Take an hour off at 2-3pm in any major US city and look at how many people are just milling about. Mostly shopping. There are a lot of people in the US that are not working.

Pre-2008 retail was quiet in the middle of the day, now it booms. I can’t comment on if this is a good or bad thing, but I am surprised at how many people are causally walking their dog as I am rushing to compete an essential errand and get back to work.

Sounds more like people retire somewhat early - for 25-54yo labor force participation near all time high: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

And here is one for 55+yo: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11324230

All is fine

Today I read about Accenture Norway taking in 56 summer internship students from over...1600 applicants. Record year, they reported.

Previously I imagined only the top-top tier firms could enjoy low single-digit acceptance rate, but here we have Accenture crushing it. Competition must be tough.

(But for what I know, could be that AI has made it easier for people to spam everyone with applications)

Our HR department has given up.

They are being inundated with thousands of AI slop applications each week.

Hiring has devolved to word of mouth recommendations.

The money printing during COVID screwed everything up. Most of the capital was directly given to banks and businesses, fraudulently in many cases and unnecessarily in most, and everything pooled up into real estate and stocks so anyone who had already owned a large proportion of those became absurdly wealthy in the span of a couple years and everyone else effectively lost 20-30% of their income through inflation. The majority of all money was printed during COVID, no one voted for this to happen, no one bothered to even communicate how it was decided how much money would be printed and who would get it, and no retrospective has ever been done. It’s never been more clear that a small group of the wealthiest investors in the US run the show and the majority of people are wage slaves who had the ladder kicked out above them. Now we’re seeing an administration and elite class that is openly ransacking the country for whatever profits it can extract from a dying empire. I have no idea how this ever gets fixed.

Headline cropped. It's the lowest participation rate "outside the Covid era".

Original headline: "Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation rate falls to lowest in 50 years, outside of the Covid era"

It was never AI, it’s not “recession”, it’s not xyz, it’s simply since covid the wealth distribution got worse, further. It’s why you see the very few are with an exponential networth increase while the majority are suffering, at the same time, those who hold that networth are pulling all sort of shenanigans to keep the market alive and far from crashing for as long as possible, but it’s eminent and it will happen soon, the only exception is starting a major war to meat grind all these young men otherwise they will revolt for sure.

The current regime's policies are causing an economic recession.

I wish I could quit working. It is hell. Employers DGAF about people, so why should we care about them?

We live in a capitalist society. This means we prioritize making money via capital rather than through labor. It looks like we just got what we've asked for. I'm not sure what the problem is.

If you're playing labor in a capitalist society, you're playing a losing strategy.

And I'm not going back, either. Reckon I can slowly liquidate assets for as long as I have left to live. To hell with all this shit, my farm is enough.

I suppose it’s in how you word it. I’ve given up on trying to get a job because there is no point in trying. I can’t afford to pay my rent, but I guess you could call that early retirement.

> However, in June the biggest plunge came from what is defined as “prime age” workers, or those between the ages of 25 and 54. That rate fell 0.6 percentage point to 83.3%, its lowest since December 2023.

It's great how two sources can tell a completely different story about the same numbers.

> All is fine

An aging population means 25-54 represent less workers and people "retiring" from the labor force before social security age is likely to be deeply negative for their finances into old age and not just a decision from the relative luxury of being able to select jobs with quick vesting pensions like in past decades.

If pension ages were going down over the years and the average worker were well vested by 55 then in that reality all would be fine.

> Sounds more like people retire somewhat early

I know many ex-colleagues who have been retired early -- they face age discrimination and cannot find work.

"retired" at 25-30 is also pretty common, or at minimum self employed and fully sustainable while putting in only 10-20 hours a week usually for 2-3 days a week.

It's likely not even people retiring early, just demographics shifting up the ages. The youngest baby boomers are 61. The percentage of Americans over the age of 60 increased from 22.8% in 2020 to 25% in 2025. Also the younger cohorts moving into the labor force are smaller as well.

https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...

I did retire somewhat early but also somewhat involuntarily and only after a somewhat fruitless search.

I think you are grossly overestimating the number of people >55 years old who free willingly retire early because of having enough new worth. Already millenials' CVs are written off in recruitment pipelines.

Prime age is meant to filter college kids and retirees which makes sense but it is likely hiding the minor crisis in hiring for college grads. But I agree it's not disastrous just a yellow flag. The 20 year bull market has minted a lot of millionaires amongst the upper middle class and a lot of them are retiring early.

55+ crushing it on the asset inflation mania they got at ~zero interest, the youngins left holding the bag of the inflationary cost renting out houses their seniors got negative real interest mortgages for.

> The capital was either directly given to businesses, fraudulently and unnecessarily in many cases

Especially concerning when a bunch of politicians were in on it, ensuring that the money went out willy-nilly and that $700+ billion in "loans" were turned into a straight up gift from the taxpayers.

https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/cre...

https://fortune.com/2020/07/08/ppp-loan-recipients-members-o...

You get the money back the same way Roosevelt did, 94% tax rate on the rich.

Google Disaster Capitalism.

What we've done to other countries has finally turned inwards. It was just a matter of time.

a big war, probably