A Labor Market On Life Support: What The Jobs Numbers Are Actually Saying And How It Affects You
When people can't find the jobs, it cascades to a big time problem.
Our story begins with a 21 year old man by the name of Martin. Martin has an bachelor’s degree in computer science at Harvard University an he spend many hours on GitHub, creating projects, attended workshops, and even attending job fair! Now he carries about $60,000 in debt, and he wants to get rid of this ASAP.
After relentless job applications he lands his dream Job at Google as a software developer. He makes $120,000 a year, purchases that car he wanted, have a nice little set up in his apartment, dated a woman in his college days that he eventually married, has 2 kids, everything is going great!
Until he got an email from the company notifying him that he was laid off…
The world that he knows just shattered. The only income source that he has is gone as he has a pile of credit card bills to pay, utilities, property tax on his car, not to mention taking care of the 2 kids.
And this is a reality that millions of Americans are facing everyday, with the number one question they are asking: “How am I going to pay all these bills without a job?”
According to CNBC in 2025, 1.17 million people was laid off in the US, which was a 54% increase from 2024, making 2025 the biggest year for job cuts since 2009, and we all know what happened in 2009: The global financial crisis! OUCH.
But now we need to dive deeper to what really is going on in the jobs:
What Are People Being > 27 Weeks Unemployed Represent?
This is a statistic that you can find in the Bureau of Labor Statistics website. This measures the people that has been out of work for 189 days or more, which is a little over 6 months. Those are the people that is still continuously looking for a job, but that has not yet been successful, a statistic that will never show up on main stream media! here’s a jaw dropper:
In January 2024, 1,279,000 people was unemployed for 27 weeks or greater.
As of the latest BLS report, in December 2025 that number increased to 1,948,000 people.
That is a WHOPPING 52.3% INCREASE.
This means that more and more people are being unemployed for more than 27 weeks and they are struggling HARD to find a job in an economy where there has been layoffs all of 2024 and 2025.
This is a MAJOR red flag, because this means there is piles of unpaid bills, especially credit, auto and student loans. Remember in one of my last articles I said the delinquencies for the 3 of these are soaring? If not, that’s okay, below is the people who has transition to serious delinquency from the New York Fed.
THIS IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF WHY THERE’S BEEN SUCH SOARING DELINQUENCIES.
And with more and more layoffs that is incoming in 2026, more people will be out of work, which will lead to more people being unemployed for 6 months or greater, and means more incoming delinquencies, and well this all eventually leads to deflation. This is what the economist on mainstream media will never tell you. You have to watch this metric the next time they talk about the jobs report.
Discouraged Workers: Where People Feel Marginally Attached
See, this is another story that mainstream media is not covering. This is the people that are not actively seeking employment because of the belief there isn’t a job available for them.
Now this connects with the layoff situation we are seeing. Because the amount of layoffs that has happened in both 2024, and 2025 there’s fewer and fewer job openings, and this is especially true especially for the younger people that has graduated college as their has been widespread reports from multiple outlets of those who graduate college struggling to find a job.
To add insult to this injury, take look at the table in terms of discourage workers.
On average the Year of year change for disgruntled workers from 2024 to 2025 is up 27% meaning that more and more people are believing there isn’t a job available to them.
And as a bonus, the job openings has also been trending to the downside, which is a reason why disgruntled workers is going up!
Will they ever show you the truth? No! Remember, the people you see in financial media is being paid to promote the company! ;)
What does this mean for you?
What if you are one of the people that lost a job, and you can’t even find the job, you aren’t the only one, there’s millions out there that is struggling to find a job.
If you are one these people that is under stress because you don’t have the income source to cover your bills, there are millions out there that’s seeing the same thing.
Honestly, I really, really wish I could give the best advice possible if you find yourself in a situation like this.
Unfortunately, this trend is going to get much worse as this year, there’ll more than likely be more layoffs that’ll incoming, and with the job openings trending downward, disgruntled workers going up, and people being over 27 weeks unemployed going up, things will get much more worse.
And that is why I’ve been hammering home throughout my post the US is going into a deflationary state.