Should we worry about another dot-com bust?

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This jobs Friday, we look to the tech sector, where companies are laying off thousands of workers in a rapid reversal of their pandemic-era hiring boom. What effects could tech layoffs have on the broader economy?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:03.4	It is Jobs Friday.
0:14.8	My favorite time of the month.
0:16.6	That day the month when the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics comes
0:20.1	out, and according to the report, US employers added 263,000 jobs in November.
0:27.6	More than expected.
0:28.6	Also, the unemployment rate stayed flat at 3.7%, so labor market seems pretty strong.
0:35.6	And yet there is one group of workers where if you check the news out, you think they
0:41.1	have it pretty bad.
0:42.5	We're talking about tech workers.
0:44.8	Well, layoffs in the tech industry have been piling up this year.
0:48.5	The tech announcing a slew of layoffs, Amazon, Twitter, Intel, OpenDorp, Dordash Stripe,
0:54.8	Salesforce laid off hundreds of employees this week.
0:57.7	This isn't just happening in big tech.
0:59.9	It's also happening what you might call little tech.
1:03.4	Like dozens of smaller startups are also shedding jobs.
1:08.2	And as I'm seeing all these headlines in recent weeks, I cannot help but think of something
1:12.4	that happened two decades ago.
1:14.6	And I'm talking about the dot com bust.
1:17.7	The dot com bust followed the dot com bubble, which was this gold rush period in the late
1:22.7	90s when the internet was taking off.
1:26.4	And it seemed like anybody with money to invest was just throwing at any company with a website
	...

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