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The U.S. economy is booming. So why are tech companies laying off workers?
(www.washingtonpost.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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Using out of touch metrics that say nothing about how the median household is doing is not helpful.
On the other hand if you measure by how much the shareholders are getting richer, the layoffs are exactly why the economy is considered booming. Record layoffs lead to record short term profits for the wealthy few.
Combined with billions in weapons being ordered and produced, oil producing competition being crushed, while gimping Europs growth. The Chinese hurting from the Evergrande debacle and the lithography embargo.
Plenty of reasons for the US as an entity to celebrate.
It’s pretty clear to me that many companies are jumping on the layoff bandwagon right now since so many others are doing it too (doesn’t look as bad if your layoffs are drowned out in the noise). Easy way to increase profitability (on paper) and not look quite as bad if “everyone else is doing it.”
Layoffs hurt GDP generally, but GDP doesn't really care as long as "value" is created elsewhere. Like you said, none of the measurements they use care about the median income. It's usually just generic measurements of "value" that don't mean anything for the people of a nation.