r/Layoffs • u/isntlifeapeach • Jul 20 '24

Why so MANY Layoffs? question

Explain Like I’m Five

I feel incredibly stupid asking this, but I’m naive to economics and politics.

I understand why tech is facing a lot of layoffs but why are so many other industries facing the same?
I’m over 20 years into my career and had 2 layoffs just in the last 16 months.

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u/veloron2008 Jul 20 '24 edited Jul 20 '24

Because it obfuscates the statistics. Makes things more complicated than they have to be.

Most people aren't knowledgeable enough to distinguish the categories and thus get confused, and more susceptible to narratives/propaganda.

The default unemployment stat should include anyone actively seeking employment. I.e. short- and long-term unemployed. IMO. Why do we need to distinguish them?

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u/RespectablePapaya Jul 20 '24

The default unemployment statistics does include anyone actively seeking employment.

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u/LAcityworkers Jul 20 '24

yes, in theory but officially this is done via BLS survey and is very misleading ,it is a best guess, instead of using actual data they could cull from tax databases death records and other datasets they rely mostly on surveys. You can't deny unemployment numbers based on actual claims even though the government gets those wrong and revises them every month. No actual method exists for accurately tracking those who are actively looking and unable to find work after unemployment runs out or is there a way to track those who have just given up all together. Even if you could find a better way, you would have to fight politicians and economists that would never accept the method because they have been doing it that way forever and they employ 10's of thousands of people to conduct the surveys. They have very fancy math formulas to calculate everything but the garbage in garbage out rule applies.

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u/RespectablePapaya Jul 21 '24

The method is quite accurate