Layoff story that everybody required to hear

Even if you have a job right now and feel secure in it, you need to understand what's happening to people who are losing good Jobs right now, because there's basically nobody safe from potentially losing a Job right now.

There's a story about a guy who worked for Accenture, and he was a project manager at a company in Florida. In November 2023, he was laid off from his job, managing up to 150 developers, architects, and software testers, among others.

Over the past 21 months, he has had More than two dozen interviews, but he hasn't been able to land a new job. And his wife is a homemaker, which makes things even tougher financially. So he has been doing DoorDash to make money, they have been getting unemployment benefits, and they've been getting some financial help through Family.

 The reason I want to bring this up is because it shows you how fast the financial dynamic can turn around, even when you have a very good job and you think things are secured And going well and it's also a reminder of why you shouldn't be carrying debt from month to month And why you should be constantly saving and have an emergency fund of at least 6 months And start investing for your future because if you ever do find yourself in a situation like This you're going to be able to withstand it much better Then somebody who kind of gets blindsided by it and is living paycheck to paycheck even on a 6 figure income.

It is now to the point where these people have fallen behind on their mortgage payments now 21 months is a long time, don't get me wrong. Guys, if you have a 6-month emergency fund, even if they have a 12-month emergency fund, they would have blown through the cash by now, 'cause the guy has been without a job for almost two years, which is horrible, and he says he's not even getting interviews anymore.

The harsh reality of job loss

Recently, the job market just seems to be completely dead, which corroborates what I've been telling you here on my blog post based on all of the labour market data that we have.

But what makes it a particularly tough job market for him is that he has a lot of experience in his field, and He expects the high pay, so these high-paying jobs with experience are very, very difficult to find right now. 

He says that It's the first thing recruiters say when they see his profile is that it's very expensive, and obviously, the companies are in cost-cutting mode right now, so there's not a lot of incentive to hire people that command large salaries.

The great Flattening

There's a lot of news also, about how companies are cutting the middlemen. You know the middle managers are being squeezed out because there's a lot of redundancy and these companies are able to save a lot of money by not paying these big salaries. If they had 10 middle managers before, they might be able to cut it down to three or four and save a significant amount of cash.

Big corporations have been doing this like Microsoft, Google, Intel, Amazon, and Walmart have all announced plans to reduce the number of managers that they employ, and according to a payroll company called Gusto They have found out that manager firings and layoffs have risen 66% Between January of 2022 and September of 2024 For people who are aged 45 to 54 and more than 400 percent of Increase in layoff if you are between the ages of 35 to 44. 

And this trend is being called the Great Flattening, which reflects a Broader push to reduce cost and bureaucracy. So basically they are just cutting the fat They don't need so many managers telling everybody what to do. 

I always think of the Office Space reference man, that Movie still holds so true to this day, you know, you got Peter sitting there telling the Bobs that he has eight different bosses coming by to tell him what to do today, like what kind of Jobs require you to have eight different bosses.

But it's just a spoof of how things work in the real world, and a lot of companies are realising that they can do without a lot of these people. 

Accepting a massive pay cut in today's job market

So, coming back to the point, his job at Accenture paid him $87 an hour, and he has been looking at roles between $65 and $85 an hour, which roughly lands you to earn about $177,000 to $135,000 a year.

Which I think we could all agree is a pretty good salary, but many Recruiters are saying that this number is just too Steve for a lot of their clients right now, and the one job that was willing to hire him said that "We can only pay you $35 an hour."

so imagine going from making $85 an hour to$35 an hour So basically guys you're taking like a 65% pay cut to do the same job and I think most people just out of pride would Not accept a situation like that Like if you were going to take that much of a pay cut You might as well just do something else right?. 

There's no reason to fill the old role that you had, because what's the incentive to? So basically, his target for his job is that he doesn't want to get into the Same role without making at least 50 bucks an hour. That's kind of like his floor, his threshold of where he is willing to accept, but you are still looking at what that is.

A 40% pay cut is something like crazy, especially in times of high inflation when life costs more than ever, and you have A homemaker wife who is not helping the situation. It's nothing against the stay-at-home mothers; it's a tough job.

I think it's a beautiful thing if you can pull it off, but sometimes you can't in situations Like this, and it requires you to have two incomes coming in To make it work especially if you're falling behind on your mortgage because let's face it, There's going to be no home to stay in if you can't pay the mortgage You end up losing your house to foreclosure So you have to think like that too and the job search Has been disheartening.

He says when he finds a job posting that seems like a good fit for him, there are already hundreds of applicants, which makes the chances feel slim to none. A lot of people can relate to that. And since there are so many people applying for these jobs, it is very difficult for recruiters to sort through the noise and figure out who is actually a good candidate for any of these jobs.

What to do?

We have to broaden the search Beyond Project Manager positions to Business Analysts and sales roles, even applying for kitchen team member roles at Chick-fil-a. He is also trying to increase his knowledge about AI hopefully be able to land something in that field.

But if he could give any advice to anybody struggling to find a job right now. He would say this like Don't give up and look for opportunities to improve your skills while looking for work.

That exactly is what needs to be focused on. It's good to hear that somebody is experiencing this first hand agrees with what I am telling people to do here as well.

AI's impact and job market concerns

Speaking of the job market, Something else that everybody else needs to hear is that layoff have risen 140% over the last year. Just so far this year in 2025. The companies have already announced more than 800,000 job cuts which is the highest in the past four years since the pandemic of 2020. 

And this is supposed to be the greatest economic crisis ever. We're not supposed to be in a recession right now, but we are seeing 800 thousand job cuts in the first half of the year, which is horrible, and we are talking about pandemic-level job loss, and no one blinks an eye.

Just in July alone, US employers cut over 62,000 jobs. In July of 2024, the job cuts were barely under 26,000. According to Challenger Grey and Christmas, they found that the biggest impact on job losses this year was the relentless onslaught of AI, which I'm not really surprised by because so many companies are turning to AI to save money right now. 

Which is the number one cost-cutting measure that A lot of companies are taking, and they are filling a lot of their entry-level roles with AI nowadays.

Just in July alone, AI was responsible for over 10,000 job losses and of course, most jobs Over overcut in the tech industry, where over 89,000 people have lost their jobs in the first seven months of the year. This is all due to artificial intelligence.

Amazon is also another company that is heavily reducing its workload off to AI for the entry-level positions, and they have been big investors pumping billions of dollars into the AI companies like Anthropic.

The CEO of Anthropic recently came out and said that AI could wipe out half of the. Entry-level Job positions. We are talking about the good jobs that people have gone to college and gotten four-year, six-year and 8-year degrees for.

And apparently, the demographic that is being hit the hardest with all these job losses and AI Takeover has been college graduate males who are between 22 to 27 years old with at least a bachelor's degree. And they are now unemployed at the highest rate of the general population.

So I do not know what is worse, guys to be this guy at the beginning, where you kind of had it all, you had it made, you had a really good job for a long time, making good money, you own a house things are going good you have a stay at home wife now all of the sudden you are doing door dash and applying chick-fil-A.

I don't know if that's worse, or if you are going to college, possibly going into debt for an education only to come out to find that there is no job available for you, and you are either on unemployment or working at a fast food restaurant. You tell me in the comments which one you think is worse. For me, both situations are horrible. 

Weak treasury auctions signal economic crisis

Something else that just happened this week is that the 30-year bond auction went really bad, and the yields on these tragedies are spiking; they're going up.

Last Thursday, the Treasury Department sold $25 billion worth of 30-year debt at a yield of 4.813% which was more than two basis points above the yield Level at the pre-bidding deadline, and higher Rates at auctions signal that demand is weak. As the tragedy has to entice investors to buy US debt.

Also, the demand for the 10-year treasury was below expectations, and actually, this was the third week in a row for a weak auction, meaning that there was just lower demand for these Treasury notes than usual.

Now, the way the law works is that the primary dealers and banks, and lending institutions are obligated to buy the remaining debt in all treasury auctions of what doesn't Get Sold. And this group bought 17.5percent of the supply of debt, which is the most since the week of August 2024.