The Job Market is FALLING APART (10 Warning Signs)

The job market has been flashing red for a while now, but today I want to go over 10 of the biggest signs that the job market is in big trouble right now, because the economy has been getting worse for the bottom 90% of American citizens for years now, and these last couple of years have been by far the worst. So let's go over 10 reasons why the job market is completely in the tank right now, and it's probably not going to be getting better anytime soon. Number one is homelessness in the U.S. is at its highest level ever recorded, and of course, California is leading the way. They've been leading the way for years. That part is not news, but now that we have more homeless than ever before, that is news, and it's concerning news, and it's a reflection of the job market, because if people were able to get by on one salary or able to get a good job and keep a roof over their head and stay clothed and fed without issue, we wouldn't be seeing a record number of homeless people in this country. Right now, there's close to 800,000 people who are homeless in the United States, and we can expect that number only to grow as economic conditions continue to deteriorate. The second and major reason that the job market is completely finished right now is because CBS News, they recently just reported that the true rate of unemployment is actually 24.3% as of April of 2025. Well, you say, how did they come up with that number, Michael? Because the official unemployment number is only 4.2%. Well, let me tell you how they come up with it. What they're looking at is not just people who are unemployed. According to a report from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, they measure not only people who are unemployed, but also people who are looking for work, but can't find full-time employment, as well as those stuck in poverty-wage jobs. And by tracking functionally unemployed workers, this measure seeks to capture labor market nuances that other economic indicators miss. In other words, these are all the Americans that are being left behind right now. So just because you lost a job, yes, you are unemployed, but you fall off being counted as unemployed after six months of being unemployed. And if you're working a poverty-wage job and you technically are employed, that still doesn't really count as employed when looking through this lens. When you have almost a quarter of the country functionally unemployed right now in the United States, how is that a good sign that things are good right now? How is this the best economy ever? How are we in times of prosperity? We aren't. Now, the third reason the job market is in the tank is because due to the current economic conditions, about a quarter of the U.S. population is canceling plans to make a major purchase this year. And this could be something like a car or a home. And listen, if the job market was good and people were flush with cash and earning enough to make a decent living and go on vacations and buy that house and buy cars, you would see people out there everywhere buying up those things just like they did during the pandemic. And why did that happen during the pandemic? Because a lot of people were getting paid not to work. So it was like having a job even though you didn't. And it was before inflation was a major problem as well. Now you have inflation that is shot through the roof and people who are working don't make enough to keep up with it. So a lot of folks have no choice but to cancel any plans that they had to make a major purchase right now unless they land a much better paying job very soon. Another sign that the job market is not great is the price of meat, particularly beef and chicken. You know, the price of ground beef right now is up 10 percent from a year ago. The price of steak is up 7 percent. Chicken's up 3 percent. Ham is up 4 percent. And so a lot of people now have to choose to either forego the meat and not buy it or buy a cheaper cut in order to be able to still have it. And once again, if the job market was great and people were making sufficient amounts of money, people wouldn't need to be making these sacrifices. These are the type of sacrifices that you would see people making in poor countries. You know, whether people like to admit it or not, on this current trajectory, the United States is headed towards being a third world country. Things are not going to get better if we stay on this trajectory. We can't keep pushing up inflation and pushing up the money supply and just printing our way out of problems. It doesn't work. And the current economic conditions are proof of that. Another big sign of economic downturn in the job market getting worse is restaurants that used to be full are now being boarded up all across the country. In fact, we just saw Hooters this week abruptly shut down 30 restaurants with no explanation. Just all of a sudden they were closed. And of course, they are far from the only ones. We've seen many different restaurant chains close down locations over the past couple of years due to business not being what it was five years ago. And in order for something like a restaurant to prosper, the area needs to be flush of people that have good paying jobs, that have a lot of disposable income, that can not only afford to pay their bills, but go ahead and patronize all the local restaurants and not be afraid to drop a couple hundred dollars there. That's how restaurants make money. They don't make money on the cheap deals where you walk in and pay 10 bucks for something. Their margins are very thin with restaurants. They rely on big spenders, people that come in there and spend a sizable amount of cash. And without a good job, you just can't do it. The next thing is the job market itself and all of the layoffs we have been seeing. There have been over 700,000 job losses so far since the beginning of this year. We just had a big company like Procter & Gamble. They just announced that they were going to be letting go of 7,000 people over the next two years, which is about 15% of its non-manufacturing workforce. Another big one that announced layoffs this week was Microsoft. They announced 305 new layoffs. And this is just a few weeks after announcing they were cutting 3% of its workforce. So it's like, where does it end? How many people are they going to have to let go before they become profitable again? Or profitable enough in order to be acceptable by their shareholders? And you know things are bad when even Walmart is letting people go. Walmart announced that they're going to be firing 106 people. These layoffs are happening in the Bay Area in California for Walmart. And basically, they're giving people the ultimatum that you can either move to another part of the country and work for Walmart still, or the layoff will be permanent. So it's up to you if you want to leave. That's the ultimatum a lot of companies are giving people right now. You know, a lot of these layoff notices, they do include that information. They say, oh, well, we're giving employees the chance to transfer to a new location or a new headquarters, something like that. But that involves moving your family halfway across the country. In fact, one of my viewers reached out to me a couple of months ago, and I never actually made this video. But if this is something you guys are interested in, let me know. And what he told me is he moved from California to Texas for a job, and literally a month later, he got fired. And last I heard from him, a lot of people did this, and they're trying to put together a class action lawsuit against the company for forcing people to uproot their lives and move only to just let them go a month later. So things like this are happening to people, and it's very unstable. You know, it makes people very uneasy to have to make such a big life decision. And you're not even sure if things are going to work out. You don't even know if you're going to get to keep your job. Now, this eighth reason is a very sinister thing that's happening in the job market, which is quiet firing. And companies are all over the country are quiet firing employees to basically get rid of staff without having to make the severance payouts. And it's a way to, you know, kind of do it on the down low and not get the negative press. And in case you don't know what quiet firing is, it's when companies intentionally create an unfavorable work environment to compel employees to leave their jobs rather than formally firing them or using layoffs. In fact, it's reported that about 53 percent of companies are using quiet firing right now in the first quarter of 2025. They're just making it unbearable. They're doing things like Walmart right there. They're saying, well, yeah, you can keep your job if you want to move to Arkansas. You want to be in our headquarters over there. So you got to move from the Bay Area to Arkansas. Sound like a plan to keep your job? Maybe a few people will say yes, but most of them are going to say, I don't think so. I'll just leave. And then that's it. It's not Walmart's problem anymore. They can just walk away. Don't have to deal with them anymore. Now, the ninth reason that the job market is in the toilet is because of the housing market. The housing market continues to falter right now. Inventory continues to go up. People are selling homes they can no longer afford that they could afford just three to five years ago. And people aren't buying these homes because their jobs don't pay them enough to be able to afford to buy them, number one. And even if they do make enough, a lot of people are scared that they might be next on the chopping block. So that's not exactly a sign of a healthy job market now, is it? The United States housing market is back to pre pandemic levels of inventory, and about half of the markets across the country now are starting to see price declines year over year, which means that homes are selling for less today than they did a year ago. And when you factor in inflation, that's a much more powerful thing, because even if home prices are down one percent in your area, let's say, OK, that's not a lot, Michael. Well, you're right. It's not. But then factor in how much inflation have we had over the past year? Four, five, six percent. Who knows what the real number is? But when you factor in, let's say it's five and you had a one percent nominal price decline, that's a six percent decline in prices in one year. A lot of people like to say, well, the great thing about owning a home is it's a hedge against inflation, which it can be. But remember, that house is also going to lose value in times of inflation as well when the market is turning the other way. So inflation ends up being a double edged sword when it comes to price declines. But that's another thing that wouldn't be an issue if people had good jobs, people could afford to pay today's prices and today's interest rates. It wouldn't be a problem and home prices would still continue to go up at the average pace that they always have been, about two to three percent a year. Now, the 10th reason that this economy in the job market is on the brink of collapse is consumer sentiment. OK, according to a recent survey, 70 percent of Americans are saying they are the most financially stressed and they have ever been in their entire lives. And I feel like I can see that sentiment not only in the comments sections of my videos, but in other YouTube videos. I see that people post their financial situation right now. You know, if the economy was good or the job market was good, people wouldn't be having these complaints. And I'm not saying it's bad for everyone and everyone's suffering and no one's doing well right now. Of course not. There's plenty of people who are doing well. In fact, as I make these videos and walk through the neighborhoods, people constantly say, well, look, Michael, doesn't look like people are doing so bad over there. And they're not because everybody that lives around here is essentially rich to afford one of these houses. And for anybody who's wondering why I never walk through like normal neighborhoods is because there are none around here anymore. Where I live in Miami, there are no normal neighborhoods and all the normal neighborhoods are far away from here and in the ghetto. So I am not going to be doing videos in those areas for what? To show people how poor people live? Everybody knows that already. You guys can see how poor people live in a bunch of Nick Johnson's videos. That's his specialty. He likes doing that kind of stuff. You know, the recent jobs data just came out from Challenger Gray and Christmas. I covered this in a recent video also, but I'll give you a refresher that there's been about 700,000 layoffs since the beginning of this year and just 94,000 in May alone. And that number equates to an 80% increase in job losses compared to just one year ago. So anybody who doesn't think that that's significant is just delusional right now. And once again, does that mean that there are no jobs available? No, it doesn't. It just means that it's much harder to get a job right now. And your odds of losing a job right now are up exponentially. It's even jobs that you don't even think about. Like, for example, this story that was sent to me about a paper mill closing that's been open for almost 200 years in Ohio, guys. Like, we still use paper. I know it's becoming more of a paperless society with the internet and digital signatures and things like that, but there is still paper for everything. In fact, I just rented a car today since my car is already on its way to California on the truck, and they still use the old school printer with the slotted paper on the sides. Like, yeah, that's the kind of paper they use at the budget car rental here. So paper is definitely still a thing. You get a mountain of paperwork when you close on a property or buy a car or whatever, but yet paper mills are going out of business. They're laying off about 800 people at this Ohio paper mill. And this is a abrupt closing as well. In fact, this is all going to take place over the next few weeks. So people didn't get a whole lot of notice that they're going to be losing their job. And in these small Ohio towns where you still have a lot of industrial jobs and you have 800 people lose their job at once, it creates a massive impact on the local economy. And guess what? All of those people are going to be out looking for new jobs in a bad job market. And I realize when you guys see stuff like this, and I'm showing you views of the bay and people out on these expensive yachts and it's like, yeah, these guys are doing great. You know, everybody must be doing well, except for me. Well, that's not true guys. What's happening is right now, Miami and Miami beach, this whole area is becoming a playground for the wealthy. You guys have seen all the rich guys move here over the past few years. Tom Brady, Jeff Bezos, you know, Ivanka Trump, all these people are living right in this vicinity right now. A lot of other well-known, very rich people have moved here as well. And what you see in these videos and what even people that live around here see is not a reflection of reality for 99.99% of people that live here, including me. This is not my life. Now, one other thing I want to mention here that's outside of this list, but still affects the economy and the job market, the bond market is also flashing red right now. Basically everything is flashing red and people say, oh, you're just an alarmist, Michael. You're trying to make things sound worse than they really are. Well, I'm not, I'm just reporting what it actually is. I'm not telling you anything that isn't factually true. You can look all this stuff up for yourself, but essentially the bond market is the ultimate economic thermometer. You can think of it like that. Okay. And recently the shares of the 20 year treasury bond ETF is down 7.4% over 12 months and is underperforming the S and P 500. And its yield is now up to 4.4%, meaning that money has gotten significantly more expensive and higher yields equal higher borrowing costs, which means growth slows down and stock valuations face pressure. And this is all happening at a time of high inflation. So this is all translating into the real world of consumer spending and discretionary spending in slowing down right now. And this is a ripple effect of the tighter credit, the rising costs and shrinking consumer budgets. And what a lot of investors are doing right now, they are buying gold. Not only have gold prices hit an all time high in 2025, but even gold ETFs are up 12% in the last 12 months. And I don't even like gold ETFs. I don't buy them myself. I'm a fan of owning metals yourself, physical gold and silver, but a lot of people buy those. And that's because this is what investors do when they're worried about inflation. When they're worried about what's happening with treasury yields right now, it seems to be the only thing that can protect them from major losses down the road, especially when the government and the fed are in cahoots and they print money to buy up their own treasuries. And that sinister action is how they've been able to keep treasury yields from exploding so far. And guess what? The rise in these bond yields and gold prices means that there's trouble ahead for equities. You might start seeing more losses in the stock market as money becomes more expensive because these companies thrive on debt. And when debt becomes expensive, they don't thrive so much anymore. And on top of that, a lot of investors are pulling money out of stocks right now and putting it into things like gold and gold ETFs as a safer bet in volatile times. So basically when gold rallies, you know, bonds break down and consumers retreat and the writing is on the wall. We're not just looking at volatility. We're looking at a warning shot across the entire bond and stock market. But here's what I want from people who watch this channel. And if you made it all the way to the end of this video, I don't want you to get scared when you hear this news. I want you to feel informed and empowered knowing what's going on out there. So that way it helps you make the right decision. Maybe you were thinking about leaving a job and going to another one. Maybe now's not the best time to do it. Maybe you're thinking about looking at rearranging your assets as well. Maybe following what other investors are doing and investing more in gold and silver right now instead of the stock market might be a wise choice. You can learn stuff from what's going on regardless of how bad or how good things are. Believe me, one day when things get better, if they get better, because on this current trajectory, I don't see any of our politicians making really any real effort to make things better. But assuming one day things do get better, I will report on it. I will tell you guys. I have no reason not to. But the fact of the matter is there's not a whole lot of good economic news to report on right now. And there's just more bad news than there is good news. And I think you can learn more from the bad news and make better decisions with the bad news. And it's more helpful. This is the reality of today. I hope you guys enjoyed the video. And if you did, make sure you subscribe to the channel. And if you don't want to wait for my next video to come out, check out this one on the screen right over here. And I'll see you in the next one.