High-income job losses are cooling housing demand

https://jbrec.com/insights/job-growth-housing-demand-metro-analysis-2026/

76•gmays•38m ago

Comments

engineer_22•30m ago

We're in a recession.

pinkmuffinere•27m ago

Someone please tell the stock market, I moved my investments to be more risk averse and it hurts to watch the green line go up.

outside1234•21m ago

The market can stay insane longer than you can stay insolvent.

Also, its possible that the market thinks job losses are good (aka that AI is replacing jobs)

reactordev•18m ago

The brutal truth…

Stocks go up, wages and income go down, things keep on keeping on because AI has quietly replaced you.

jvanderbot•15m ago

First time?

iwontberude•9m ago

Except in reality this isn’t happening outside of press releases. God y’all drank the koolaid.

thatfrenchguy•17m ago

There is generally no point in doing this, keep a constant asset allocation that match your risk appetite, otherwise you're just playing the casino.

anonymars•11m ago

They say time in the market generally beats timing the market

QuercusMax•27m ago

I saw HUGE ramen displays yesterday at Safeway, including some of the less common flavors like blue (Soy Sauce, formerly "Oriental") and yellow (Creamy Chicken).

I can't find the blog post from the last major recession where people were talking about all the crazy flavors you only see when the economy is REAL bad.

bluedino•18m ago

I was always taking noodle bowls to work. Fill with water, microwave, enjoy at my desk. A dollar or two.

Couldn't believe how many people would go to the sushi restaurant at the base of the building and spend $25 on lunch a couple days a week. Yikes.

foogazi•15m ago

> Fill with water, microwave, enjoy at my desk

Getting lunch with coworkers once in a while doesn’t hurt

bluedino•11m ago

Sure. And there's also shared lunchroom areas you can take your own lunch to.

kulahan•13m ago

It's not nearly as filling, but I saw a character on TV smashing up their noodles and pouring in the powder, shaking the bag, and eating them like popcorn. I've become incredibly addicted.

potato3732842•2m ago

Prepare it and eat it per the instructions and it's infinitely more filling.

Also there's fairly wide variance in calorie count brand to brand for the same size square, not sure why.

sph•7m ago

Wheat in a watery soup flavoured with monosodium glutamate isn't very nutritious compared to rice and fresh fish. There's a reason ramen costs a dollar or two compared to sushi.

gruez•4m ago

Are you sure they're not trying to capitalize on the ramen craze from kpop demon hunters?

micromacrofoot•21m ago

objectively we're not yet, but things are certainly weird

mistrial9•17m ago

bifurcation, and more

andrewstuart2•16m ago

Objectively, I'm not sure we can reliably say any longer, given how much pressure has been put on formerly objective reporting agencies to conform to this administration's narrative.

rvz•9m ago

We were already in one following the tech correction since Nov 2021. [0]

The problem here is some waited for too long to be told we are now in a recession, then some politicians tried to redefine it.

But that is nothing compared to what will happen in the next 5 - 10 years. Nothing goes up forever. The only hint is that we need to prepare before 2030.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508238

monkeydust•21m ago

Any evidence if this is global trend in developed countries?

nemomarx•11m ago

All of the examples in the article seem to be the us, so I think they're only looking at local trends.

Are other developed countries firing people in the same way rn?

lapcat•20m ago

It's curious that the article combines education and health care into one category. I suspect that most of the growth is coming from the health care side.

On the other hand, a quick search suggests that the growth in government jobs is mainly in education at the state and local level. Does anyone have further insight into that?

potato3732842•18m ago

The illustration is misleading because it forces things into three buckets, two of which are colored to indicate "not good". But still, that bottom right corner of the graph is telling.

Also pretty disgusting to me that healthcare is "growing faster than normal" across the board. You'd think it'd be "growing the normal rate" at least somewhere. It's not like population is growing faster than normal across the board. Isn't 20% of the GDP enough for an industry that's fundamentally a cost center of society? Wars have been fought over less.

bell-cot•13m ago

Healthcare is a non-negotiable way to extract money from people. And the industry is swimming in opaque complexities, IP, monopolies, monopsonies, and sweetheart regulation. Why the h*ll should they limit themselves to a mere 20%?

bluGill•12m ago

The large baby boomer generation is getting old, and thus their costs will go up just by nature of old people needing more. They are also realizing that health is the largest factor in how long they will live (not to mention that they likely started smoking before people realized how harmful it was - most have long quit but with unknown damage done. There are other choices that they often made that are now questionable)

Which is to say I expect spending to go up just for demographic reasons of large numbers of people starting to care. Don't confuse this for thinking all is well with health care costs.

doctorpangloss•11m ago

What’s the maximum price you’d pay for a cure to a rare, fatal pediatric disease?

Answer this question, and you’re on the journey to the solution to the problem you are talking about. Tell me some BS why the question doesn’t matter or is wrong or whatever, and discover why “Dunning Kruger” is at least part of the answer.

potato3732842•8m ago

>Answer this question, and you’re on the journey to the solution to the problem you are talking about. Tell me some BS why the question doesn’t matter or is wrong or whatever, and discover why “Dunning Kruger” is at least part of the answer.

I posit that the people who hold an ideology, moral compass, world view, or whatever else you want to call it, that permits the question to even be framed in this way are a root problem exacerbating many other problems in society, healthcare likely being one.

I don't know what the "solution" is but the fact that ~1:5 dollars in this country is spent on maintenance of the human body is just wild and likely unsustainable or indicative of some gross error in how we measure such things.

Spivak•6m ago

From experience from my peers getting pregnant it's the cost of a "selective reduction" (which can be 1 to 0). Newly pregnant friends are spending $$$ on tests in utero to weed out children with such things.

trollbridge•5m ago

An aging population combined with people generally being a lot less healthy (eg look at obesity or diabetes rates) means we either let people die off, or else spend more and more on healthcare.

mcdonje•15m ago

But will lower demand coupled with still high interest rates actually lead to reduced housing prices?

etchalon•15m ago

It has in several cities, including Austin, where I live.

ortusdux•10m ago

Zillow publishes some interesting data:

https://www.zillow.com/home-values/10221/austin-tx/

https://www.zillow.com/home-values/102001/united-states/

TrainedMonkey•9m ago

I feel like 50% of that is explained by the luxury housing build out bubble in Austin specifically.

etchalon•3m ago

We just overbuilt everything. Condos, houses, etc. There's a lot of inventory no matter what type of housing you're looking for.

dr_kretyn•13m ago

Talking from the Vancouver perspective where we have a similar situation - yes, house prices are going down. People list houses with the same price as 3-4 years ago but most close below the asking price.

ekjhgkejhgk•8m ago

> But will lower demand coupled with still high interest rates actually lead to reduced housing prices?

One theory says that either lower employement causes lower demand and therefore lower interest rates OR lower employement causes the FED to lower interest rates to stimulate spending, and in EITHER case the response to your premise of "low employement + high interest rates" should be "interest rates will come down", and separately "low employment implies low demand implies house prices will come down".

bluGill•5m ago

Somewhat, but remember that house prices are sticky. If I can't sell my house and get into one with a similar value (both price and features) with near net zero change in my debt and payments I'm likely to stay put. Of course once I decide to move I'll be looking at cheaper and more expensive places, but if I can't break even on a like for like move why would I move? I'll just ride this market out for another 10 years. (note too that my mortgage is less than 3% - one more reason moving anytime soon would be a terrible thing for my life)

If my house is worth less than what I owe then moving (selling short) can make sense.

Houses are not just an investment for most people. There are investment factors, but they are also the place you live. Thus most people cannot just sell or not - they also have to consider where will they live next if they sell. Even if I knew exactly where the bottom would be odds are I'd still not sell because I don't have options to live elsewhere.

toomuchtodo•4m ago

~4M homes transacted in 2025. Price levels will decline over time, it's just who has to sell first. Life/forced sales (divorce, death, relo, downsize for costs, etc) are up first vs irrational sellers pining for look back price levels. Foreclosures are rising (especially in Florida), but not materially imho.

https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/foreclosure-increase-att...

fred_is_fred•3m ago

> If my house is worth less than what I owe then moving (selling short) can make sense.

I believe this varies by state but I thought in some states the lender can come after you for the difference and in others you can just walk away (albeit with a credit ding).

georgeburdell•10m ago

Anecdotally, in my corner of the Silicon Valley, I've been looking to trade up homes from my 7/10 district to a nearby 10/10. Over the last year, I've seen the comparable properties in 10/10's rise about 10%, while my 7/10 has gone down about 5%. Both areas are very short commutes to high tech.

harmmonica•10m ago

A drop in housing prices might be the only silver lining if an actual recession hits (whether the official statistics will actually admit to a recession is debatable of course).

That said, even if housing prices drop materially and eventually bottom it will provide little opportunity for "normal" folks to buy in if they're jobless. Will be interesting to see if Fed interest rate cuts translate to mortgage rate cuts, and whether those rate cuts lessen any price drops.

I've said this before on here, but the historical price-to-income for housing has been something like 4x. Today it's 7x (that is as insane as it sounds). A long way to revert to the mean unless you really think "this time is different."

mcny•9m ago

What I am worried about is won't building new homes slow down to a crawl or stop completely if the r word is confirmed?

jfghi•4m ago

I think with the amount of corporations and existing homeowners buying homes that the demand is strong enough to keep prices high no matter what happens. There are billions of dollars set aside to gobble up homes in the event of a price drop. In my area, 20 percent of homes are owned by investors and realtors delist homes that don’t sell as opposed to drop price.

rockskon•6m ago

It's 7x these days largely due to the 0% interest rate environment we had for so long.

al_borland•5m ago

Housing prices dropping aren’t so good for those who own homes. It is also likely there will be a feeding frenzy of investors snatching up homes. I had a hard time buying a few years ago, because investors kept out-bidding me with all-cash offers. I had to raise my price target to move outside of their impulse buy range, which I was not too happy about.

standardUser•3m ago

Desirable metros seem to have very sticky prices. San Francisco, where I lived for 15 years, turned into a grotesque caricature of what it once was, but prices barely budged (and for most of that transition, they surged wildly). Sure, it's no longer the single most expensive rental market in the country, but it's still one of the highest despite quality of life degrading massively and even a big decline in population.

francisofascii•10m ago

[delayed]

lvl155•6m ago

Boston is seeing some headwind especially from slowdown in biotech, the main driver of growth over the past decade or so. Rents are also down. However, worth noting supply is still constrained especially if you exclude replacement-ready homes.

stego-tech•2m ago

Can confirm via my own experiences. Had a job in a SV firm, and paid just barely enough to try and get on the housing ladder. Four years and a 40-60% price increase later, and I got laid off without managing to successfully buy a home.

Since the layoffs, I’ve taken a sizable paycut (~$75k TC) to make ends meet with whatever I could find, but kept a pulse on the market in case things turned around. Locally, rents have gone down by ~$100-$500 a month (depending on when you renew) with one to two months free rent, while home prices have finally stopped rising. Homes are staying on markets longer, and bidding wars have dried up. I get about one to three price cut messages a day from Redfin, though nothing in my area or price range post salary cut.

Unfortunately, I don’t expect this trend to continue. My landlord just introduced a new RealPage-alike to keep rents high, local developers have put a hold on new housing construction as resources get consumed for AI datacenters, and the same old red tape blocks meaningful progress in addressing availability gaps. The only real bright spot is that renters are pushing for statewide rent caps and controls with better progress than ever before, so there might be some relief in sight next election.

It’s bad out there, ya’ll.

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