Yes, we have a good idea as to why. There are a few key factors involved starting with a shift away from full time employment and towards part time and gig work. This means that the number of people working full time jobs with the protections they provide has not gone up even though the population has gone up over that time. These workers are more precarious, experiencing less stable hours, unpredictable income, and easier firing processes. This makes people feel less secure and accept worse conditions. People with precarious employment may be less likely to report wage theft for example, which to be clear is more than all other types of theft combined.

Maybe the US slowed its population growth?

I’m no economist but I imagine it has to do with the wealth hoarding that our elite is engaging in.

This isn’t per capita, so it’s primarily a population graph. US population growth is stalling, immigration is already the only reason we’re still maintaining any growth, and it’s easy to guess why that might be slowing down now as well.

Economy is fucked.

It is also going to drop soon. When immigrants, illegal or not, are forcibly removed, you don’t only remove the low-level jobs required to keep e.g. farms/factories sustainable (general US populace is unlikely to pick up this kind of low-education/low-wage jobs), which forces these companies to close. On the other hand, fewer people in town also means lower spending power, which means that fewer (e.g. food) businesses are sustainable, and this again leads to the closure of companies. The increase number of companies closing will also mean greater unemployment.

Aside from the wealth concentrating in the hands of a few, there’s also noting that it’s “working full time”. More people are stuck into part time or multiple part time jobs to make ends meet.

gig economy

We are about to see unemployment numbers like we have never seen. In my opinion of course.

March 2023 was when GPT 4 was released. Maybe it’s coincidental, but I think the AI hype has some factor in it. Companies got an excuse (a bad one) to lay off their staff.

Just going by this graph and headlines over the last half-decade, probably still COVID hangover. You can see it did something similar in the early 90’s and early 2000’s.

At some point going forwards, blowing up all the US’s trading relationships is going to have an effect, as well. And maybe the AI bubble will burst.

What do you mean. It’s a graph of working people. If people there aren’t more people working, it’s either that people are missing, which is unlikely with a country that big (and so far open to immigration) , or the economy can’t pay them.

As you can see by the struggles after 2008 and during covid.

It’s the economy.

It’s flattening because of birth rates. You can’t have more working people if they aren’t being born