Is the pay location dependent or has it just gone way down? That link shows three near me, but only paying a rather paltry $23/hr.

That's not much more than something like Walmart, which is likely a much less strenuous job with way less wear and tear on your vehicle(and body).

Honestly, if I were hit by lack of work, I would see how much runway savings I have and then try to either take some time off, to spend with family, do some low-budget traveling, learn new professional skills I wanted to learn, try to change the niche I work in and/or contribute to some open source project.

The AI bubble being the only thing holding up aggregate economic numbers is widely acknowledged, and this is just one of many manifestations of that.

> intertwined with two wars, one genocide,

There are more than two wars and one genocide happening now, so that's a really weird insertion.

Its what an economic slowdown outside of AI gets us, mostly, but yes, unbridled capitalism (with, among other things, neither unionization in the industry under consideration nor strong public protection of labor rights) magnifies that (it also, to be fair, magnifies the upswing in employment on the upward side of the business cycle, but, it also magnifies the adverse consequences of unemployment on either side.)

Certainly a trailer home in a lot of places but then not clear how easily you'll get that $50K/yr job.

The value of money and especially the dollar is getting printed away to worthlessness.

In any case, my impression is that juniors are being hit the hardest. They're the easiest to offshore and the easiest to justify as being replaceable by AI (regardless of how true that actually is).

Whether this is sustainable remains to be seen, there was a big outsourcing trend back in ~2004 in the tech industry here that ended up being somewhat short-lived as many companies realized those efforts were costing them more than they were saving them beyond the short term. Whether or not this time is different with the added AI component, I have no idea. I wouldn't bet on it in either direction.

Its not great out there for senior developers either, but on the senior side its more of a freeze (try not to lose your job because the next one may be very hard to find) whereas on the junior side its more of a clear contraction (keeping your job will be much harder, finding a new one harder still).

It used to be true, but companies seem deadset on demoralizing their workforce as much as possible.

They've raised prices as much as consumers will bear.

We're getting near the physical limits of how efficient things can get in many sectors.

If P/Es are to remain this high (and they have to for the rich to remain this rich), the profits must continue to grow far in excess of the total economy.

The only orange left to squeeze is labor costs.

One very real factor that actually does act as a gravitational pull for doing layoffs in Oct/Nov Q4 is insurance elections. Waiting until January can create a lot of complicated paperwork and cost more. There is also very much a sense that doing layoffs before the holidays, while giving severance pay, is more humane than waiting, because they can "spend time with family" (real words I've heard stated).