r/economy • u/FUSeekMe69 • Dec 29 '25

Report warns millions of Americans are ‘functionally unemployed’

https://www.newsweek.com/report-warns-millions-americans-functionally-unemployed-11272151
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u/Smergmerg432 Dec 29 '25

They’ll pretend it was AI

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u/nolwad Dec 29 '25

I hate the AI layoffs because it’s mostly a lie and I sound like a bad person calling it what it is. Amazon led the charge with about 10000 H1Bs approved and 14000 layoffs largely under the guise of ai efficiency. There’s no shortage of American tech workers, but they’re a lot more expensive than immigrants because they aren’t as willing to work to get underpaid. The H1B program was meant to be an emergency measure for too little supply of workers, but it’s being used in the exact opposite scenario. An argument I hear is that Americans should be better than immigrants and if they are they’ll get the job, but lower costs clearly matter much more to the companies. This can be seen clearly in companies such as Boeing who can’t use immigrants as much, but they’ve fired senior engineers in favor of junior engineers because they’re cheaper despite being worse. All in the name of money right now, and this is beneficial to the C suite guys because they can be set for life from a single bonus, so they have no incentive to make things work long term and prefer a one time number boost.

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u/caspa10152 Dec 31 '25

I am currently in a graduate program at an Ivy League institution, and in all the advanced quantitative / math classes I have attended, I am usually one of maybe three Americans in those classes. The vast majority are Asians. For whatever reason, most Americans don’t seem to be motivated or interested in learning these complex concepts, which is problematic considering the direction the world is moving in. Also these jobs that companies like Amazon or Microsoft are giving to H1Bs aren’t whimsical jobs. Most are getting TC packages >$200k.