Tech Layoffs and Higher Than Average Unemployment: A Close Look at the Bay Area’s Job Market

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KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

California now has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.5%. While the Bay Area’s rate is a bit lower than the state’s, it is still higher than the national average, and continued tech company layoffs and threats to jobs from AI, have workers worried. We look at the shifting Bay Area labor market. Where are jobs disappearing and what could replace them? Will AI be a net boom or loss for local employment? If you’re in the market we want to hear about it. How is the Bay Area labor landscape looking to you? Guests: Jeff Bellisario, executive director, Bay Area Council Economic Institute Aki Ito, chief correspondent, Business Insider coverings the tech industry and workplace issues Enrico Moretti, professor of economics, UC Berkeley; author, "The New Geography of Jobs" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:02.0	California now has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.5%.
1:07.7	Our rate here is a bit lower than the state as a whole, but it's higher than the national
1:12.5	average. The question is, why? Is it just continuing tech and biotech layoffs? Is it AI? Or is it
1:20.6	something else entirely? We're convening a panel of experts, but we want to hear from our other
1:25.9	experts. That's you. If you're in the job
1:28.4	market, either looking to get hired or hiring. It's all coming up next right after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:51.8	Anecdotally, the Bay Area job market is not great.
1:56.2	Perhaps it's just relative to some of the recent boom times when it seemed like tech job openings were
2:01.8	endless and that trickled down into all kinds of fields. Now the tech companies are still highly
2:07.7	profitable but they're not hiring like they used to. I mean remember the days of quiet quitting
2:13.9	and the great resignation. But tech is but a slice of the overall Bay Area
2:19.6	job market, hospitality and leisure, construction, government work, non-profits, health care.
2:24.9	There's so much to our landscape here that is exposed to budget cuts, tariffs, other uncertainties,
2:30.8	here to help us make sense of it all. We're joined by Aki Ito, who's chief correspondent with business insider covering the tech industry
2:38.0	and workplace issues, including burnout, hustle culture, and the end of workplace loyalty.
	...

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