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams.
0:08.4	Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.
0:12.4	Thank you to everyone, whether you're joining us on the YouTube live stream or listening
0:16.8	to this as a podcast later on.
0:19.3	This is Economics on Tap, our weekly Happy Hour
0:22.0	episode. Thank you everyone for joining in. Now, yesterday on the show, we talked with Anthropics
0:28.3	head of economics about what the AI boom could mean for the economy and the labor market
0:33.9	more broadly. And today, we're going to zoom in and talk about where the kind of impetus of this all came from we're going to talk about what it looks like in seattle and what's going on more broadly in the tech sector there so joining me today is monica nicholsberg she covers ai in the economy forU-O-W in Seattle and co-hosts the
0:55.5	economics podcast, Booming. Welcome to the show, Monica. I'm so glad to be here. So glad to have
1:02.6	you here. It's nice to see you again. I know we've met before. But before we get to the news
1:07.8	and what you've been covering there in Seattle, let's talk drinks. What did you
1:10.9	bring? Okay, so I brought a Seattle IPA. It's from Fremont Brewing. We're very proud of our craft
1:20.4	beer scene here. Should I go ahead and open it? Oh yeah, go for it. I'm going to shake my
1:25.3	can to drink while we're at it. It's called the lush IPA, and it's
1:30.7	delicious. It's very drinkable, especially if they, you know, they take a little getting used to.
1:36.0	I used to think they were so strong and bitter when I moved here almost 15 years ago, but now
1:40.7	everything else doesn't taste quite right. Kai used to love a good IPA on the show,
1:46.8	so it's very nostalgic to have somebody drinking an IPA across from my cocktail.
1:51.7	Oh, I'm glad to represent it.
1:53.7	Yes, I'm having a tip-top canned cocktail.
1:57.8	It's a paper plane, which is always a nice cocktail to have on a Friday. And it's just the right amount for my glass, which is perfect. It's a teeny, tiny little can, but it's just the right size. So, cheers. Happy Friday.
2:11.5	Cheers. Happy Friday. So let's move and talk about what you've been covering there in Seattle when it comes to the tech
	...

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