Rogé Karma

You have this filtering effect where some spot opens up somewhere up the career ladder, people move up, and then there's a new open spot for a young person fresh out of college to be hired.

Right now, we're basically seeing, while employers aren't necessarily firing workers, layoffs are still pretty low, they're also just not hiring people either.

And this is, again, it's a very weird, mysterious thing.

It's most punishing for young people who aren't in the labor force yet, which may explain some of the trends that we're talking about.

But also, it's not exactly a great situation for everyone else either, right?

If you are someone who's at your current job, but you're dissatisfied with it,

If you're someone who maybe wants a raise, the primary way historically workers get raises is by quitting and finding a new job.

This is also bad for you too.

And there's this stat right now that came out of Glassdoor last year that around more than two-thirds of all workers report feeling stuck in their current roles.

And I think that is something, basically, the game that we're constantly playing in this labor market, this musical chairs that leads to a lot of dynamism, it leads to a lot of innovation.

And most importantly, it allows young people to get on the ladder to begin with.

That has stopped.

The music has stopped and no one is getting hired.

And remarkably, Derek, this is happening across almost every industry, right?

Over the last few years, almost the entirety of the job growth that has happened has been in two sectors, healthcare,

and local government.

That is because healthcare, there's just always demand for more workers.

Americans are always getting older, always needing more healthcare.

And for local government, a lot of this is like a rebound effect from the pandemic and also a result of a lot of movement during the pandemic to like new cities, like new Sunbelt cities all of a sudden have a lot more residents.

They need more school teachers and nurses, et cetera.