Amanda Goodall: US Economy Not Creating 6 Figure Jobs Anymore? Many US Consumers Are Tapped Out?
Summary
Workforce Intelligence: Amanda Goodall utilizes unique data sourcing methods, including emails and messages from tech company managers, to provide insights into workforce trends, contrasting with traditional sources like the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Tech Industry Job Cuts: Major tech companies like Microsoft, Meta, and Google are laying off high-paying jobs, including six-figure programmers, despite significant investments in AI and data centers.
AI's Impact on Employment: While AI is causing job losses in certain sectors, it is also being used as a justification for layoffs, with companies like FedEx focusing on AI-driven efficiencies.
Recession Indicators: Despite government reluctance to acknowledge a recession, workforce data suggests a downturn since mid-2024, with declining job numbers and labor participation.
Consumer Debt and Spending: High consumer debt levels and increased bankruptcies indicate financial strain, with consumers cutting back on spending in areas like dining and housing.
Job Market Challenges: The job application process is hindered by AI and spam, making it difficult for qualified candidates to get noticed, while companies struggle to find suitable hires.
Industries with Opportunities: Sectors like commodities, defense, and aerospace are highlighted as areas with potential job growth, contrasting with the broader trend of job cuts.
Adapting to Market Changes: Job seekers are advised to focus on company needs, leverage personal networks, and continuously update skills, particularly in AI and tech, to remain competitive.
Transcript
Hi everyone, this is Jason Becker of Wall Street for Main Street. Welcome back for another Wall Street for Main Street podcast interview. Today's special guest is a first-time guest, but I've been following her work for a little over 6 months now over on X. Amazing insights into a lot of different companies and a lot of different industries. The way she gathers intelligence, there's copies of emails, there's uh late night text messages from managers. It's very, very impressive the way she sources her data. Basically the exact opposite of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. She has been working in the field for HR and jobs hirings and firings for over 20 years. I think she worked um for Fortune 500 companies. Her current company, she's a workforce intelligence analyst. She uh tweets at the job check on X. Thank Amanda Goodall. Thank you for so much for joining me today. >> Hi Jason, thanks for having me. This is great. >> So we're recording this interview on Wednesday, August 27th, 2025. Uh could you briefly before we maybe start talking about like some of the data that you're collecting for the technology companies, the jobs being lost, if we're actually in official recession, if the government's going to admit that, uh where how do you actually source some of this information? Cuz literally you're getting copies of emails from like managers at like uh Google and Meta and and some of the other major technology companies. How how are you able to get access to this information ahead of Wall Street and the government? Yeah, you know, it's it's weird how things have just changed over the last year. I would say everybody wants to share their story and you know, everything that I've always done with workforce intelligence has been through official documentation, not so much the BLS, but you know, what companies are saying, what their PR, looking at the workforce data as well. That's what I've done for 20 years. So, you know, I I analyze all that way, but now everybody wants to talk about it. Now they are just voluntarily sending me stuff just going, "Did you see this? Oh, I want to send you this. I want to send you this." And it's not that I asked for it. A lot of people think I'm a journalist. I'm not. Um, you know, I I write, but I'm not a journalist, you know, to to, you know, fit the definition like that. So, people just send me things and let me know. Now, obviously, I take all of it with a grain of sand. Um, you know, it's it's it's one of those things that you're like, "Well, is this real? Is this just made up? Are they trying to push a narrative? Are they trying to get their boss in trouble? Whatever. So, you know, when I see stuff that people send me, and I get I get just tons of pieces, probably hundreds of pieces every single week. And, you know, I don't publish most of it. I don't publish most, you know, images or anything like that. I don't want to get anybody in trouble, but I look at the data and when I see something that I know is correct and I can just do some quick pulls of information and just what I know, then I start digging and then I go down that rabbit hole and and try to figure out what is actually going on, you know. And everything that I do with workforce intelligence is is really, you know, to serve my clients, whether they're corporate, legal, or investors, you know, they want to know what's coming. They know what already happened, you know, and they don't really necessarily want that context or that analysis of why it happened. Sometimes legal does obviously, but for the most part, they want to predict what's going on to project where they can go, what they can do, and and to almost like, you know, be prepared. Uh, you know, especially legal, you know, okay, we need to make sure we're good on all of these things. So, I do look at jobs. I do look at you know hiring the exits you know no matter whether they're layoffs or just attrition whatever it happens to be because we do see a lot of org changes and things like that but you have to look at all of that and just really try to go what's the truth what is going on where's the trend line and you know you can look at it honestly you know most people look at it whether as a whole um just as jobs as a whole or they look at it by industry honestly until you dig into the company data you do not see it. That's what you have to do. You almost have to go company by company and then bring it into industry and then you can look at it as a whole and that's where you get your numbers. And for listeners who are not familiar, Amanda was warning people over a month ago about Microsoft and Meta, Google, that these companies, even though the headlines over the last 6 to 12 months that they were spending tens of billions, that their projected capital expenditure budgets were for some of them $80 billion for 2025 on artificial intelligence data centers. That they were actually firing a lot of what what was it? Six figure programmers. These were not entry-level jobs or they weren't even hiring entry level. They were firing managers. These were people that had no warning, right? >> That's correct. Yeah. I mean, I've been looking at all of that. I mean, that's what I do, you know, and I try to go anywhere from three to six months out. Sometimes it's it's harder to go that nitty-gritty. Um, but usually, um, for, you know, my clients that, you know, share their portfolio that we work on different reports, you know, I usually can give them a 30 60day heads up and that can make all the difference, especially for investors, you know, when you're dealing with it. And you know, the market doesn't always tank or or you know, increase, you know, depending on what's going on. It just depends on the whole scenario, how the PR spin is is made and things like that. But for anybody looking and even people looking for a job, for companies that are trying to figure out what their competitors are doing, this is important to know. You know, I called the Chevron one last year. They laid off 9,000 this year, right? Uh it's still messy out there. Um the Microsoft stuff I've been talking about since I think last December. And you know, you can see it. It was all there. It's all there in the data. Just nobody wants to talk about it or they just think you're crazy cuz I put it out there and they're just like, "Yeah, that's not happening." I'm just like, >> well, actually, as an investment analyst that covers publicly traded companies now for over a decade, I could tell you, Amanda, and I'm sure you're aware of this, that normally when a lot of these companies announce that they're firing a lot, sometimes the stock price will actually the the investors will like it. Be like, "Okay, the management is focusing on cutting costs." So even though it hurts like the real economy, it hurts, you know, someone who is making a high paying job, they're probably not going to be able to get, at least for a while, the same highpaying job or if they can ever get it, but the investors, the the stock price normally is not upset with um management, you know, cutting costs and firing a bunch of people. >> Exactly. You know, and that's that's what my clients love. They're just like, "Okay, no matter what their game is, you know, what are what are they doing?" Um you know, I don't provide them complete advice on it. I go, "Here's the report. Here's what's happening. Go do you." And you know, and yeah, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. And you know, it just depends. Every company is different. And you know, and it's who's managing the company, what board is behind it, what activist is behind it. Um, you know, and and the really savvy investors know their stuff. They just want this in, you know, this integral data that can get really granular and, you know, and that's what I focus on. So for artificial intelligence software, a lot of these companies, whether it's Fortune 500 companies that are not like big tech companies like Microsoft, they're still spending a lot on artificial intelligence software. There's the headline articles. And you posted a study from Stanford University saying there's going to be a lot of job losses. Which industries? Would you say that uh as of now, at least for the foreseeable future, that artificial intelligence, software, robotics, automation will not uh it will not be a net creator of jobs? >> You know, I think AI is an interesting one. A lot of companies, especially the big tech ones, are are using AI. Um, they're using it as an excuse. It's not what I'm seeing fully. Um, and also I'm also seeing companies that are not talking about AI like FedEx for example, and they just laid off people. Um, you know, today, in fact, they just mentioned that today. You know, they're when you look at the workforce data, they are focusing on AI heavily. So, you know, you do have to look at all the different areas and and the classifications and what does AI mean? You know, especially when you're looking at like the press releases and just their spokespeople talking that everybody uses AI and it I I actually hate the word AI, which is really funny. Um, I love the technology. I think it's incredible. Um, you know, but it's kind of like going, "Hey, I use internet, you know, to me it's it's I have electricity. I have I have internet. I have AI." Okay, cool. Okay. You're building a new technology. you're restructuring something else to do cooler things with your programs, whatever. The a the phrase AI is weird, but so it really just depends on how companies are utilizing it and what it actually means, you know, to say, "Oh, we're going to cut back on, you know, this team or or reduce this org because we're focusing on AI." What does that mean? What does that mean? And, you know, companies are, you know, they're not transparent enough to to really go into all of that. So, it leaves everybody just sitting there going, "What are they actually doing?" And that's that's what I love digging into all this stuff because you can really find out a lot more details when you start seeing everything. And that's where you can start seeing what their future is. You know, companies companies are not making decisions last week to fire people. They're not making decisions today to go, "Oh, this is what we're going to do uh you know, next month." They're they're they're years out. They're 18 plus months out at least. So, you know, to look at what AI is doing for jobs, for hiring, for things like that, it's it's a word I want you to ignore. Forget the forget the phrase AI. Look at what they're actually doing and see, you know, where you can plug in on getting the data for all of that. >> Well, the data centers are still getting built. A lot of them haven't even been built yet. So, they just committed the capital expenditure, the billions of dollars to starting to build out these next generation data centers. But what I've seen is a lot of there's a ton of these stories. A lot of these uh college graduates that graduated at the top of their class, maybe they got a uh full-time, not a full-time, but a paid internship at the top of their class for computer programming, they didn't get offered a full-time job by these tech companies that they would have gotten in the past. So, it looks to me like the old, you know, learn to code, people should learn to code, people are going to get a six-figure job for computer programming. That looks like an industry that uh that six figure job people can't count on that. That is true, you know, and and and I just want to take a minute to just like um rant just a minute about all this. And everybody says, "Oh, don't learn to code." Well, you know, that doesn't mean don't go into tech, right? That doesn't mean not look at what's in the future. What other areas are there? Because somebody's building AI. AI is not building AI. Humans are still building it. So, you know, um I I hate seeing the argument. it just, you know, and also I hate seeing the argument of like, oh, don't learn to code anymore because this is happening. Go learn a trade. Well, you know what? AI is jumping into that one, too. At the end of the day, we still have to understand tech and and again, this kind of brings it down to the AI and and and coding and all the phrases people use and and they just interject things and, you know, so yeah, no, technology is still really really really important. Um, somebody's going to run those data centers, somebody's going to build the AI, somebody has to build that next technology. let it be you, you know, and I say that to anybody that's looking for a job right now that's that's in technology, any of the the grad students, know this is good. Just know what's going on and and really like chase it. >> Well, it looks like AI is causing deflation. So, the software is improving, the quality is improving, the costs are falling, especially for artificial intelligence video. So, if you're a business in another industry, and you mentioned FedEx, but I mean there's a ton of other businesses in other industries that can take that software and let's say a database or find like big data analytics or a legal business, they can adopt that software learning language model or something smaller and more customized from an open- source um artificial intelligence software learning language model, then that would benefit them. That would allow them to cut their costs, uh their overhead, maybe increase profits and profit margins. So, I could see it like over the future as more businesses adapt to it, it'll be more efficient, but right now it looks like it's going to cause a lot of job losses for those six figure white collar jobs that people weren't expecting. >> That is very true. Yeah. You know, we we are going to see we're going to see a lot of eb and flow with all of this right now. And we already have, you know, clarn something that I've looked into. You know, they were like, "Oh, hey, we don't need to hire people. We have AI." You know, and then they went, "Oh, wait. We need to hire people because people don't like talking to, you know, bots for customer support." Hi. I could have told them that. Um, and I wouldn't have charged them as much as McKenzie, but you know, it's like it's it's going to be interesting to watch how companies um, you know, whether they're big corporates or they're smaller companies utilize AI to grow, to evolve in how they realize, oh, this isn't working. We need to step back and now they hire more humans again. And I think for the next, you know, 5 10 years, we are going to see that. It's it's there's going to be a lot of changes. Right now we're in the big slump where a lot of people got laid off because AI is the cool shiny thing that everybody's chasing right now. And um you know and and companies are going after that technology. It's a race. It's a race right now. And um I I really feel like we're just creating a racing dynamic. Um you know all the all the all the tech companies and you know good or bad is what it is. You know you know companies are are scaling margins instead of teams right now. That's the name of the game. >> And those customer service bots you talked about. I mean, I've read articles where people have figured out how to game them, how to trick them into getting like free vacations and stuff like that. So, there's a lot of bugs in that thing. There's still bugs in chat GPT. I mean, I I do like um economic cartoons memes with it. There's still enormous amount of bugs. Some of the images take me over 24 hours, the two or three days to work out. So, there's still a lot of bugs that need to be worked out. Now, in in terms of job losses, the government I don't think the US federal government here in Washington DC, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Trump just replaced the head of the BLS and said he uh it was a agency, it was a political appointee from the last administration. Do you see signs that we're already in a recession? And do you think the government will actually admit we're in a recession? >> Never. They'll never admit that. Um, you know, and I I don't think any any president wants to admit that whether they just came in or it's their fault or whoever. You know, this is something that's been coming for a while. Um, we're kind of in a perfect storm right now. Um, with regards to like, you know, the BLS and if we're in a recession, we know what the jobs look like. And, you know, I'm not an economic expert uh with all of this, but you know, dealing with what I deal with on the job side. Yeah. Have we been in a recession? Yeah. I'd say probably since May, April, May of 2024. And you know, are they going to call it? I I seriously doubt it. I seriously doubt it. But we have constantly seen jobs decrease and and labor participation is decreasing. And we have a lot of issues going on right now with regards to this. And and it it really just kind of blows my mind sometimes to see, you know, any any party either side right now talking about how great and how strong the labor market is. I'm like, "Hi, I can show you some workforce data that suggests otherwise. Let me introduce you to all these people that don't have jobs that haven't had jobs for years." So, you know, the BLS thing, you know, claiming it was rigged data, whatever. You know, if there was incompetence, I totally understand the firing. But if it was just due to the really bad way we survey to get unemployment data and things like that then you know fair you know that that's just a really bad method and you know I don't know the full methods they use the full modeling they use but it's not accurate I don't believe it's been accurate probably for the last 20 plus years to be honest um you know but what's happening today now we see this now we have media talking about it now we have people that are been out of work for so long realizing wait a minute that's that's not that's not it when when you have this many people especially on X the community on X you know that many people just going no this is my story this is my story it's always the same then you know it's worse off so you know take the BLS numbers take unemployment numbers if you want to and and and make that your you know baseline of what's happening and just know that it's probably worse >> since you track um a lot of consumer industries a lot of different industries source data and intelligence are There are industries that are actually hiring many many thousands of jobs like some of the jobs data claim >> many many thousands absolutely not um Accenture maybe um you know no not in the thousands um not anymore that just doesn't happen you know you see and I think a lot of people actually believe that corporations are hiring thousands like every day you know we see all these job listings out there right so they're just like well assuming oh they're hiring you know, Apple has 600 plus, you know, jobs available on their career sites. That's not necessarily all for the US, not necessarily all for one industry, but I think just mentally that's what we we see that number which like, oh, wow, they're massively hiring. This is great. And, you know, companies don't massively hire anymore. Um, it's been a long time since they did. And and and really, I don't think it was ever that crazy on numbers except when they were like massively growing like when Nvidia grew a couple years ago. that was that was a big growth pattern. Um it wasn't all in the US either. Um you know, so by looking at all the different data and between the different companies and everything like that, as I said, you know, you really have to kind of look at it from a company standpoint on who's hiring and who's hiring the most. And you know, I would say right now the the biggest churn is either in tech or finance. That's what I'm still seeing. And that's been the case for the last several years anyway, at least since the pandemic. um we're always going to see a turn in finance as well. So you probably know that uh you know with your background as well just kind of what goes on with it all but um interesting things just happening behind the scenes with it all >> and then you have a lot of firings or stopping drilling spending capital for the oil and natural gas companies. You mentioned Chevron. So a lot of the larger companies that have done a lot of acquisitions like Exxon Mobile or Chevron, normally what happens when these companies do a large acquisition, they start firing because there's redundancies. There's two accounting departments after the huge merger. They don't need two accounting departments. So um the average person isn't aware of this but when the the industry is not spending capital expenditure say for drilling if the oil prices are low or stuck in a trading range and uh there's just not the economic incentive for the oil companies and to spend a lot of capital for drilling and the drilling normally is what creates more jobs. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, there's a lot going on with oil and gas right now as you mentioned. Um, you know, the Chevron thing was a big one and that really kind of started the kickoff honestly for 2025 and how bad it is. I mean, you know, I I I don't remember if it was December or January. I finally, you know, modeled out the numbers and I said it's probably going to be close to 40 to 50,000 layoffs within oil and gas and like, you know, their adjacent industries um that it would touch on. And I think we're pretty close to that number. We've got Hallebertton and Kico Phillips coming up. Um, I actually just spoke to somebody that's a consultant at Hallebertton the other day and they were just like, "How do you have your data so accurate?" Like, "How do you know that? Do you work for us?" I'm like, "No." Um, you know, so there's a lot of things happening with it all. And and like I said, you know, the adjacent industries and and and all of the uh side services, nobody thinks about that, you know, when when you're talking about all the oh, there's 9,000 people getting laid off from Chevron. Well, look at all the side services that are also going to get hit. and and that's that's the true impact of what a layoff actually does, >> especially if they don't spend the capital expenditure on maintaining the oil production or drilling trying to grow production. So, if they cut that budget enormously, I mean, that's directly into into the amount of jobs and uh because there's just not going to be as many drill rigs and as many humans needed to drive the trucks or set up oil pipelines, all the different oil service jobs that you mentioned. Now, you talked about applying to jobs, artificial intelligence, and you've talked about this cuz you have an HR background. is artificial intelligence like and these bot programs that people can program is it really screwing up like the job market and applying to jobs right now? >> Uh yeah. Uh quick thing I I don't actually don't have a background in HR. I'm not a fan of HR to be honest. Um but um what is going on with uh AI is basically you know everybody's doing these AI resumes. Companies have all of these ATS systems and they're you know and they're everything's all about agentic AI. If you go to like HR conferences, which I have been, that they just talk about it like it's like God. It's amazing. It's it's actually just like I just sit there and listening to the panels going, "Oh my gosh." But, you know, we have all these issues that are going on. So, you're literally going you're you're any job seeker is literally fighting AI versus AI to get a job and they're wondering what's going on and companies are wondering why they can't find qualified hires. It's just all messed up. And and to watch it happening and to see these companies promoting this, oh, apply like this. And and to have companies, you know, just say, "Oh, no. This is how we're going to deal with their their resumes, even if they're AI résumés." Just to watch it all is it's actually just insane. And it just makes you just go, "Can we just stop, throw it all out, hit reset, and start again?" And you know, it's almost to the point where, you know, you want to just go, can we just can we just go back to the days where you walked in and handed somebody a resume and shook their hand and you had to interview? You know, it just seems to make things so much easier. It's it's wild. Yeah. It sounds like like a ton of spam. I mean, I think you were talking about some stories on LinkedIn where like someone posted an HR professional that that sent you some information, sent you something that they posted a job res job posting on LinkedIn and like in 24 48 hours there was tens of thousands of job applications, but they're all like spam applications that had nothing to do with the job. They got a notification from LinkedIn saying they couldn't look at any more of the résumés uh or they were going to have to get charged. So, the whole thing was just like big and bloated and wasteful from all the uh spam rums. So someone who actually would have qualified for the job wouldn't have even been able to apply it and no human being was even going to be able to read their resume from what it sounds like. >> Yeah, you're invisible when this is happening. And you know, LinkedIn, Indeed, and and any of any of the other, you know, AI systems or you know, well, just programs and companies that are out there where you can just apply online. You know, it's about making money. That's how they make money. They charge for, you know, for you listing a job, right? And you know, it's it's crazy to see how much money actually companies spend on on job boards. Um, you know, at the end of the day and and you know, and for all the people that are just like, oh, you know, they're just doing this to to, you know, take my my data and and have it and and you know, and stuff like that. I don't think so. I don't believe it's at that level. But, you know, it's it is frustrating to watch companies waste money. Unknowingly, many of times when I've spoken to some of some of my past clients, you know, they didn't realize what was actually going on in HR. They didn't even realize their own numbers uh of headcount and the way functions looked, you know, for so for when people like me go through it, you know, and go, "This is actually what's happening." You know, company CEOs were just like, "I'm sorry, what?" you know, and so when you when you dive into all of that and and this is probably a little bit of my pet peeve with HR, you know, they're not all business leaders. I know a lot of them really want to sit at the table. You know, this whole CHRO thing and CPOS, whatever, they want to sit at the table, but they're just most of them, I will say that most of them are just don't have that kind of background to run a corporation. And you do have to be able to run both sides. And and I believe you know overall just from my experience and and you know and this is you know 15 20 years of actually dealing with executives on their career path which was kind of what got me into what I do now. You know seeing what goes on behind the scenes they have no idea what's going on in HR and it there's there's no talking channel. So companies just spend they spend they spend they spend they spend on jobs and they bring in people. It's not right and the churn is increasing. It's been increasing over the last several years and nothing is getting addressed for that and it makes you kind of some days I I sit there number one some days I'm angry some days I'm kind of conspiracy you know just going maybe they don't want anybody maybe they have another plan you know so they don't need humans you know I I have my moments especially when I'm going through different data points and stuff but um I don't know it's just it there's so much disconnect in in corporations these days and you know and I' I've looked at a lot of corporations over the years and just read a lot of the history of it and I don't know what happened and and I'm actually working on something to try to figure that out like where did it all break >> you know >> well they they always want to cut costs right so they got rid of the defined benefit uh retirement plans the days of someone you know working for one company and the company being loyal to them and them uh getting taken care of in retirement after they worked there 20 30 40 years those days are over um the trend that's been going on Amanda for a very very long time is with these HBN1s offshoring because what the the uh employment costs the uh salaries are what at least 30% less or something like that. So all whether it's Elon Musk or Vivec Ramosari or a lot of these other tech guys are all pro immigration but mostly what because they want cheaper um they want cheaper salaried employees. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. you know, the the whole H-1B thing is, you know, looking into all the data and I just finished a workforce series on my Substack for all of this, but you know, and looked at the MAG 7 specifically, the H-1B visas is a big distraction. Honestly, it's a distraction on what's happening with offshoring and nearshoring overall with companies. It is, and this is kind of where, you know, I kind of developed the whole phrase of this is a corporate revolution. You know, it's not the people rising up at this point. It's the corporates rising up and revoling. And you know, and it's not to give them street cred or make them noble uh for what they're doing. But we are seeing this this big mass restructuring, mass automating, mass offshoring on a scale that is reshaping society. And you know, it's a bit terrifying to to look at. And and again, this kind of ties back into what job seekers are feeling and why I don't believe the unemployment rate is what it what the BLS says it is, you know, and I don't think many people do, but you know, we we have so many compounding layers to add to everything that that's I that's what just boggles my mind some days. And I think, you know, everybody feels what they feel in their own corner of the world and depending on what industry they're in and and they see all these things, but you know, we can't all be crazy, right? >> Well, if if you use the old data from the 1980s and 1990 survey data, John Williams of Shadow government statistics, he asked it closer to around 30%. So, the government stops counting people who stopped applying to jobs what after 12 months or something like that. They're not even counted. So, I guess it depends on the industry, but uh overall, I mean, I don't see a lot of headlines, Amanda, that are saying for a lot of companies, a lot of industries saying we're hire we're looking to hire thousands upon thousands of people. I mean, it's just pretty rare. >> Yeah, it doesn't exist anymore. And yeah, the average uh unemployment uh time period right now is 24 weeks. At 27 weeks, you're not counted in the data anymore. You're long-term unemployed. So, that's and that's been increasing. So like you know and and and well I guess the the unemployment uh time period has been uninccreasing. Um and then we're also seeing just the unemployment rate. So when when you fall off you're not counted anymore. You know if you're if you're driving Uber you're not counted anymore. You know it's really frustrating. So yeah I I don't really look at much of the statistics for that. Um just it's not been something I've needed to do with what I work on. But I you know is it 20 30%? I wouldn't doubt it some days, you know, and and definitely heavier in certain industries, certain regions and things like that. And I do believe it's going to increase. Whatever the unemployment rate does happen to be, we are going to see it increase because at least for the US, for us American workers, because we are seeing so much offshoring happening right now. This is why we're not finding jobs. I straight up looking at the numbers, I'm blown away. And I also think that government economic data doesn't count underemployed because I know a lot of people in the metro area here and I have friends in New York City area and others who are working two or three part-time jobs trying to put make a living together to begin. >> Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. >> So, so for your company, you cover the consumer. You track the consumer and consumer spending. Are we seeing recession or are we seeing only people that are benefiting what from higher asset prices, stock prices, crypto? What are they spending on? And um what what is a consumer cutting back on based on uh uh your data and intelligence? >> They spend on Door Dash. Um you know, I actually um so my company is Adoptic, but I also advise um different startups and and businesses and have done for the last 20 years and I'm currently since 2018 um I've been advising a consumer credit company. And so I get to see all the data and I I originally started in there just you know to kind of help them deal with people um and what's going on and and how to you know kind of more of the customer service side but you know in that I've learned all the stuff and seen what's going on. So for the past several years people are just spending the consu the amount of consumer debt is insane. And you know what I would say you know we are seeing uh heavy revolving uh credit accounts which are all your credit cards your store cards they were massive right after the pandemic massive massive massive and they just imploded within a year like people were just overextended and not paying because that's pretty much where we can tie up where layoffs really started ramping up especially because you know when you're talking like you know late 2022 early 2020 23 when all of the overhiring that happened during the pandemic really started taking place. Right. So then everybody got laid off. Nobody's paying their bills anymore. >> Yeah. That was pre AAI. So they were just like, "Oh, we're going to we're going to reopen the economy." We didn't know what AI was per se yet because like 2022 2023 was when it really started coming on the scene with the share price in Nvidia. So that was like the transition from reopening the economy post pandemic to AI. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, overall the consumer uh you know, from what we're seeing and and what we're seeing today still, they just absolutely disregarded their credit and they're just like, "It'll get better. I'll find a job." Well, here we are. You know, mid 2025, I mean, a lot of people are still struggling to find jobs. I mean, I speak to people that have been out of work for over a year. And it's not that they're not qualified. I've I've spoken to some of the most talented people I have ever spoken to, and they're struggling to find jobs. And you know it can be due to just applying wrong industries AI whatever you want to name it you know companies offshoring it doesn't matter um the situation still exists so you know it's it's interesting to watch you know we are seeing bankruptcies increase um I just heard from um my friend Lakshmi at uh Unicus Research she actually just mentioned today that more people are filing 13 over seven which is wild you know is it just due to how much debt you're in or the fact that you need to keep your house and your car and everything like Yeah. I don't I don't know what all the breakdown is of it, but um >> is that a type of bankruptcy filing that so it's not chapter 11 then? It's chapter you said 13. >> 13. Yeah. And you know companies and people are filing bankruptcy more often these days and it's just I don't know it's just um it's weird to watch from the credit from the credit side you know especially we had student loans hit uh you know kind of at the beginning of the summer really and people's scores dropped anywhere from you know 80 to 170 points. Actually, I think the highest one I ever saw was 182. And I actually saw this on the on on somebody's like credit file. And you know, the other day I actually just saw one and they got hit like 165 points. And you know, it's cuz it's still happening. And and I think that's that's the thing people aren't going to realize, especially when you're dealing with consumer debt and and student loans and things like that. Well, even though you were 90 days beforehand and they finally put it on credit reports, well, if you get to that point now, whenever that happens, it's going to fall into your credit reports. We're just going to keep having people added and added and added that are all in delinquency going into default. It's just going to keep getting added to credit files. So, it's credit files as a whole are just going to get worse and worse and worse because we have a lot of people, millions that are uh, you know, delinquent with their student loans. when you have all of these people and you you have to look at this and and I'm going to bring this back into jobs. You know, if you have a layoff and maybe you know after the pandemic or during the pandemic you bought a house because we could back then, right? A lot easier, right? >> Well, interest rates were were cheap temporarily. >> Yeah. If you bought a house cuz you had deferred student loan payments so you could make your payments and now you don't. Well, your payment is now due. You now have to pay student loans. Well, do you pay your mortgage? do you pay that? You know, for those that are going to get wage garnished with all of this, what does that do for their housing situation if they did buy a home? You know, there's all these issues. And if you do get laid off, you're you're lucky if you're at 6 months before you find a new job. And you know, and I think there's different things like with the one big beautiful bill that went on um that says you can't defer uh more than like two times in like 9 months or something like that. I can't remember all the details, but there's there's issues that are going to keep arising with all of this. And this is and like I said, this is millions of people. This is not just a small thing. And you know, it's it's going to be interesting to watch over the next like 18 months. I think I I don't think we're we're we're not even at the beginning of seeing what's going on with consumer credit and debt and things like that. >> Well, it's distorted. So, if you didn't use a lot of debt, so if you benefited from the asset price inflation the last 10 or 15 years and you didn't have a lot of credit card debt or student loan debt or huge mortgage debt, you're fine. It's the people that didn't have high income or just lost their job and then they had all that debt that you said that are going to be like maybe they were um uh working class or middle class. They didn't have a lot of discretionary income. they were barely making ends meet or now that the interest rates are higher on a mortgage because there was a good amount of people with adjustable mortgage and now you said they were counting maybe they were counting on a student loan debt bailout and now there's no student loan debt out now they have to make the payments too. Now they're basically what are they going to have to sell probably sell their house or their condo? They're going to have to try to liquidate it quickly for some cash maybe. >> Yeah. Yeah. There's there's big issues of foot, you know, and speaking to a couple uh you know, uh very smart people in housing. Uh that that that's their thing, you know. Yeah. Looking at what's happening over the next couple months, they're really worried about, you know, the end of the year for housing. You know, plus you have that whole FHA thing uh going on and you know, there's there's a lot of problems a foot and you know, and and I say this to a lot of people, you know, my thing is jobs. My thing is is the workforce, but you know, I am I am a part of some of the other areas, you know, a little bit in housing, uh a little bit in credit, um a little bit in auto, uh you know, so looking at all of those, when you layer all of these issues that we have from consumer debt to housing to layoffs and the length of time that you're being laid off, the amount of money, the salary, the wage compression that goes on, and you layer all of these things together, peel it, it's like an onion, and you are going to start crying. This is going to this is a problem. There are so many layers that we have to just keep peeling open. It is bad. It is bad news. And like I said, I we're just at the beginning of it all. Uh honestly, and um you know, it's not to say that it's necessarily going to get way worse. Let's fingers crossed, right? Um but I do believe there's going to be a lot of people that are going to have a really tough time. Now conversely uh you know you mentioned people with you know not necessarily the middle class or the lower classes but those with assets you know we are seeing that side as well do just fine you know people that are that were making you know the three four $500,000 uh you know uh salaries you know plus bonuses and all that kind of stuff you know dealing with them as well they're like I can ride this out so there is going to be a a vast change in in how split of a society we become. Um just just seeing that just seeing that from people just >> so more wealth disparity more more distortions. If if I could summarize what you said over the last couple minutes it sounds like a lot of consumers they just don't have the discretionary income. The real economy is not creating a lot of new net highpaying jobs of six figure or more or more jobs. Right now the a lot of these companies are adapting to artificial intelligence software. The consumer in certain industries cutting back. I think Chipotle actually just shocked a lot of people because they've raised prices what with a lot of their a lot of their food the average check size was way over $20 in a lot of areas and they said that their their customer was cutting back on ordering at Chipotle. So you've seen a lot of examples of some of these consumer businesses and then I think the homebuilders just said that a lot of the new home sales and they were subsidizing the mortgages to get new home sales. They said they're not even selling a lot of the new homes that they're building. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot there's a lot going on. And you know, it it it all comes back to jobs. It all comes back to jobs. And you know, and that's, you know, when I when I start talking to people, you know, they're just like, well, it's just a it's just jobs. You just you just deal with layoffs. No, I don't. You know, because if you don't have a job, the economy doesn't run, right? >> Yeah. Consumer can't spend. Can't go out can't go on vacation. Can't go to Las Vegas. So, I I know you you're what? You're you're not far from Las Vegas. >> I am in Las Vegas. Yes. Yes. >> Yeah. So, like the the stories coming out of Las Vegas are crazy. I mean, I have some friends who lived there. I used to when I lived in Southern California, I used to go there like once a month. That was many, many years ago. But I mean, like, I remember when my grandparents used to go there all the time and there was budgets on the Las Vegas uh there was like um good value on the Las Vegas strip. You could eat a dinner buffet for like 20 bucks at MGM Grand. That was like 2530 years ago. I mean, it's turned into like what fivestar Michelin restaurants $90 for for a mediocre steak. Like, it's just gotten ridiculous. >> It's it's all mediocre. Most most of the restaurants are mediocre. you know, I only moved here um I've just been here just coming up two years now. Um so I got here when it got really fun, right? Um but you know, it's not as bad as the media portrays it. Yes, there's pockets of problems, but what I find interesting about Las Vegas, so most everybody thinks about Las Vegas is it's just a strip. And yes, of course, it's tourism, right? We we all come here for the strip and for the lights and for the shows and and for all the fun stuff and and our mediocre stakes, but you know there it's interesting because Las Vegas as a whole doesn't have a lot of really big industries here. They don't have a lot of the big corporations here, whether it's warehousing or or even just, you know, white collar jobs. It's it's that's not the main thing here. And I know they're trying to be a big tech hub here. Um I work with a lot of the startups here on all of that. Um, you know, of course, obviously it's hospitality, but because Las Vegas is not a big corporate hub at, you know, compared to like, you know, bigger, you know, other other cities, Austin and things like that. Um, the local economy is not feeling it. You can go out to any of the satellite casinos that are not on the strip. Um, they're packed. They're always busy. They're always busy. So, it hasn't touched the locals in Las Vegas yet. Now once the strip closes down that will obviously well not close it's not going to close down but I'm not even sure why I said that but but once it starts closing down a little bit more because we do we are seeing layoffs but you know once it is closing in more I think it's a better phrase you know we're going to see less and less hospitality workers here and that tends to be the lower mid mid-level workers overall. Well between that and housing and things like that that's where the problem lies. So, as a whole, Las Vegas isn't doing that bad. Uh, you know, tourism's down, things like that. Whatever. Whatever. A lot of it's come back coming back to consumer debt at the end of the day. I know a lot of people want to say it's tariffs and travel and Trump and things like that. I don't believe it's just that. Not from what I can see, it is just straight consumer debt. And >> if if there's a deal on travel, I mean, people are still looking. They're just not looking in Las Vegas. So, they're looking in other areas. Yeah. >> Yeah. It's expensive. It's pricey. I mean, I I'm one of those weird people, you know, my husband and I actually moved here by choice. Uh we could live anywhere we want, but we were like, we have a few more years left in the United States. Where do we want to live? And and we were like, well, when we traveled for years, pre- pandemic, we always stopped in Las Vegas. We're like, hey, that's fun. I love entertainment, night life, and things like that. That's why we came here, for that fun side of things. So, you know, I'm I'm the I'm the one that I'm the local that does the touristy things. So, I'm at the strip a lot. So, I do see it. So, yes, some casinos are struggling and and some are doing fine. You go into the wind, the Bellagio, things like that. They're doing great. They're doing great. You know, restaurants are still busy. Um, you know, we see like all these like different like influencers that post these like dead casinos. I'm like, "Yeah, if you go at like 3:00 a.m., you know, like when I come out of a club at 3 a.m., it's pretty quiet." >> The casinos that are struggling, they'll either shut them down or renovate them. They'll demolish them. adapt cuz the uh Las Vegas strip goes through boom and bus cycles. I mean most of the developers like win and those guys Sheldon Aden I mean they've gone bankrupt. So they've had to deal with boom and bus cycles. I mean there's different consumer preferences that have changed on the Las Vegas strip. Like 25 years ago the Las Vegas strip was value. My grandparents wanted to go there all the time for good food at a reasonable price and shows. I mean those days are over for the value side on the Las Vegas strip. >> Yeah. The biggest thing I think with the Las Vegas strip, and this is just me seeing this kind of as an outsider, just somebody that used to travel through and now I live here, it costs a lot just to go there just to have the benefit of going to buy that mediocre steak. You you're paying $40 plus valet, right? You're paying, you know, 20 to $30 to self park. So, you might as well valet at that point, you know, if you're going to go spend $80, $90 on a steak, valet. um you know, help the help the local economy and the people there, you know, but it's like it's so expensive just to get there, just to for the benefit of gambling or doing a show or something like that. That's the that's the crazy part. And I don't know why, but it it just to me it feels like Las Vegas has shot themselves in the foot with that one, you know, and you see different different places. I think Resorts World just had like free parking for locals for the summer or something. And >> they they'll adapt over the next couple years, Amanda, to the consumer not spending at those levels. So they'll start remodeling parts of the casinos. They'll knock down the old ones that used to be new 10, 20, 30 years ago. So you'll see that it'll be a boom and bust cycle. It will it will not happen over the next like 6 months or anything. It will be over the next like 5 years. >> Definitely not. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, now they're all just bickering about are we having the A stadium built or not. So it's a it's a very unique town. I will say I've lived all over the US and this is a really really unique area. Definitely. >> So I So I have one more question. I've kept you for for almost an hour. I actually enjoyed a lot. So, we'll definitely have you back on. I'm sure you're going to get offered to go on a lot of different financial podcasts cuz a lot of the larger YouTube channels listen to financial YouTube listen to my my interviews. As we wrap up here, maybe tips for my listeners out there who are looking to get their resume read by a human where it's not blocked by spam or artificial intelligence software and screened out. What What should they start doing to maybe uh differentiate themselves if they just lost their job? Maybe they someone uh cuz I do have a lot of tech people who listen to these podcasts at Microsoft and Google. They just they just lost their six figure computer programming job that they had for 10 or 15 years. How should they adapt and potentially find another uh decent highpaying job again? >> Yeah. First off, know that you're not alone. You know, I everybody knows that all the layoffs are happening, but a lot of people are in the same boat right now. You know, my focus when I used to work on like career path was, you know, more in the tech side, a lot of oil and things like that. So tech is unique. you have to and and regardless of what industry you are in and this is going to be very generic advice overall um but tech people really need to listen to this one because you you will stand out very differently you have to number one don't use AI resume writers don't use any of those automated systems online and honestly you know it's it's funny because I used to say you know like sub 100 jobs use LinkedIn or Indeed now I'm not even going to recommend those and it's not that you know you and go search the job boards to go see what's out there to give you ideas. But these days, regardless of what salary you're looking for, you know, if you're just looking for just something local like working at a grocery store, something that obviously that's not going to work. But if you are looking for a salaried role, you really need to focus on the companies that are out there. What are they doing today? What are they doing in the future? And you know, again, this is this is looking and really thinking outside the box, looking at their press releases, looking at their earnings, looking at all the little details of what they do and and and diving into, you know, where they are actually going as a company. Think about who you know, you know, and it's not that you need to talk to people to, you know, everybody says network and and I don't I don't want you to necessarily network, which is kind of backwards. I understand everybody on LinkedIn, all the all the gurus on LinkedIn are just like, "Oh, network, network." No, no, no. They're recruiters are annoy they're annoyed by having all of that. But what you should do when you are looking for a job or even when you have a job specifically. Start finding out you know what companies are needing. Start meeting recruiters at that point. Start talking to HR at that point. Start seeing what they might need. Let them know who you are because one day they might go, "Hey, we actually have this painoint. You said you could solve this stuff before. I remember you." So that's what you really need to do. you need to start standing out differently to solve company's pain points because at the end of the day and nobody just wants you to do your job the job description, you know, and I do see that especially with like the AI resumes and just ones that are written hard. I get it. Rums are hard to write. It's like legal ease for the the career world. I've done over 25,000 of them. And you know, it is it is very very different. But today's world is not just about I can do these requirements. It's about you have this problem as a company or you guys are aiming for this thing. I can help you. I've done this before. And you know, and it's harder it's harder to think outside the box like that. I'm not going to lie. But you know, the more people you can talk to, um, you know, reaching out to different people, just talk to your, you know, past colleagues where they landed, you know, what companies are they working at or what people do they know and and see what's going on in the company. You don't necessarily have to ask for referrals, you know, and uh I know a lot of people in tech do that, but you don't have to do that. You just have to go, "Hey, who should I talk to here? Do you like it? What's going on?" You know, where where are the problems that you see? So, you actually know what you're getting into. A lot of people, you know, apply to companies. And I see this all too often. People will apply to a company because they have not done their homework on the company other than reading on the local press release that, you know, a new CEO was was hired, you know, but they don't actually know what's going on in the company. and they basically what happens they'll get a job and 6 8 n months later they're on the layoff list because you know the company was doing layoffs and I see this a lot I see this because this is what I look at and you know the last 5 10 years I've been monitoring this for my clients to just say hey this is actually what's happening so I know you like this company but no don't do this to yourself you know you don't want to be put in that predicament so the more you know the more you can talk to people and not just send them your resume and not just do the general networking thing like, "Hey, I'm looking for a job. Let me know if you know of anything." Don't do that. Don't be generic. Stand out. You have to be the obvious choice. And I think that's what most people forget. And they they know they are because there's so many talented people out there. I speak to them on a daily basis. There's so many talented people. Be the obvious choice. Yes, you might have that degree, that pedigree, or you've worked at a certain logoed company, but that's not enough these days. Just because you know you can do the job does not mean that you're the obvious choice. And that's what you have to do. You have to stand out as the obvious choice >> and you have to keep learning, constantly learning and adapting. So even if you're a computer programmer, I mean like you probably have to go and get your artificial intelligence certifications which are cheap and almost free from either Google. They have the courses online or Microsoft or Nvidia now. So you can go and learn those and adapt. So if you just lost your computer programming job at one of those tech companies, you can go get your certification, cyber security certification. That makes you um you know, you're learning the new skills. you're uh adapting to where these companies are actually investing in. So, that might be something. I've also heard, you know, you mentioned LinkedIn. I mean, I I've heard LinkedIn's turning into a dating app now, unfortunately. I mean, like there's like people there trying to trying to get some action on there. They're not necessarily looking for a job anymore because they're deleting the dating apps because the dating apps are cluttered with bots and all this spam and all this stuff, too. And now they've gone to LinkedIn. So, that's cluttering LinkedIn, too. >> Yeah, it's it's a bit of a mess. You know, it it used to just kind of be like a guru central and now it's just Yeah, it's it feels like Facebook some days, which is not beneficial if you're actually looking for a job. It's jobs have changed and we have to >> LinkedIn is so spammy, too. It feels like someone just copied and pasted and sent like the same email to hundreds if not thousands of people. >> Yeah. And every post is written by AI. You can you can spot it a mile away. It's like, why do I want to read this? You know, you're all the same, you know. Um and uh Yeah. Yeah, I'm not a fan as you can tell. >> So, it sounds like there's not a lot of industries right now that are that are hiring six figure job. There is one, we've discussed this over the last couple weeks since I've gotten to know you a little bit. Um, the commodities. So, not oil and natural gas, but the other commodities. So, that's where the investment capital because you've had high commodity prices. The US is adapting what strategic metals for copper and rare earth elements. So, those but then you need to go and get what? A geology degree. you need to get become a geologist or you need to get into um one of the rare earth professions there that is involved in refining rare earth. So those types of jobs um those actually look good because there's going to be less what trading and free markets there. A lot of these countries like the US and China they're setting up their own domestic supply of key metals. >> Yeah. Yeah. There's a there's a lot in that field. Um and you know I would say any anything within the commodities like that are really good. anything in defense and aerospace. Um, you're strong. You're strong. You know, none of that's going anywhere. Uh, you know, whether it's rare earth or, you know, metals or or or space, it's all there. It ain't going anywhere. >> Well, good point for military and defense spending because what the average person is maybe not thinking about is artificial intelligence software. The more it improves, the more it goes into humanoid robots and drones and things like that. So the more the software improves, the more they're going to invest it and put it into other military uh weapons and upgrades. >> Definitely. Yeah, there's always always industry in that. And you know, gosh, you can even just be like, you know, materials engineer and go into aerospace and defense and things like that. So there's so many things you can do with a lot of different degrees that are out there. You have to think outside the box these days and and really focus on, you know, personally, what do you really like to do and how does that fit a certain industry and then go after those companies that >> I don't know if pursuing your passion is a good long-term financial strategy, Amanda for about >> it's it's not about a passion. It's more about what are you really good at? Um, you know, some people just don't realize that and they just go, well, this is my degree. This is what I have to do. This is what the job description is. And you know, so my first questions and again, this is this is how I've helped so many people over, you know, figure out their career path and just over the years. What is it that you're really good at and what is it that you're really good at that you don't ever want to do again and figure out what those things are? There's going to be common threads and now you need to see where those fit in to go after those certain industries on where their pain points are and go plug in what you are good at. And it's not necessary not necessarily that you should be passionate about it because I don't believe you should have passion about your job. I really just don't. You should go where there's money and where they're hiring. Yes, but you do have to actually like it or you're going to get burned out and you're going to hate it and you're going to be back at square one faster than you can imagine. And we don't want that at all. So, um really look at those things, but really, really, really think outside the box. There's so many avenues that people can go down no matter what industry they have, what degree they have. Um there's so many jobs. You just got to think outside the box. look at adjacent companies as well, adjacent industries, and see where you can fit. >> I I'll add one, especially if you can take this artificial intelligence software, whether it's the regular learning language model or the video stuff from Google V3, and you can help a business in another industry, not computer programming in another industry. You can help them improve their marketing. You can help them uh reduce their overhead. You can improve their profit margins. If you can solve that, you can uh make a career or at least like a decent job for yourself. >> Exactly. Exactly. You've got to think outside the box these days. Companies are not there for you. You got to be out there for yourself. Trust your gut and go after go after what you know. >> So, as we wrap up here, uh please tell my listeners about your newsletter. Don't you have a a free sample for my newsletter? Uh my listeners who want to check it out, you have the first month of the newsletter for free or one one copy of the newsletter. >> Yeah, absolutely. Um they can reach out to me and I can uh get them on there. Uh I have a substack. It's uh insider edge report and you know I basically try to put out about two to four sometimes five pieces a week uh just depending on what's going on and uh you know so that that's a good start and then so you can find that at like I said insidered report.com and then also if you're looking for any kind of workforce intelligence come to the job.com and uh that's where I do all my consulting and things like that and and the straightup straight up reports for investors and companies and uh if you just want to know what's going on and see what I video on a daily basis. Check out my ex at the job check.
Amanda Goodall: US Economy Not Creating 6 Figure Jobs Anymore? Many US Consumers Are Tapped Out?
Summary
Transcript
Hi everyone, this is Jason Becker of Wall Street for Main Street. Welcome back for another Wall Street for Main Street podcast interview. Today's special guest is a first-time guest, but I've been following her work for a little over 6 months now over on X. Amazing insights into a lot of different companies and a lot of different industries. The way she gathers intelligence, there's copies of emails, there's uh late night text messages from managers. It's very, very impressive the way she sources her data. Basically the exact opposite of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. She has been working in the field for HR and jobs hirings and firings for over 20 years. I think she worked um for Fortune 500 companies. Her current company, she's a workforce intelligence analyst. She uh tweets at the job check on X. Thank Amanda Goodall. Thank you for so much for joining me today. >> Hi Jason, thanks for having me. This is great. >> So we're recording this interview on Wednesday, August 27th, 2025. Uh could you briefly before we maybe start talking about like some of the data that you're collecting for the technology companies, the jobs being lost, if we're actually in official recession, if the government's going to admit that, uh where how do you actually source some of this information? Cuz literally you're getting copies of emails from like managers at like uh Google and Meta and and some of the other major technology companies. How how are you able to get access to this information ahead of Wall Street and the government? Yeah, you know, it's it's weird how things have just changed over the last year. I would say everybody wants to share their story and you know, everything that I've always done with workforce intelligence has been through official documentation, not so much the BLS, but you know, what companies are saying, what their PR, looking at the workforce data as well. That's what I've done for 20 years. So, you know, I I analyze all that way, but now everybody wants to talk about it. Now they are just voluntarily sending me stuff just going, "Did you see this? Oh, I want to send you this. I want to send you this." And it's not that I asked for it. A lot of people think I'm a journalist. I'm not. Um, you know, I I write, but I'm not a journalist, you know, to to, you know, fit the definition like that. So, people just send me things and let me know. Now, obviously, I take all of it with a grain of sand. Um, you know, it's it's it's one of those things that you're like, "Well, is this real? Is this just made up? Are they trying to push a narrative? Are they trying to get their boss in trouble? Whatever. So, you know, when I see stuff that people send me, and I get I get just tons of pieces, probably hundreds of pieces every single week. And, you know, I don't publish most of it. I don't publish most, you know, images or anything like that. I don't want to get anybody in trouble, but I look at the data and when I see something that I know is correct and I can just do some quick pulls of information and just what I know, then I start digging and then I go down that rabbit hole and and try to figure out what is actually going on, you know. And everything that I do with workforce intelligence is is really, you know, to serve my clients, whether they're corporate, legal, or investors, you know, they want to know what's coming. They know what already happened, you know, and they don't really necessarily want that context or that analysis of why it happened. Sometimes legal does obviously, but for the most part, they want to predict what's going on to project where they can go, what they can do, and and to almost like, you know, be prepared. Uh, you know, especially legal, you know, okay, we need to make sure we're good on all of these things. So, I do look at jobs. I do look at you know hiring the exits you know no matter whether they're layoffs or just attrition whatever it happens to be because we do see a lot of org changes and things like that but you have to look at all of that and just really try to go what's the truth what is going on where's the trend line and you know you can look at it honestly you know most people look at it whether as a whole um just as jobs as a whole or they look at it by industry honestly until you dig into the company data you do not see it. That's what you have to do. You almost have to go company by company and then bring it into industry and then you can look at it as a whole and that's where you get your numbers. And for listeners who are not familiar, Amanda was warning people over a month ago about Microsoft and Meta, Google, that these companies, even though the headlines over the last 6 to 12 months that they were spending tens of billions, that their projected capital expenditure budgets were for some of them $80 billion for 2025 on artificial intelligence data centers. That they were actually firing a lot of what what was it? Six figure programmers. These were not entry-level jobs or they weren't even hiring entry level. They were firing managers. These were people that had no warning, right? >> That's correct. Yeah. I mean, I've been looking at all of that. I mean, that's what I do, you know, and I try to go anywhere from three to six months out. Sometimes it's it's harder to go that nitty-gritty. Um, but usually, um, for, you know, my clients that, you know, share their portfolio that we work on different reports, you know, I usually can give them a 30 60day heads up and that can make all the difference, especially for investors, you know, when you're dealing with it. And you know, the market doesn't always tank or or you know, increase, you know, depending on what's going on. It just depends on the whole scenario, how the PR spin is is made and things like that. But for anybody looking and even people looking for a job, for companies that are trying to figure out what their competitors are doing, this is important to know. You know, I called the Chevron one last year. They laid off 9,000 this year, right? Uh it's still messy out there. Um the Microsoft stuff I've been talking about since I think last December. And you know, you can see it. It was all there. It's all there in the data. Just nobody wants to talk about it or they just think you're crazy cuz I put it out there and they're just like, "Yeah, that's not happening." I'm just like, >> well, actually, as an investment analyst that covers publicly traded companies now for over a decade, I could tell you, Amanda, and I'm sure you're aware of this, that normally when a lot of these companies announce that they're firing a lot, sometimes the stock price will actually the the investors will like it. Be like, "Okay, the management is focusing on cutting costs." So even though it hurts like the real economy, it hurts, you know, someone who is making a high paying job, they're probably not going to be able to get, at least for a while, the same highpaying job or if they can ever get it, but the investors, the the stock price normally is not upset with um management, you know, cutting costs and firing a bunch of people. >> Exactly. You know, and that's that's what my clients love. They're just like, "Okay, no matter what their game is, you know, what are what are they doing?" Um you know, I don't provide them complete advice on it. I go, "Here's the report. Here's what's happening. Go do you." And you know, and yeah, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. And you know, it just depends. Every company is different. And you know, and it's who's managing the company, what board is behind it, what activist is behind it. Um, you know, and and the really savvy investors know their stuff. They just want this in, you know, this integral data that can get really granular and, you know, and that's what I focus on. So for artificial intelligence software, a lot of these companies, whether it's Fortune 500 companies that are not like big tech companies like Microsoft, they're still spending a lot on artificial intelligence software. There's the headline articles. And you posted a study from Stanford University saying there's going to be a lot of job losses. Which industries? Would you say that uh as of now, at least for the foreseeable future, that artificial intelligence, software, robotics, automation will not uh it will not be a net creator of jobs? >> You know, I think AI is an interesting one. A lot of companies, especially the big tech ones, are are using AI. Um, they're using it as an excuse. It's not what I'm seeing fully. Um, and also I'm also seeing companies that are not talking about AI like FedEx for example, and they just laid off people. Um, you know, today, in fact, they just mentioned that today. You know, they're when you look at the workforce data, they are focusing on AI heavily. So, you know, you do have to look at all the different areas and and the classifications and what does AI mean? You know, especially when you're looking at like the press releases and just their spokespeople talking that everybody uses AI and it I I actually hate the word AI, which is really funny. Um, I love the technology. I think it's incredible. Um, you know, but it's kind of like going, "Hey, I use internet, you know, to me it's it's I have electricity. I have I have internet. I have AI." Okay, cool. Okay. You're building a new technology. you're restructuring something else to do cooler things with your programs, whatever. The a the phrase AI is weird, but so it really just depends on how companies are utilizing it and what it actually means, you know, to say, "Oh, we're going to cut back on, you know, this team or or reduce this org because we're focusing on AI." What does that mean? What does that mean? And, you know, companies are, you know, they're not transparent enough to to really go into all of that. So, it leaves everybody just sitting there going, "What are they actually doing?" And that's that's what I love digging into all this stuff because you can really find out a lot more details when you start seeing everything. And that's where you can start seeing what their future is. You know, companies companies are not making decisions last week to fire people. They're not making decisions today to go, "Oh, this is what we're going to do uh you know, next month." They're they're they're years out. They're 18 plus months out at least. So, you know, to look at what AI is doing for jobs, for hiring, for things like that, it's it's a word I want you to ignore. Forget the forget the phrase AI. Look at what they're actually doing and see, you know, where you can plug in on getting the data for all of that. >> Well, the data centers are still getting built. A lot of them haven't even been built yet. So, they just committed the capital expenditure, the billions of dollars to starting to build out these next generation data centers. But what I've seen is a lot of there's a ton of these stories. A lot of these uh college graduates that graduated at the top of their class, maybe they got a uh full-time, not a full-time, but a paid internship at the top of their class for computer programming, they didn't get offered a full-time job by these tech companies that they would have gotten in the past. So, it looks to me like the old, you know, learn to code, people should learn to code, people are going to get a six-figure job for computer programming. That looks like an industry that uh that six figure job people can't count on that. That is true, you know, and and and I just want to take a minute to just like um rant just a minute about all this. And everybody says, "Oh, don't learn to code." Well, you know, that doesn't mean don't go into tech, right? That doesn't mean not look at what's in the future. What other areas are there? Because somebody's building AI. AI is not building AI. Humans are still building it. So, you know, um I I hate seeing the argument. it just, you know, and also I hate seeing the argument of like, oh, don't learn to code anymore because this is happening. Go learn a trade. Well, you know what? AI is jumping into that one, too. At the end of the day, we still have to understand tech and and again, this kind of brings it down to the AI and and and coding and all the phrases people use and and they just interject things and, you know, so yeah, no, technology is still really really really important. Um, somebody's going to run those data centers, somebody's going to build the AI, somebody has to build that next technology. let it be you, you know, and I say that to anybody that's looking for a job right now that's that's in technology, any of the the grad students, know this is good. Just know what's going on and and really like chase it. >> Well, it looks like AI is causing deflation. So, the software is improving, the quality is improving, the costs are falling, especially for artificial intelligence video. So, if you're a business in another industry, and you mentioned FedEx, but I mean there's a ton of other businesses in other industries that can take that software and let's say a database or find like big data analytics or a legal business, they can adopt that software learning language model or something smaller and more customized from an open- source um artificial intelligence software learning language model, then that would benefit them. That would allow them to cut their costs, uh their overhead, maybe increase profits and profit margins. So, I could see it like over the future as more businesses adapt to it, it'll be more efficient, but right now it looks like it's going to cause a lot of job losses for those six figure white collar jobs that people weren't expecting. >> That is very true. Yeah. You know, we we are going to see we're going to see a lot of eb and flow with all of this right now. And we already have, you know, clarn something that I've looked into. You know, they were like, "Oh, hey, we don't need to hire people. We have AI." You know, and then they went, "Oh, wait. We need to hire people because people don't like talking to, you know, bots for customer support." Hi. I could have told them that. Um, and I wouldn't have charged them as much as McKenzie, but you know, it's like it's it's going to be interesting to watch how companies um, you know, whether they're big corporates or they're smaller companies utilize AI to grow, to evolve in how they realize, oh, this isn't working. We need to step back and now they hire more humans again. And I think for the next, you know, 5 10 years, we are going to see that. It's it's there's going to be a lot of changes. Right now we're in the big slump where a lot of people got laid off because AI is the cool shiny thing that everybody's chasing right now. And um you know and and companies are going after that technology. It's a race. It's a race right now. And um I I really feel like we're just creating a racing dynamic. Um you know all the all the all the tech companies and you know good or bad is what it is. You know you know companies are are scaling margins instead of teams right now. That's the name of the game. >> And those customer service bots you talked about. I mean, I've read articles where people have figured out how to game them, how to trick them into getting like free vacations and stuff like that. So, there's a lot of bugs in that thing. There's still bugs in chat GPT. I mean, I I do like um economic cartoons memes with it. There's still enormous amount of bugs. Some of the images take me over 24 hours, the two or three days to work out. So, there's still a lot of bugs that need to be worked out. Now, in in terms of job losses, the government I don't think the US federal government here in Washington DC, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Trump just replaced the head of the BLS and said he uh it was a agency, it was a political appointee from the last administration. Do you see signs that we're already in a recession? And do you think the government will actually admit we're in a recession? >> Never. They'll never admit that. Um, you know, and I I don't think any any president wants to admit that whether they just came in or it's their fault or whoever. You know, this is something that's been coming for a while. Um, we're kind of in a perfect storm right now. Um, with regards to like, you know, the BLS and if we're in a recession, we know what the jobs look like. And, you know, I'm not an economic expert uh with all of this, but you know, dealing with what I deal with on the job side. Yeah. Have we been in a recession? Yeah. I'd say probably since May, April, May of 2024. And you know, are they going to call it? I I seriously doubt it. I seriously doubt it. But we have constantly seen jobs decrease and and labor participation is decreasing. And we have a lot of issues going on right now with regards to this. And and it it really just kind of blows my mind sometimes to see, you know, any any party either side right now talking about how great and how strong the labor market is. I'm like, "Hi, I can show you some workforce data that suggests otherwise. Let me introduce you to all these people that don't have jobs that haven't had jobs for years." So, you know, the BLS thing, you know, claiming it was rigged data, whatever. You know, if there was incompetence, I totally understand the firing. But if it was just due to the really bad way we survey to get unemployment data and things like that then you know fair you know that that's just a really bad method and you know I don't know the full methods they use the full modeling they use but it's not accurate I don't believe it's been accurate probably for the last 20 plus years to be honest um you know but what's happening today now we see this now we have media talking about it now we have people that are been out of work for so long realizing wait a minute that's that's not that's not it when when you have this many people especially on X the community on X you know that many people just going no this is my story this is my story it's always the same then you know it's worse off so you know take the BLS numbers take unemployment numbers if you want to and and and make that your you know baseline of what's happening and just know that it's probably worse >> since you track um a lot of consumer industries a lot of different industries source data and intelligence are There are industries that are actually hiring many many thousands of jobs like some of the jobs data claim >> many many thousands absolutely not um Accenture maybe um you know no not in the thousands um not anymore that just doesn't happen you know you see and I think a lot of people actually believe that corporations are hiring thousands like every day you know we see all these job listings out there right so they're just like well assuming oh they're hiring you know, Apple has 600 plus, you know, jobs available on their career sites. That's not necessarily all for the US, not necessarily all for one industry, but I think just mentally that's what we we see that number which like, oh, wow, they're massively hiring. This is great. And, you know, companies don't massively hire anymore. Um, it's been a long time since they did. And and and really, I don't think it was ever that crazy on numbers except when they were like massively growing like when Nvidia grew a couple years ago. that was that was a big growth pattern. Um it wasn't all in the US either. Um you know, so by looking at all the different data and between the different companies and everything like that, as I said, you know, you really have to kind of look at it from a company standpoint on who's hiring and who's hiring the most. And you know, I would say right now the the biggest churn is either in tech or finance. That's what I'm still seeing. And that's been the case for the last several years anyway, at least since the pandemic. um we're always going to see a turn in finance as well. So you probably know that uh you know with your background as well just kind of what goes on with it all but um interesting things just happening behind the scenes with it all >> and then you have a lot of firings or stopping drilling spending capital for the oil and natural gas companies. You mentioned Chevron. So a lot of the larger companies that have done a lot of acquisitions like Exxon Mobile or Chevron, normally what happens when these companies do a large acquisition, they start firing because there's redundancies. There's two accounting departments after the huge merger. They don't need two accounting departments. So um the average person isn't aware of this but when the the industry is not spending capital expenditure say for drilling if the oil prices are low or stuck in a trading range and uh there's just not the economic incentive for the oil companies and to spend a lot of capital for drilling and the drilling normally is what creates more jobs. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, there's a lot going on with oil and gas right now as you mentioned. Um, you know, the Chevron thing was a big one and that really kind of started the kickoff honestly for 2025 and how bad it is. I mean, you know, I I I don't remember if it was December or January. I finally, you know, modeled out the numbers and I said it's probably going to be close to 40 to 50,000 layoffs within oil and gas and like, you know, their adjacent industries um that it would touch on. And I think we're pretty close to that number. We've got Hallebertton and Kico Phillips coming up. Um, I actually just spoke to somebody that's a consultant at Hallebertton the other day and they were just like, "How do you have your data so accurate?" Like, "How do you know that? Do you work for us?" I'm like, "No." Um, you know, so there's a lot of things happening with it all. And and like I said, you know, the adjacent industries and and and all of the uh side services, nobody thinks about that, you know, when when you're talking about all the oh, there's 9,000 people getting laid off from Chevron. Well, look at all the side services that are also going to get hit. and and that's that's the true impact of what a layoff actually does, >> especially if they don't spend the capital expenditure on maintaining the oil production or drilling trying to grow production. So, if they cut that budget enormously, I mean, that's directly into into the amount of jobs and uh because there's just not going to be as many drill rigs and as many humans needed to drive the trucks or set up oil pipelines, all the different oil service jobs that you mentioned. Now, you talked about applying to jobs, artificial intelligence, and you've talked about this cuz you have an HR background. is artificial intelligence like and these bot programs that people can program is it really screwing up like the job market and applying to jobs right now? >> Uh yeah. Uh quick thing I I don't actually don't have a background in HR. I'm not a fan of HR to be honest. Um but um what is going on with uh AI is basically you know everybody's doing these AI resumes. Companies have all of these ATS systems and they're you know and they're everything's all about agentic AI. If you go to like HR conferences, which I have been, that they just talk about it like it's like God. It's amazing. It's it's actually just like I just sit there and listening to the panels going, "Oh my gosh." But, you know, we have all these issues that are going on. So, you're literally going you're you're any job seeker is literally fighting AI versus AI to get a job and they're wondering what's going on and companies are wondering why they can't find qualified hires. It's just all messed up. And and to watch it happening and to see these companies promoting this, oh, apply like this. And and to have companies, you know, just say, "Oh, no. This is how we're going to deal with their their resumes, even if they're AI résumés." Just to watch it all is it's actually just insane. And it just makes you just go, "Can we just stop, throw it all out, hit reset, and start again?" And you know, it's almost to the point where, you know, you want to just go, can we just can we just go back to the days where you walked in and handed somebody a resume and shook their hand and you had to interview? You know, it just seems to make things so much easier. It's it's wild. Yeah. It sounds like like a ton of spam. I mean, I think you were talking about some stories on LinkedIn where like someone posted an HR professional that that sent you some information, sent you something that they posted a job res job posting on LinkedIn and like in 24 48 hours there was tens of thousands of job applications, but they're all like spam applications that had nothing to do with the job. They got a notification from LinkedIn saying they couldn't look at any more of the résumés uh or they were going to have to get charged. So, the whole thing was just like big and bloated and wasteful from all the uh spam rums. So someone who actually would have qualified for the job wouldn't have even been able to apply it and no human being was even going to be able to read their resume from what it sounds like. >> Yeah, you're invisible when this is happening. And you know, LinkedIn, Indeed, and and any of any of the other, you know, AI systems or you know, well, just programs and companies that are out there where you can just apply online. You know, it's about making money. That's how they make money. They charge for, you know, for you listing a job, right? And you know, it's it's crazy to see how much money actually companies spend on on job boards. Um, you know, at the end of the day and and you know, and for all the people that are just like, oh, you know, they're just doing this to to, you know, take my my data and and have it and and you know, and stuff like that. I don't think so. I don't believe it's at that level. But, you know, it's it is frustrating to watch companies waste money. Unknowingly, many of times when I've spoken to some of some of my past clients, you know, they didn't realize what was actually going on in HR. They didn't even realize their own numbers uh of headcount and the way functions looked, you know, for so for when people like me go through it, you know, and go, "This is actually what's happening." You know, company CEOs were just like, "I'm sorry, what?" you know, and so when you when you dive into all of that and and this is probably a little bit of my pet peeve with HR, you know, they're not all business leaders. I know a lot of them really want to sit at the table. You know, this whole CHRO thing and CPOS, whatever, they want to sit at the table, but they're just most of them, I will say that most of them are just don't have that kind of background to run a corporation. And you do have to be able to run both sides. And and I believe you know overall just from my experience and and you know and this is you know 15 20 years of actually dealing with executives on their career path which was kind of what got me into what I do now. You know seeing what goes on behind the scenes they have no idea what's going on in HR and it there's there's no talking channel. So companies just spend they spend they spend they spend they spend on jobs and they bring in people. It's not right and the churn is increasing. It's been increasing over the last several years and nothing is getting addressed for that and it makes you kind of some days I I sit there number one some days I'm angry some days I'm kind of conspiracy you know just going maybe they don't want anybody maybe they have another plan you know so they don't need humans you know I I have my moments especially when I'm going through different data points and stuff but um I don't know it's just it there's so much disconnect in in corporations these days and you know and I' I've looked at a lot of corporations over the years and just read a lot of the history of it and I don't know what happened and and I'm actually working on something to try to figure that out like where did it all break >> you know >> well they they always want to cut costs right so they got rid of the defined benefit uh retirement plans the days of someone you know working for one company and the company being loyal to them and them uh getting taken care of in retirement after they worked there 20 30 40 years those days are over um the trend that's been going on Amanda for a very very long time is with these HBN1s offshoring because what the the uh employment costs the uh salaries are what at least 30% less or something like that. So all whether it's Elon Musk or Vivec Ramosari or a lot of these other tech guys are all pro immigration but mostly what because they want cheaper um they want cheaper salaried employees. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. you know, the the whole H-1B thing is, you know, looking into all the data and I just finished a workforce series on my Substack for all of this, but you know, and looked at the MAG 7 specifically, the H-1B visas is a big distraction. Honestly, it's a distraction on what's happening with offshoring and nearshoring overall with companies. It is, and this is kind of where, you know, I kind of developed the whole phrase of this is a corporate revolution. You know, it's not the people rising up at this point. It's the corporates rising up and revoling. And you know, and it's not to give them street cred or make them noble uh for what they're doing. But we are seeing this this big mass restructuring, mass automating, mass offshoring on a scale that is reshaping society. And you know, it's a bit terrifying to to look at. And and again, this kind of ties back into what job seekers are feeling and why I don't believe the unemployment rate is what it what the BLS says it is, you know, and I don't think many people do, but you know, we we have so many compounding layers to add to everything that that's I that's what just boggles my mind some days. And I think, you know, everybody feels what they feel in their own corner of the world and depending on what industry they're in and and they see all these things, but you know, we can't all be crazy, right? >> Well, if if you use the old data from the 1980s and 1990 survey data, John Williams of Shadow government statistics, he asked it closer to around 30%. So, the government stops counting people who stopped applying to jobs what after 12 months or something like that. They're not even counted. So, I guess it depends on the industry, but uh overall, I mean, I don't see a lot of headlines, Amanda, that are saying for a lot of companies, a lot of industries saying we're hire we're looking to hire thousands upon thousands of people. I mean, it's just pretty rare. >> Yeah, it doesn't exist anymore. And yeah, the average uh unemployment uh time period right now is 24 weeks. At 27 weeks, you're not counted in the data anymore. You're long-term unemployed. So, that's and that's been increasing. So like you know and and and well I guess the the unemployment uh time period has been uninccreasing. Um and then we're also seeing just the unemployment rate. So when when you fall off you're not counted anymore. You know if you're if you're driving Uber you're not counted anymore. You know it's really frustrating. So yeah I I don't really look at much of the statistics for that. Um just it's not been something I've needed to do with what I work on. But I you know is it 20 30%? I wouldn't doubt it some days, you know, and and definitely heavier in certain industries, certain regions and things like that. And I do believe it's going to increase. Whatever the unemployment rate does happen to be, we are going to see it increase because at least for the US, for us American workers, because we are seeing so much offshoring happening right now. This is why we're not finding jobs. I straight up looking at the numbers, I'm blown away. And I also think that government economic data doesn't count underemployed because I know a lot of people in the metro area here and I have friends in New York City area and others who are working two or three part-time jobs trying to put make a living together to begin. >> Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. >> So, so for your company, you cover the consumer. You track the consumer and consumer spending. Are we seeing recession or are we seeing only people that are benefiting what from higher asset prices, stock prices, crypto? What are they spending on? And um what what is a consumer cutting back on based on uh uh your data and intelligence? >> They spend on Door Dash. Um you know, I actually um so my company is Adoptic, but I also advise um different startups and and businesses and have done for the last 20 years and I'm currently since 2018 um I've been advising a consumer credit company. And so I get to see all the data and I I originally started in there just you know to kind of help them deal with people um and what's going on and and how to you know kind of more of the customer service side but you know in that I've learned all the stuff and seen what's going on. So for the past several years people are just spending the consu the amount of consumer debt is insane. And you know what I would say you know we are seeing uh heavy revolving uh credit accounts which are all your credit cards your store cards they were massive right after the pandemic massive massive massive and they just imploded within a year like people were just overextended and not paying because that's pretty much where we can tie up where layoffs really started ramping up especially because you know when you're talking like you know late 2022 early 2020 23 when all of the overhiring that happened during the pandemic really started taking place. Right. So then everybody got laid off. Nobody's paying their bills anymore. >> Yeah. That was pre AAI. So they were just like, "Oh, we're going to we're going to reopen the economy." We didn't know what AI was per se yet because like 2022 2023 was when it really started coming on the scene with the share price in Nvidia. So that was like the transition from reopening the economy post pandemic to AI. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, overall the consumer uh you know, from what we're seeing and and what we're seeing today still, they just absolutely disregarded their credit and they're just like, "It'll get better. I'll find a job." Well, here we are. You know, mid 2025, I mean, a lot of people are still struggling to find jobs. I mean, I speak to people that have been out of work for over a year. And it's not that they're not qualified. I've I've spoken to some of the most talented people I have ever spoken to, and they're struggling to find jobs. And you know it can be due to just applying wrong industries AI whatever you want to name it you know companies offshoring it doesn't matter um the situation still exists so you know it's it's interesting to watch you know we are seeing bankruptcies increase um I just heard from um my friend Lakshmi at uh Unicus Research she actually just mentioned today that more people are filing 13 over seven which is wild you know is it just due to how much debt you're in or the fact that you need to keep your house and your car and everything like Yeah. I don't I don't know what all the breakdown is of it, but um >> is that a type of bankruptcy filing that so it's not chapter 11 then? It's chapter you said 13. >> 13. Yeah. And you know companies and people are filing bankruptcy more often these days and it's just I don't know it's just um it's weird to watch from the credit from the credit side you know especially we had student loans hit uh you know kind of at the beginning of the summer really and people's scores dropped anywhere from you know 80 to 170 points. Actually, I think the highest one I ever saw was 182. And I actually saw this on the on on somebody's like credit file. And you know, the other day I actually just saw one and they got hit like 165 points. And you know, it's cuz it's still happening. And and I think that's that's the thing people aren't going to realize, especially when you're dealing with consumer debt and and student loans and things like that. Well, even though you were 90 days beforehand and they finally put it on credit reports, well, if you get to that point now, whenever that happens, it's going to fall into your credit reports. We're just going to keep having people added and added and added that are all in delinquency going into default. It's just going to keep getting added to credit files. So, it's credit files as a whole are just going to get worse and worse and worse because we have a lot of people, millions that are uh, you know, delinquent with their student loans. when you have all of these people and you you have to look at this and and I'm going to bring this back into jobs. You know, if you have a layoff and maybe you know after the pandemic or during the pandemic you bought a house because we could back then, right? A lot easier, right? >> Well, interest rates were were cheap temporarily. >> Yeah. If you bought a house cuz you had deferred student loan payments so you could make your payments and now you don't. Well, your payment is now due. You now have to pay student loans. Well, do you pay your mortgage? do you pay that? You know, for those that are going to get wage garnished with all of this, what does that do for their housing situation if they did buy a home? You know, there's all these issues. And if you do get laid off, you're you're lucky if you're at 6 months before you find a new job. And you know, and I think there's different things like with the one big beautiful bill that went on um that says you can't defer uh more than like two times in like 9 months or something like that. I can't remember all the details, but there's there's issues that are going to keep arising with all of this. And this is and like I said, this is millions of people. This is not just a small thing. And you know, it's it's going to be interesting to watch over the next like 18 months. I think I I don't think we're we're we're not even at the beginning of seeing what's going on with consumer credit and debt and things like that. >> Well, it's distorted. So, if you didn't use a lot of debt, so if you benefited from the asset price inflation the last 10 or 15 years and you didn't have a lot of credit card debt or student loan debt or huge mortgage debt, you're fine. It's the people that didn't have high income or just lost their job and then they had all that debt that you said that are going to be like maybe they were um uh working class or middle class. They didn't have a lot of discretionary income. they were barely making ends meet or now that the interest rates are higher on a mortgage because there was a good amount of people with adjustable mortgage and now you said they were counting maybe they were counting on a student loan debt bailout and now there's no student loan debt out now they have to make the payments too. Now they're basically what are they going to have to sell probably sell their house or their condo? They're going to have to try to liquidate it quickly for some cash maybe. >> Yeah. Yeah. There's there's big issues of foot, you know, and speaking to a couple uh you know, uh very smart people in housing. Uh that that that's their thing, you know. Yeah. Looking at what's happening over the next couple months, they're really worried about, you know, the end of the year for housing. You know, plus you have that whole FHA thing uh going on and you know, there's there's a lot of problems a foot and you know, and and I say this to a lot of people, you know, my thing is jobs. My thing is is the workforce, but you know, I am I am a part of some of the other areas, you know, a little bit in housing, uh a little bit in credit, um a little bit in auto, uh you know, so looking at all of those, when you layer all of these issues that we have from consumer debt to housing to layoffs and the length of time that you're being laid off, the amount of money, the salary, the wage compression that goes on, and you layer all of these things together, peel it, it's like an onion, and you are going to start crying. This is going to this is a problem. There are so many layers that we have to just keep peeling open. It is bad. It is bad news. And like I said, I we're just at the beginning of it all. Uh honestly, and um you know, it's not to say that it's necessarily going to get way worse. Let's fingers crossed, right? Um but I do believe there's going to be a lot of people that are going to have a really tough time. Now conversely uh you know you mentioned people with you know not necessarily the middle class or the lower classes but those with assets you know we are seeing that side as well do just fine you know people that are that were making you know the three four $500,000 uh you know uh salaries you know plus bonuses and all that kind of stuff you know dealing with them as well they're like I can ride this out so there is going to be a a vast change in in how split of a society we become. Um just just seeing that just seeing that from people just >> so more wealth disparity more more distortions. If if I could summarize what you said over the last couple minutes it sounds like a lot of consumers they just don't have the discretionary income. The real economy is not creating a lot of new net highpaying jobs of six figure or more or more jobs. Right now the a lot of these companies are adapting to artificial intelligence software. The consumer in certain industries cutting back. I think Chipotle actually just shocked a lot of people because they've raised prices what with a lot of their a lot of their food the average check size was way over $20 in a lot of areas and they said that their their customer was cutting back on ordering at Chipotle. So you've seen a lot of examples of some of these consumer businesses and then I think the homebuilders just said that a lot of the new home sales and they were subsidizing the mortgages to get new home sales. They said they're not even selling a lot of the new homes that they're building. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot there's a lot going on. And you know, it it it all comes back to jobs. It all comes back to jobs. And you know, and that's, you know, when I when I start talking to people, you know, they're just like, well, it's just a it's just jobs. You just you just deal with layoffs. No, I don't. You know, because if you don't have a job, the economy doesn't run, right? >> Yeah. Consumer can't spend. Can't go out can't go on vacation. Can't go to Las Vegas. So, I I know you you're what? You're you're not far from Las Vegas. >> I am in Las Vegas. Yes. Yes. >> Yeah. So, like the the stories coming out of Las Vegas are crazy. I mean, I have some friends who lived there. I used to when I lived in Southern California, I used to go there like once a month. That was many, many years ago. But I mean, like, I remember when my grandparents used to go there all the time and there was budgets on the Las Vegas uh there was like um good value on the Las Vegas strip. You could eat a dinner buffet for like 20 bucks at MGM Grand. That was like 2530 years ago. I mean, it's turned into like what fivestar Michelin restaurants $90 for for a mediocre steak. Like, it's just gotten ridiculous. >> It's it's all mediocre. Most most of the restaurants are mediocre. you know, I only moved here um I've just been here just coming up two years now. Um so I got here when it got really fun, right? Um but you know, it's not as bad as the media portrays it. Yes, there's pockets of problems, but what I find interesting about Las Vegas, so most everybody thinks about Las Vegas is it's just a strip. And yes, of course, it's tourism, right? We we all come here for the strip and for the lights and for the shows and and for all the fun stuff and and our mediocre stakes, but you know there it's interesting because Las Vegas as a whole doesn't have a lot of really big industries here. They don't have a lot of the big corporations here, whether it's warehousing or or even just, you know, white collar jobs. It's it's that's not the main thing here. And I know they're trying to be a big tech hub here. Um I work with a lot of the startups here on all of that. Um, you know, of course, obviously it's hospitality, but because Las Vegas is not a big corporate hub at, you know, compared to like, you know, bigger, you know, other other cities, Austin and things like that. Um, the local economy is not feeling it. You can go out to any of the satellite casinos that are not on the strip. Um, they're packed. They're always busy. They're always busy. So, it hasn't touched the locals in Las Vegas yet. Now once the strip closes down that will obviously well not close it's not going to close down but I'm not even sure why I said that but but once it starts closing down a little bit more because we do we are seeing layoffs but you know once it is closing in more I think it's a better phrase you know we're going to see less and less hospitality workers here and that tends to be the lower mid mid-level workers overall. Well between that and housing and things like that that's where the problem lies. So, as a whole, Las Vegas isn't doing that bad. Uh, you know, tourism's down, things like that. Whatever. Whatever. A lot of it's come back coming back to consumer debt at the end of the day. I know a lot of people want to say it's tariffs and travel and Trump and things like that. I don't believe it's just that. Not from what I can see, it is just straight consumer debt. And >> if if there's a deal on travel, I mean, people are still looking. They're just not looking in Las Vegas. So, they're looking in other areas. Yeah. >> Yeah. It's expensive. It's pricey. I mean, I I'm one of those weird people, you know, my husband and I actually moved here by choice. Uh we could live anywhere we want, but we were like, we have a few more years left in the United States. Where do we want to live? And and we were like, well, when we traveled for years, pre- pandemic, we always stopped in Las Vegas. We're like, hey, that's fun. I love entertainment, night life, and things like that. That's why we came here, for that fun side of things. So, you know, I'm I'm the I'm the one that I'm the local that does the touristy things. So, I'm at the strip a lot. So, I do see it. So, yes, some casinos are struggling and and some are doing fine. You go into the wind, the Bellagio, things like that. They're doing great. They're doing great. You know, restaurants are still busy. Um, you know, we see like all these like different like influencers that post these like dead casinos. I'm like, "Yeah, if you go at like 3:00 a.m., you know, like when I come out of a club at 3 a.m., it's pretty quiet." >> The casinos that are struggling, they'll either shut them down or renovate them. They'll demolish them. adapt cuz the uh Las Vegas strip goes through boom and bus cycles. I mean most of the developers like win and those guys Sheldon Aden I mean they've gone bankrupt. So they've had to deal with boom and bus cycles. I mean there's different consumer preferences that have changed on the Las Vegas strip. Like 25 years ago the Las Vegas strip was value. My grandparents wanted to go there all the time for good food at a reasonable price and shows. I mean those days are over for the value side on the Las Vegas strip. >> Yeah. The biggest thing I think with the Las Vegas strip, and this is just me seeing this kind of as an outsider, just somebody that used to travel through and now I live here, it costs a lot just to go there just to have the benefit of going to buy that mediocre steak. You you're paying $40 plus valet, right? You're paying, you know, 20 to $30 to self park. So, you might as well valet at that point, you know, if you're going to go spend $80, $90 on a steak, valet. um you know, help the help the local economy and the people there, you know, but it's like it's so expensive just to get there, just to for the benefit of gambling or doing a show or something like that. That's the that's the crazy part. And I don't know why, but it it just to me it feels like Las Vegas has shot themselves in the foot with that one, you know, and you see different different places. I think Resorts World just had like free parking for locals for the summer or something. And >> they they'll adapt over the next couple years, Amanda, to the consumer not spending at those levels. So they'll start remodeling parts of the casinos. They'll knock down the old ones that used to be new 10, 20, 30 years ago. So you'll see that it'll be a boom and bust cycle. It will it will not happen over the next like 6 months or anything. It will be over the next like 5 years. >> Definitely not. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, now they're all just bickering about are we having the A stadium built or not. So it's a it's a very unique town. I will say I've lived all over the US and this is a really really unique area. Definitely. >> So I So I have one more question. I've kept you for for almost an hour. I actually enjoyed a lot. So, we'll definitely have you back on. I'm sure you're going to get offered to go on a lot of different financial podcasts cuz a lot of the larger YouTube channels listen to financial YouTube listen to my my interviews. As we wrap up here, maybe tips for my listeners out there who are looking to get their resume read by a human where it's not blocked by spam or artificial intelligence software and screened out. What What should they start doing to maybe uh differentiate themselves if they just lost their job? Maybe they someone uh cuz I do have a lot of tech people who listen to these podcasts at Microsoft and Google. They just they just lost their six figure computer programming job that they had for 10 or 15 years. How should they adapt and potentially find another uh decent highpaying job again? >> Yeah. First off, know that you're not alone. You know, I everybody knows that all the layoffs are happening, but a lot of people are in the same boat right now. You know, my focus when I used to work on like career path was, you know, more in the tech side, a lot of oil and things like that. So tech is unique. you have to and and regardless of what industry you are in and this is going to be very generic advice overall um but tech people really need to listen to this one because you you will stand out very differently you have to number one don't use AI resume writers don't use any of those automated systems online and honestly you know it's it's funny because I used to say you know like sub 100 jobs use LinkedIn or Indeed now I'm not even going to recommend those and it's not that you know you and go search the job boards to go see what's out there to give you ideas. But these days, regardless of what salary you're looking for, you know, if you're just looking for just something local like working at a grocery store, something that obviously that's not going to work. But if you are looking for a salaried role, you really need to focus on the companies that are out there. What are they doing today? What are they doing in the future? And you know, again, this is this is looking and really thinking outside the box, looking at their press releases, looking at their earnings, looking at all the little details of what they do and and and diving into, you know, where they are actually going as a company. Think about who you know, you know, and it's not that you need to talk to people to, you know, everybody says network and and I don't I don't want you to necessarily network, which is kind of backwards. I understand everybody on LinkedIn, all the all the gurus on LinkedIn are just like, "Oh, network, network." No, no, no. They're recruiters are annoy they're annoyed by having all of that. But what you should do when you are looking for a job or even when you have a job specifically. Start finding out you know what companies are needing. Start meeting recruiters at that point. Start talking to HR at that point. Start seeing what they might need. Let them know who you are because one day they might go, "Hey, we actually have this painoint. You said you could solve this stuff before. I remember you." So that's what you really need to do. you need to start standing out differently to solve company's pain points because at the end of the day and nobody just wants you to do your job the job description, you know, and I do see that especially with like the AI resumes and just ones that are written hard. I get it. Rums are hard to write. It's like legal ease for the the career world. I've done over 25,000 of them. And you know, it is it is very very different. But today's world is not just about I can do these requirements. It's about you have this problem as a company or you guys are aiming for this thing. I can help you. I've done this before. And you know, and it's harder it's harder to think outside the box like that. I'm not going to lie. But you know, the more people you can talk to, um, you know, reaching out to different people, just talk to your, you know, past colleagues where they landed, you know, what companies are they working at or what people do they know and and see what's going on in the company. You don't necessarily have to ask for referrals, you know, and uh I know a lot of people in tech do that, but you don't have to do that. You just have to go, "Hey, who should I talk to here? Do you like it? What's going on?" You know, where where are the problems that you see? So, you actually know what you're getting into. A lot of people, you know, apply to companies. And I see this all too often. People will apply to a company because they have not done their homework on the company other than reading on the local press release that, you know, a new CEO was was hired, you know, but they don't actually know what's going on in the company. and they basically what happens they'll get a job and 6 8 n months later they're on the layoff list because you know the company was doing layoffs and I see this a lot I see this because this is what I look at and you know the last 5 10 years I've been monitoring this for my clients to just say hey this is actually what's happening so I know you like this company but no don't do this to yourself you know you don't want to be put in that predicament so the more you know the more you can talk to people and not just send them your resume and not just do the general networking thing like, "Hey, I'm looking for a job. Let me know if you know of anything." Don't do that. Don't be generic. Stand out. You have to be the obvious choice. And I think that's what most people forget. And they they know they are because there's so many talented people out there. I speak to them on a daily basis. There's so many talented people. Be the obvious choice. Yes, you might have that degree, that pedigree, or you've worked at a certain logoed company, but that's not enough these days. Just because you know you can do the job does not mean that you're the obvious choice. And that's what you have to do. You have to stand out as the obvious choice >> and you have to keep learning, constantly learning and adapting. So even if you're a computer programmer, I mean like you probably have to go and get your artificial intelligence certifications which are cheap and almost free from either Google. They have the courses online or Microsoft or Nvidia now. So you can go and learn those and adapt. So if you just lost your computer programming job at one of those tech companies, you can go get your certification, cyber security certification. That makes you um you know, you're learning the new skills. you're uh adapting to where these companies are actually investing in. So, that might be something. I've also heard, you know, you mentioned LinkedIn. I mean, I I've heard LinkedIn's turning into a dating app now, unfortunately. I mean, like there's like people there trying to trying to get some action on there. They're not necessarily looking for a job anymore because they're deleting the dating apps because the dating apps are cluttered with bots and all this spam and all this stuff, too. And now they've gone to LinkedIn. So, that's cluttering LinkedIn, too. >> Yeah, it's it's a bit of a mess. You know, it it used to just kind of be like a guru central and now it's just Yeah, it's it feels like Facebook some days, which is not beneficial if you're actually looking for a job. It's jobs have changed and we have to >> LinkedIn is so spammy, too. It feels like someone just copied and pasted and sent like the same email to hundreds if not thousands of people. >> Yeah. And every post is written by AI. You can you can spot it a mile away. It's like, why do I want to read this? You know, you're all the same, you know. Um and uh Yeah. Yeah, I'm not a fan as you can tell. >> So, it sounds like there's not a lot of industries right now that are that are hiring six figure job. There is one, we've discussed this over the last couple weeks since I've gotten to know you a little bit. Um, the commodities. So, not oil and natural gas, but the other commodities. So, that's where the investment capital because you've had high commodity prices. The US is adapting what strategic metals for copper and rare earth elements. So, those but then you need to go and get what? A geology degree. you need to get become a geologist or you need to get into um one of the rare earth professions there that is involved in refining rare earth. So those types of jobs um those actually look good because there's going to be less what trading and free markets there. A lot of these countries like the US and China they're setting up their own domestic supply of key metals. >> Yeah. Yeah. There's a there's a lot in that field. Um and you know I would say any anything within the commodities like that are really good. anything in defense and aerospace. Um, you're strong. You're strong. You know, none of that's going anywhere. Uh, you know, whether it's rare earth or, you know, metals or or or space, it's all there. It ain't going anywhere. >> Well, good point for military and defense spending because what the average person is maybe not thinking about is artificial intelligence software. The more it improves, the more it goes into humanoid robots and drones and things like that. So the more the software improves, the more they're going to invest it and put it into other military uh weapons and upgrades. >> Definitely. Yeah, there's always always industry in that. And you know, gosh, you can even just be like, you know, materials engineer and go into aerospace and defense and things like that. So there's so many things you can do with a lot of different degrees that are out there. You have to think outside the box these days and and really focus on, you know, personally, what do you really like to do and how does that fit a certain industry and then go after those companies that >> I don't know if pursuing your passion is a good long-term financial strategy, Amanda for about >> it's it's not about a passion. It's more about what are you really good at? Um, you know, some people just don't realize that and they just go, well, this is my degree. This is what I have to do. This is what the job description is. And you know, so my first questions and again, this is this is how I've helped so many people over, you know, figure out their career path and just over the years. What is it that you're really good at and what is it that you're really good at that you don't ever want to do again and figure out what those things are? There's going to be common threads and now you need to see where those fit in to go after those certain industries on where their pain points are and go plug in what you are good at. And it's not necessary not necessarily that you should be passionate about it because I don't believe you should have passion about your job. I really just don't. You should go where there's money and where they're hiring. Yes, but you do have to actually like it or you're going to get burned out and you're going to hate it and you're going to be back at square one faster than you can imagine. And we don't want that at all. So, um really look at those things, but really, really, really think outside the box. There's so many avenues that people can go down no matter what industry they have, what degree they have. Um there's so many jobs. You just got to think outside the box. look at adjacent companies as well, adjacent industries, and see where you can fit. >> I I'll add one, especially if you can take this artificial intelligence software, whether it's the regular learning language model or the video stuff from Google V3, and you can help a business in another industry, not computer programming in another industry. You can help them improve their marketing. You can help them uh reduce their overhead. You can improve their profit margins. If you can solve that, you can uh make a career or at least like a decent job for yourself. >> Exactly. Exactly. You've got to think outside the box these days. Companies are not there for you. You got to be out there for yourself. Trust your gut and go after go after what you know. >> So, as we wrap up here, uh please tell my listeners about your newsletter. Don't you have a a free sample for my newsletter? Uh my listeners who want to check it out, you have the first month of the newsletter for free or one one copy of the newsletter. >> Yeah, absolutely. Um they can reach out to me and I can uh get them on there. Uh I have a substack. It's uh insider edge report and you know I basically try to put out about two to four sometimes five pieces a week uh just depending on what's going on and uh you know so that that's a good start and then so you can find that at like I said insidered report.com and then also if you're looking for any kind of workforce intelligence come to the job.com and uh that's where I do all my consulting and things like that and and the straightup straight up reports for investors and companies and uh if you just want to know what's going on and see what I video on a daily basis. Check out my ex at the job check.