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    As Infrastructure Money Lands, the Job Dividends Begin

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    It has never exactly been boom times for the archaeology profession, but this past year comes close — thanks to Congress.Kim Redman runs Alpine Archaeological Consultants, a firm that searches for historically or culturally valuable artifacts in the path of construction — an essential step for federally assisted projects. For decades, she has hired temporary workers (affectionately known as “shovel bums”) to comb the ground.These days, she’s bringing on as many full-timers as she can, as billions of dollars in infrastructure appropriations make their way down through the states.“If you’re going to build a road, we’re at the beginning of the process,” Ms. Redman said. “The opportunities in archaeology are immense right now — everybody’s trying to hire so we can meet the demand.”Archaeologists are on the leading edge of a wave of jobs that will result from $1.2 trillion in direct government spending from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Two subsequent initiatives — $370 billion in incentives and grants for lower-emissions energy projects provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, and $53 billion in subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing funded by the CHIPS Act — are expected to leverage tens of billions more in private capital.An archaeological crew excavating an Ancestral Pueblo pit house in southwestern Colorado in advance of a highway project.Rand Greubel/Alpine Archaeological ConsultantsThe primary purpose of the three laws isn’t to stimulate the economy; they are mainly intended to combat climate change, rebuild infrastructure and reduce dependence on foreign semiconductors. But they will affect the labor market, including a reallocation of workers across sectors.The funding comes as the economy is decelerating, and it may avert a sharper dip in employment brought on by the Federal Reserve’s attempts to contain inflation by raising interest rates. The construction industry, in particular, has been buffeted by a slowdown in new-home sales and stagnant demand for new offices.“By spring or summer, the job market will basically go flat,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. “The infrastructure spending won’t kick in until late 2023, going into 2024. It feels like the handoff here could be reasonably graceful.”Nevertheless, the exact number of jobs produced by the three pieces of legislation is uncertain and may be difficult to notice in the aggregate.The State of Jobs in the United StatesEconomists have been surprised by recent strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.Noncompete Agreements: A sweeping proposal by the Federal Trade Commission would block companies from limiting their employees’ ability to work for a rival.Retirees: About 3.5 million people are missing from the U.S. labor force. A large number of them, roughly two million, have simply retired.Switching Jobs: A hallmark of the pandemic era has been the surge in employee turnover. The wave of job-switching may be taking a toll on productivity.Delivery Workers: Food app services are warning that a proposed wage increase for New York City workers could mean higher delivery costs.The only jobs that are possible to count precisely are those created directly by the federal government. The Office of Personnel Management, which set up a handy filter for jobs associated with the infrastructure law, aims to hire 7,000 people by the end of September.The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, one of the largest chip-makers in the world, is planning to expand and upgrade a factory in Arizona.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesThe actual number, of course, is larger. Dr. Zandi’s analysis of the infrastructure law found that it would add nearly 360,000 jobs by the end of this year, and 660,000 jobs at its peak employment impact at the end of 2025. He does not expect the Inflation Reduction Act to affect employment significantly, given its lower public expenditure.A group at the University of Massachusetts Amherst disagreed, forecasting the Inflation Reduction Act’s impact at 900,000 additional people employed on average each year for a decade. Betony Jones, director of energy jobs at the Department of Energy, thinks the number could be even higher because the bill includes incentives for domestic sourcing of materials that may create more jobs along the supply chain than traditional economic models account for.“It will change those assumptions in significant ways,” Ms. Jones said.But a number of mitigating forces make that number less powerful than it appears.Some of the jobs already exist, for example, since much of the money will go to extend tax credits that would have expired. The estimate includes jobs that are supported by infrastructure workers’ wages, from hairdressers to plumbers.It’s also a gross number, not accounting for the employment that the Inflation Reduction Act could subtract through the taxes it imposes on corporations, or the fossil fuel jobs that might disappear as renewable energy capacity increases. And plenty of the new infrastructure jobs will be filled by people who might otherwise be working in other sectors, especially if they’re better paid.At the same time, inflation has made construction materials more expensive, decreasing the purchasing power of public agencies. For the first portion of money from the infrastructure law, which was allocated to states by a formula in the first half of 2022, that largely meant salvaging large projects already underway that might otherwise have been stymied by rising costs.For all of those reasons, said Alec Phillips, chief political economist for Goldman Sachs, the infusions of cash haven’t increased his payroll employment projections for the coming year.The archaeological crew at a prehistoric campsite in the Colorado Rockies. Archaeologists are on the leading edge of a wave of jobs that will be created from federal infrastructure spending.Rand Greubel/Alpine Archaeological Consultants“This is not happening in a vacuum,” Mr. Phillips said. “Once you go through all those factors, it’s one of those things that wouldn’t influence our employment forecast all that much.”Nonetheless, the industry-level impact will be significant. The nation will need more people working in construction and manufacturing in the next few years — even if they come from other professions or, ideally, the ranks of people who aren’t working.That has given organized labor a rare opportunity to expand. In a policy reversal, the infrastructure law allows federally funded transportation projects to require hiring from the local community, which can aid union organizing. The Biden administration also issued an executive order in early 2022 favoring collective bargaining agreements with unions.The infrastructure law includes $42.5 billion for expanding broadband access — part of about $100 billion provided across several measures — and the agency running the program expects work on the cables and cellphone towers to start in 2024. The Government Accountability Office estimated that 23,000 more people would be needed when deployment peaked. The Communications Workers of America, a union that represents about 130,000 telecommunications workers, said that members had often left for other occupations as industry conditions deteriorated and that many would come back for the right salary and benefits.“There’s a lot of people sitting on the sidelines,” said Nell Geiser, the union’s research director. “They are not willing to take what’s on offer.”It’s clear, however, that new workers will be needed to meet the demand.A piece of an adobe wall from an Ancestral Pueblo pit house that has the 1,200-year-old handprint of a builder.Kristin Braga Wright for The New York TimesA reconstructed pot, found during excavation of an Ancestral Pueblo hamlet in Colorado, being prepared for curation.Kristin Braga Wright for The New York TimesThat’s why unions are gearing up training programs and recruiting apprentices, or even “preapprentices,” some directly out of high school or prison — times when people sometimes struggle to find work.Mike Hellstrom, Eastern regional manager of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, said the union’s apprenticeship applications had been snapped up within minutes of release. His region — New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Puerto Rico — stands to get $45 billion just from the infrastructure law.“It’s going to be a really unique time of our lives of being construction workers and watching this building boom we’re about to come into,” Mr. Hellstrom said.Recognizing the need for new workers, the infrastructure law in particular allows state agencies enormous flexibility in using funds for work force development. So far, they’ve been slow to take advantage of it. One reason: You can train people, but if you’re not able to compensate them competitively because of limits set by the state legislature, they’ll go somewhere else.“I think the biggest challenge for state departments of transportation on the work force side are what wages they’re able to pay,” said Jim Tymon, executive director for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. “That really isn’t tied to the federal dollars as much as it is to the restrictions that each individual state has because of their government employee pay scales.”Partly for that reason, as has long been the case, much of the work will be awarded to construction firms, which have more flexibility to offer higher wages. Their capacity isn’t infinite, however. Already, the wave of impending business has prompted concerns that some projects may not attract enough bids to ensure competition.President Biden was in Kentucky this month to highlight funding for infrastructure projects, including building and rehabilitating bridges.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesThat may not be a problem for huge undertakings, like a $935 million award to rebuild two locks on the upper Ohio River, a project that the Army Corps of Engineers expects to directly support 8,900 jobs. But it can prove more difficult for smaller jurisdictions that may lack the staff to solicit bids.Emily Feenstra, chief policy and external affairs officer for the American Society of Civil Engineers, said more coordination would be needed to ensure that all the money that Congress allocated was spent.“On that smaller scale, it’s almost like matchmaking — finding the firm, finding the agency and seeing where the needs are,” she said.All of that is good news for people doing the work, like Roger Oberdier, 33, who was hired at Alpine Archaeological Consultants in October. He was happy to find a staff position after picking up jobs all over the country and is applying to Ph.D. programs to advance his career, in which he plans to specialize in zooarchaeology (which means a lot of digging up butchered animals).And the increasing demand for talent affects the whole field. Even friends who don’t want permanent jobs are doing pretty well, hopscotching the country looking for evidence of ancient human activity, Mr. Oberdier said. Job websites like archaeologyfieldwork.com are stacked with listings at pay rates significantly higher than they were in previous years.“Right now, the job market is in favor of the job seeker,” Mr. Oberdier said. “My friends who are committed shovel bums — who never want to sit in an office and write a report, they just want to travel the world and hike to new places and be the first person to see something in 10,000 years — they are taking the jobs they want right now.” More

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    US Added 223,000 Jobs in December, a Slight Easing in Pace

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    The Federal Reserve’s moves to cool the economy with higher interest rates seem to be taking gentle hold. Wage growth lost momentum.The U.S. economy produced jobs at a slower but still comfortable rate at the end of 2022, as higher interest rates and changing consumer habits downshifted the labor market without bringing it to a halt.Employers added 223,000 jobs in December on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reported on Friday, in line with economists’ expectations although the smallest gain since President Biden took office.The gradual cooling indicates that the economy may be coming back into balance after years of pandemic-era disruptions — so far with limited pain for workers. The unemployment rate ticked down to 3.5 percent, back to its level from early 2020, which matched a low last seen in 1969.“If the U.S. economy is slipping into recession, nobody told the labor market,” said Chris Varvares, co-head of U.S. economics for S&P Global Market Intelligence, noting that the December number is still nearly double the approximately 100,000 jobs needed to keep up with population growth.Monthly change in jobs More

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    Labor Market Strength Persisted Heading Into the Holidays

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    Government data from November showed job openings remained high, with rates of quitting and layoffs holding steady.The labor market remained a key source of strength for households and the overall economy ahead of the holiday season, even as hiring struggles remained a headache for employers, the latest government data indicates.The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday that there were 10.5 million U.S. job openings on the last day of November, a figure little changed from the month before. The number of workers voluntarily quitting their jobs ticked up slightly, and layoffs were comparable to the previous month.According to the bureau’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, there were 1.7 open jobs for every unemployed worker near the end of 2022. Some experts caution that the vacancy rate should be taken with a grain of salt, since many employers may no longer be urgently recruiting, yet don’t see the harm in leaving a job listing posted online in case the right candidate comes along.The State of Jobs in the United StatesEconomists have been surprised by recent strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.Retirees: About 3.5 million people are missing from the U.S. labor force. A large number of them, roughly two million, have simply retired.Switching Jobs: A hallmark of the pandemic era has been the surge in employee turnover. The wave of job-switching may be taking a toll on productivity.Delivery Workers: Food app services are warning that a proposed wage increase for New York City workers could mean higher delivery costs.A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?: Employees seeking wage increases to cover their costs of living amid rising prices could set off a cycle in which fast inflation today begets fast inflation tomorrow.The JOLTS release is what economists call a lagging indicator, telling more about recent conditions in the business cycle rather than about what might come next. Most economists expect layoffs to increase and the economy to slouch, with fewer job postings. But the persistence of vacancies in November underlines commentary from small businesses leaders and Fortune 500 chief executives alike, lamenting a dearth of talent to fill openings.“The people shortage is systemic, and it’s fundamentally changing how businesses should prepare for economic slowdowns,” argued Ron Hetrick, a senior economist at Lightcast, a labor market analytics firm. “If the U.S. does see some sort of recession in 2023, it will be less about persistent worker displacement and more about employers finally being able to fill the roles they’ve had open for the past several years.”Baby boomers are retiring. And with political gridlock set to pick up in Washington, some federal legislative proposals intended to expand the labor pool — like immigration reform or an expansion of child care support — are unlikely to become law anytime soon.As inflation from sources like supply chain snags has cooled, policymakers and influential economic commentators have dedicated a larger share of their discussions to concerns about a labor market that in their view is “overheated,” or too strong for the overall good.In his most recent news conference, Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, emphasized that the central bank was focused on bringing all dimensions of the economy, including the job market, into “better alignment” in an effort to slow price increases.“We do see a very, very strong labor market, one where we haven’t seen much softening, where job growth is very high, where wages are very high, vacancies are quite elevated and, really, there’s an imbalance in the labor market between supply and demand,” he said. “So that part of it, which is the biggest part, is likely to take a substantial period to get down.”For roughly two years, millions of workers gained an unfamiliar degree of leverage as their talent became more valued or scarce, and they began quitting or bargaining for higher wages in greater numbers. That trend has been a lingering source of anxiety for a variety of business owners, who have had to contend with inflation, much like their customers, while balancing higher labor costs with their profit goals.In November, the rate of workers voluntarily quitting jumped notably for establishments with fewer than 10 employees, potentially further evidence of how small-scale entrepreneurs are struggling to compete with bigger businesses to attract talent. More

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    Wave of Job-Switching Has Employers on a Training Treadmill

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    The rise in turnover since the pandemic started has a cost in productivity: “It’s taking longer to get stuff out the door.”One after another, employees at the New Hampshire manufacturer W.H. Bagshaw said goodbye.One went to a robotics company in nearby Boston. Another became an electrician’s apprentice. In all, 22 workers have left W.H. Bagshaw in the past two years — no small matter for a company that has a work force of fewer than 50. That level of departures was also far from normal: In 2019, the company lost just one or two employees; the turnover rate in 2022 was over 30 percent.W.H. Bagshaw, which makes precision machined parts for the aerospace and medical industries, was mostly able to replace the workers who left — but at a cost. Hiring employees and bringing them up to speed could include teaching them how to operate complex, multi-axis turning machines. That took time and energy, preventing the company from running at full capacity.Production slowed. The number of on-time deliveries to customers slipped.“It’s taking longer to get stuff out the door,” said Adria Bagshaw, the company’s vice president.A hallmark of the pandemic era has been the surge in employee turnover. Since 2021, an extraordinary number of Americans have been quitting their jobs — some flexing their power in a white-hot labor market, others re-evaluating their priorities amid a destabilizing pandemic.In November 2021, more than 4.5 million workers voluntarily left their jobs, according to government data, the most in the two decades that the government has been keeping track. That number has slowly been declining in recent months, but it is still far higher than before the pandemic. The churn has been particularly high in low-wage sectors such as leisure and hospitality, where intense competition for labor led workers to pursue better-paying opportunities.All that turnover has taken a toll on productivity — for individual companies, and perhaps for the economy as well.Economists say the wave of job-switching could be one factor in the weak productivity growth that the U.S. economy has experienced in recent years. Early on, some experts expected the pandemic to unleash productivity by forcing companies to embrace new technologies and ways of working. Instead, productivity has fallen slightly over the past two years.“All that turnover, all that hiring, all that training you have to do — that takes away from your day job,” said Sarah House, an economist at Wells Fargo. “So it’s essentially less output at the end of the day.”At W.H. Bagshaw, the perpetual need to train employees has been a central reason for the production slowdown.“Anytime we bring in a new hire, they’re not productive on Day 1 — usually they’re shadowing someone for a few weeks or months,” Ms. Bagshaw said. “You’re investing in someone for the future. Whoever is doing the training, they’re slowed down from their normal productivity.”The State of Jobs in the United StatesEconomists have been surprised by recent strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.Retirees: About 3.5 million people are missing from the U.S. labor force. A large number of them, roughly two million, have simply retired.Delivery Workers: Food app services are warning that a proposed wage increase for New York City workers could mean higher delivery costs.A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?: Employees seeking wage increases to cover their costs of living amid rising prices could set off a cycle in which fast inflation today begets fast inflation tomorrow.Disabled Workers: With Covid prompting more employers to consider remote arrangements, employment has soared among adults with disabilities.Productivity — in its simplest form, the value of the goods and services that a typical employee can produce in an hour of work — is notoriously difficult to measure accurately. But it is one of the most important measures of the health of an economy, particularly during a period of rapid inflation. Productivity is what allows the economic pie to grow: If workers can produce more in the same amount of time, then their employers can afford to pay them more per hour without either raising prices or cutting into profits.When productivity stagnates, however, pay becomes a zero-sum game: If workers want to make more money, then the money has to come from somewhere else.“Really the issue at the heart of everything — from inflation to growth to companies and head count — it’s about productivity, and that turnover concern is huge,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist for ADP, a payroll processing firm.Sobeyda Rodriguez, a machine operator at W.H. Bagshaw in Nashua, N.H.M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesW.H. Bagshaw makes parts for the aerospace and medical industries.M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesIn the past two years, 22 workers have left W.H. Bagshaw, which has a work force of fewer than 50.M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesOrdinarily, economists consider turnover good for productivity. A healthy amount of job-switching allows workers to find the most suitable jobs, and employers to find the employees who will be the best fit. Over time, the most productive firms — which can afford to pay the most — will tend to attract the most productive workers, lifting the economy as a whole. In the years before the pandemic, many economists fretted about the declining rate of turnover, which they worried was a sign of an increasingly stagnant, even ossifying labor market.But the impact of the Great Resignation is complicated: Too much turnover all at once can create its own problems.For nearly two years, companies have complained that they are caught in an unending cycle of hiring and training workers, only to see them leave in a matter of weeks or months. Constant recruiting and training drains management resources, and new hires often do not stick around long enough for that investment to pay off. Veteran employees are often asked to pick up the slack, leading to burnout.These challenges have been on vivid display in the hospitality industry, which experienced much-higher-than-normal turnover rates in this period.“A lot of restaurants are in survival mode, and survival mode creates a vicious circle,” said Dominic Benvenuti, an owner of Boston Pie, which owns more than two dozen Domino’s locations in New England.Store managers can’t hire enough workers, Mr. Benvenuti said, so they demand too much from new employees too quickly, sending them out on deliveries or putting them to work in the kitchen without sufficient training. When those workers inevitably fail, they quit, compounding the labor shortage and continuing the cycle.“They are thrown into such chaos and stress that it overwhelms them, and they leave,” he said. “It is never-ending if someone doesn’t end it.”The solution, Mr. Benvenuti said, is to focus on training and to recognize that new hires won’t be as productive as 10-year veterans right away. But that is easier said than done when customers are calling to ask why their pizzas are late.There may be some relief in sight for businesses. The turnover rate has declined somewhat since its peak at the end of 2021, and many employers, both public and private, expect that trend to continue this year. That could give companies a chance to focus on tasks neglected during the pandemic chaos, like training employees and updating business processes.But some workplace experts say higher-than-normal turnover rates are likely to persist, particularly in white-collar industries where remote work has become more common. For employees who work from home some or all of the time, job hunting no longer requires manufacturing an excuse to be out of the office or worrying about a boss finding a résumé on the office printer.“It’s just easier to switch jobs now,” Ms. Richardson said. “Back in the old days, you had to meet at a Starbucks, and if you ran into another employee who was at that same Starbucks that was five blocks away from the closer Starbucks, you knew they were on a job interview.”Now, she said, “if you’re working from home, you can do a whole day’s interview from the comfort of your living room and no one’s the wiser.”Many economists say it is still possible that the pandemic-era increase in turnover will be beneficial for productivity, even if that isn’t the case yet. People who thrive working from home will gravitate toward companies that embrace remote work; people who do better in person will be snapped up by companies that require employees to come into the office. Industries that remade themselves to survive the pandemic — like restaurants, retailers and hotels — will figure out which changes will work in the long term, and which employees are well-suited to the new way of doing business.“You’re investing in someone for the future,” said Adria Bagshaw, W.H. Bagshaw’s vice president.M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesThe pandemic’s disruption contributed to a surge in entrepreneurial activity, a key driver of the kind of innovation that could lead to a more productive economy. The dynamics have also spurred many companies to re-evaluate or adapt long-held practices to increase efficiency.“There’s an enormous amount of experimentation going on right now, and it’s showing up in so many different ways,” said John Haltiwanger, a University of Maryland economist who studies job turnover.“I think it will be healthy, but not immediately,” he added. “There’s a long-term payoff to this, but it could literally take years, not months, for this to kick in.”When Rahkeem Morris started the company HourWork several years ago, his goal was to help fast-food companies and other businesses hire more efficiently. But last year, the company pivoted to a new focus: retention.A fast-food worker typically takes six months to reach full productivity, Mr. Morris said, but at many companies, the typical employee in the industry leaves after just 75 days. HourWork now offers a service to help store owners keep in touch with staff members by text message and to analyze their responses to identify issues that could be causing employees to quit — an approach the company says can reduce turnover, particularly among new hires.Mr. Morris, who worked in fast food as a teenager before getting degrees from Cornell and Harvard Business School, said companies had long tried to deal with staffing shortages by focusing on recruitment. He likened that approach to trying to fill a leaky bucket — if companies do not also try to keep their workers, no amount of recruiting will solve their problem.The Great Resignation, however, may finally have led companies to rethink that approach.“We’re starting to see the tide shift and the sentiment around that change,” Mr. Morris said. “Fixing the leaky-bucket problem will get these restaurants to full productivity.” More

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    Computer Science Students Face a Shrinking Big Tech Job Market

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    A new reality is setting in for students and recent graduates who spent years honing themselves for careers at the largest tech companies.Ever since she was a 10th grader in Seattle, Annalice Ni wanted to develop software for a prominent tech company like Google. So she went to great lengths to meet the internship and other résumé criteria that make students attractive hires to the biggest tech firms.In high school, Ms. Ni took computer science courses, interned at Microsoft and volunteered as a coding teacher for younger students. She majored in computer science at the University of Washington, earning coveted software engineering internships at Facebook. After graduating from college this year, she moved to Silicon Valley to start her dream job as a software engineer at Meta, Facebook’s parent company.Then last month, Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees — including Ms. Ni.“I did feel very frustrated and disappointed and maybe a bit scared because all of a sudden, I didn’t know what to do,” Ms. Ni, 22, said of her unexpected career setback. “There’s not much I could have done, especially in college, more than I already did, better than I already did.”Over the last decade, the prospect of six-figure starting salaries, perks like free food and the chance to work on apps used by billions led young people to stampede toward computer science — the study of computer programming and processes like algorithms — on college campuses across the United States. The number of undergraduates majoring in the subject more than tripled from 2011 to 2021, to nearly 136,000 students, according to the Computing Research Association, which tracks computing degrees at about 200 universities.Ms. Ni spends her days interviewing for jobs and brushing up on her skills.Jason Henry for The New York TimesTech giants like Facebook, Google and Microsoft encouraged the computing education boom, promoting software jobs to students as a route to lucrative careers and the power to change the world.But now, layoffs, hiring freezes and planned recruiting slowdowns at Meta, Twitter, Alphabet, Amazon, DoorDash, Lyft, Snap and Stripe are sending shock waves through a generation of computer and data science students who spent years honing themselves for careers at the largest tech companies. Tech executives have blamed a faltering global economy for the jobs slowdown.The cutbacks have not only sent recent graduates scrambling to find new jobs but also created uncertainty for college students seeking high-paying summer internships at large consumer tech companies.In the past, tech companies used their internship programs to recruit promising job candidates, extending offers to many students to return as full-time employees after graduation. But this year, those opportunities are shrinking.Amazon, for instance, hired about 18,000 interns this year, paying some computer science students nearly $30,000 for the summer, not including housing stipends. The company is now considering reducing the number of interns for 2023 by more than half, said a person with knowledge of the program who was not authorized to speak publicly.More on Big TechMicrosoft: The company’s $69 billion deal for Activision Blizzard, which rests on winning the approval by 16 governments, has become a test for whether tech giants can buy companies amid a backlash.Apple: Apple’s largest iPhone factory, in the city of Zhengzhou, China, is dealing with a shortage of workers. Now, that plant is getting help from an unlikely source: the Chinese government.Amazon: The company appears set to lay off approximately 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs, in what would be the largest cuts in the company’s history.Meta: The parent of Facebook said it was laying off more than 11,000 people, or about 13 percent of its work forceBrad Glasser, an Amazon spokesman, said the company was committed to its internship program and the real-word experience that it provided. A Meta spokeswoman referred to a letter to employees from Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, announcing the company’s layoffs last month.Hiring plans are also changing at smaller tech firms. Roblox, the popular game platform, said it planned to hire 300 interns for next summer — almost twice as many as this year — and was expecting more than 50,000 applications for those spots. Redfin, which employed 38 interns this summer, said it had canceled the program for next year.There are still good jobs for computing students, and the field is growing. Between 2021 and 2031, employment for software developers and testers is expected to grow 25 percent, amounting to more than 411,000 new jobs, according to projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But many of those jobs are in areas like finance and the automotive industry.“Students are still getting multiple job offers,” said Brent Winkelman, chief of staff for the computer science department at the University of Texas at Austin. “They just may not come from Meta, from Twitter or from Amazon. They’re going to come from places like G.M., Toyota or Lockheed.”College career centers have become sounding boards for anxious students on the cusp of entering the tech job market. In career counselors’ offices, the search for a Plan B has heightened.Some students are applying to lesser-known tech companies. Others are seeking tech jobs outside the industry, with retailers like Walmart or with government agencies and nonprofits. Graduate school is also an option.“This particular class has been a lot more savvy than previous classes,” said Hazel Raja, senior director of the career development office at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. “Even those who have secured job offers, they’re still making sure they’re networking and staying engaged in campus recruiting opportunities.”Helen Dong, 21, a senior majoring in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, interned at Meta twice, in 2021 and 2022. So she was surprised at the end of this summer, she said, when she did not receive a job offer from the company. Meta’s recent layoffs prompted her to apply for jobs outside tech, at automotive and financial companies. Last month, she posted videos on TikTok advising her peers to adjust their job expectations.Helen Dong, 21, a senior majoring in computing at Carnegie Mellon University, interned at Meta but did not receive a job offer. Now she is looking in the finance and automotive industries.Helen Dong“I chose to major in computer science so that I could get a ton of offers after college and make bank,” Ms. Dong joked in one TikTok, as she sang along to “Reduce Your Expectations to 0.” In this job market, she wrote at the bottom of the video, “be grateful with 1 offer.”In interviews, 10 college students and recent graduates said they were not prepared for a slowdown in jobs at the largest tech companies. Until recently, those companies were fiercely competing to hire computer science majors at top schools — with some students receiving multiple job offers with six-figure starting salaries and five-digit signing bonuses. An entire genre of TikTok videos had sprung up dedicated to young techies extolling their job perks and their annual compensation, with at least one highlighting a $198,000 package, complete with stock options and relocation expenses.Dozens of people who were recently laid off, or whose tech job offers were rescinded, have posted details of their plights on LinkedIn. To alert recruiters, some have added the hashtag #opentowork to their LinkedIn profile photos.Tony Shi, 23, who majored in computer science and business at Western University in London, Ontario, is one of them. After graduating this year, he began working as a product manager at Lyft in August. In November, the ride-hailing company laid off about 650 employees, including Mr. Shi.Now he is on a tight deadline to find a new job. Mr. Shi is Canadian, from Waterloo, Ontario, and obtained a visa to move to San Francisco for his job at Lyft. Under the visa, he has 60 days to find a new job. He said he had become more sensitive to the businesses and balance sheets of potential employers.“I need to be a little more risk-averse. I definitely don’t want to get laid off again,” he said. Instead of his taking a company for its word, he added, “now, the product needs to make a lot of sense.”Meta rescinded its job offer to Rachel Castellino, 22, weeks before she was scheduled to start work.Jason Henry for The New York TimesSome recent graduates did not get the chance to start their new tech jobs.Rachel Castellino, a statistics major at the California Polytechnic State University, worked to land a job at a major tech company. During college, she interned as a project manager at PayPal, received a data science fellowship funded by the National Science Foundation and founded a data science club at her school.Ms. Castellino, 22, knew she would have to grind to pass companies’ technical interviews, which typically involve solving programming problems. Last year, she spent much of the fall job hunting and preparing for coding assessments. For four days a week, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., she studied probability concepts and programming languages. Even so, she said, the interview process was brutal.In November 2021, Meta offered her a job as a data scientist, starting in December 2022. Last month, Meta rescinded the offer, she said.“I worked so hard for those interviews. It felt really good to earn something of a high caliber,” she said. “I had so much to look forward to.”The setback has been disheartening. “I was upset,” Ms. Castellino said. “It wasn’t good to hear.”As for Ms. Ni, she now views losing her dream job as an opportunity to broaden her career horizons. Over the last month, she has applied to midsize tech firms and start-ups that she finds innovative — potential employers she had not previously considered.“I’m exploring opportunities that I didn’t before,” Ms. Ni said. “I feel like I’ve already learned some things.”Karen Weise More

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    Are You Applying for Tech Jobs or Internships? We Want to Hear About It.

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    Layoffs and hiring freezes at companies like Amazon and Meta are changing the job market for recent grads and college students. Tell us about your experiences.November was a bleak month for tech workers. Meta, Amazon, Lyft, Stripe and Twitter laid off thousands of employees. Microsoft and Google announced hiring slowdowns.The cutbacks and hiring freezes affected not only veteran employees. Some tech companies laid off recent college graduates or rescinded their job offers. Some firms are also cutting their summer internship programs for college students next year.The industry slowdown is sending shock waves through a generation of computer science and data science students who spent years preparing themselves for careers at the largest tech companies. Many recent grads and college seniors are now seeking tech jobs outside the tech industry, in industries like retail, banking and finance.I’m a technology reporter at The New York Times who investigates the societal impacts of tech innovations and tech company business practices. And I am reporting a story about the implications of the industry jobs slowdown for people in the early stages of their tech careers.If you are a college student or recent grad applying for tech internships or jobs, I’d like to hear from you.We may use your contact information to follow up with you. If we publish your submission, we will not include your name without first contacting you and obtaining your permission.Tell us about your experiences applying for tech jobs and internships More

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    If There Is a ‘Male Malaise’ With Work, Could One Answer Be at Sea?

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    Before dawn on a recent day in the port of Seattle, dense autumn fog hugged Puget Sound and ship-to-shore container cranes hovered over the docks like industrial sentinels. Under the dim glimmer of orange floodlights, the crew of the tugboat Millennium Falcon fired up her engines for a long day of towing oil barges and refueling a variety of large vessels, like container ships.The first thing to know about barges is that they don’t move themselves. They are propelled and guided by tugs like the Falcon, which is owned by Centerline Logistics, one of the largest U.S. transporters of marine petroleum. Such companies may not be household names, but the nation’s energy supply chain would have broken under the pandemic’s pressure without the steady presence of their fleets — and their crews.“We’re a floating gas station,” said Bowman Harvey, a director of operations at Centerline, as he stood aboard the Falcon, his neck tattoo of the Statue of Liberty pivoting from the base of his flannel whenever he gestured at a machine or busy colleague nearby. Demand is solid, he said, and the enterprise is profitable. The company’s client list, which includes Exxon Mobil and Maersk, the global shipping giant, is robust. But manning the fleet has become a struggle.Multiyear charter contracts for key lines of business — refueling ships, transporting fuel for refineries and general towing jobs — are locked in across all three coasts, plus Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico, Mr. Harvey said. Yet as pandemic-related staffing shortages have eased in other industries, Centerline is still short on staff. “Hands down,” Mr. Harvey said, “our biggest challenge right now is finding crew.”Safely moving, loading and unloading oil at sea requires both simple and high-skill jobs that cannot be automated. And the labor supply issues in merchant marine transportation are emblematic of the conundrum seen in a variety of decently paying, male-heavy jobs in the trades.Overall Labor Force Participation Has Fallen Among Men

    Note: The overall labor force, as defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, includes all Americans age 16 and older who are classified as either working or actively looking for work.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics By The New York TimesOver the past 50 years, male labor force participation, the share of men working or actively looking for work, has steadily fallen as female participation has climbed.Some scholars have a grim explanation for the trend. Nicholas Eberstadt, the conservative-leaning author of “Men Without Work,” argues that there has been a swell in men who are “inert, written off or discounted by society and, perhaps, all too often, even by themselves.” Others, like the Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard V. Reeves, put less emphasis on potential social pathologies but say a “male malaise” is hampering households and the economy.“Hands down, our biggest challenge right now is finding crew,” said Bowman Harvey, a director of operations at Centerline.Members of the Millennium Falcon crew.Centerline employees are among about 75,000 categorized by the Department of Labor as water transportation workers, a group in which men outnumber women five to one.The State of Jobs in the United StatesEconomists have been surprised by recent strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.October Jobs Report: U.S. employers continued to hire at a fast clip, adding 261,000 jobs in the 10th month of the year despite the Fed’s push to cool the economy.A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?: Employees seeking wage increases to cover their costs of living amid rising prices could set off a cycle in which fast inflation today begets fast inflation tomorrow.Disabled Workers: With Covid prompting more employers to consider remote arrangements, employment has soared among adults with disabilities.A Feast or Famine Career: America’s port truck drivers are a nearly-invisible yet crucial part of the global supply chain. And they are sinking into desperation.Though the gender split in the industry is more even for onshore office roles, workers and applicants for jobs on the water are predominantly male. Centerline says it has roughly 220 offshore crew members and about 35 openings. Captains and company managers agree that changing attitudes toward work among young men play a part in the labor shortage. But the strongest consensus opinion is that structural demographic shifts are against them. “We’re seeing a gray wave of retirement,” said Mr. Harvey, who is 38.Even though replacements are needed and, on the whole, lacking, there are new young recruits who are thriving, such as Noah Herrera Johnson, 19, who has joined Centerline as a cadet deckhand, an entry-level role.On a Thursday morning out in the harbor, Mr. Herrera Johnson deftly unknotted, flipped and refastened a series of sailing knots as the crew unmoored from a sister boat that was aiding the refueling of a Norwegian Cruise Line ship. A small crowd of curious cruise passengers peeked down as he bopped through the sequences and the sun’s glare began to pierce the fog, bouncing off the undulating waves.“I enjoy it a lot,” Mr. Herrera Johnson said of his work, as he sliced some meat in the galley later on. (Some kitchen work and cleaning are part of the gig and the fraternal ritual of paying dues.) “I get along with everyone — everyone has stories to tell,” he said. “And I was never good at school.”Mr. Herrera Johnson, who is Mexican American and whose mother is from Seattle, spent most of his life in Cabo San Lucas, in Baja California, until he moved back to the United States shortly after turning 18.Though entry-level roles aboard don’t require college credentials, new regulations have made at least briefly attending a vocational maritime academy a necessity for those who want to rise quickly up the crew ladder. Because he is interested in becoming a captain by his late 20s, he began a two-year program at the nearby Pacific Maritime Institute in March, and he earns course credits for work at Centerline between classes.Noah Herrera Johnson, left, preparing to throw a line to Andrew Nelson, right, as the Millennium Falcon docked in Seattle.Mr. Herrera Johnson, right, joined the Falcon crew as a cadet deckhand, an entry-level role.He got his “first tug” in May: an escapade from New Orleans through the Panama Canal to San Francisco, patched with some bad weather. “Two months, two long months — it was fun,” he said. “We had a few things going on. We lost steering a few times. But it was cool.”In short, the industry needs far more Noahs. Many Centerline employees have informally become part-time recruiters — handing out cards, encouraging seemingly capable young men who may be between jobs, undecided about college or disillusioned with the standard 9-to-5 existence to consider being a mariner instead.“When I’m trying to get friends or family members to come into the business,” Mr. Harvey said, “I make sure to remind them: Don’t think of this as a job, think of it as a lifestyle.”Internet connections aboard are common these days, and there is plenty of downtime for movies, TV, reading, cooking and joking around with sea mates. (On slow days, captains will sometimes do doughnuts in the water like victorious racecar drivers, turning the whole vessel into a Tilt-a-Whirl ride for the crew: sea legs required.)Of course, those leisurely moments punctuate days and nights of heaving lines, tying knots, making repairs, executing multiple refueling jobs and helping to navigate the tugboat: rain or shine, heat or heavy seas.It’s “an adventurous life,” Mr. Harvey said, one that he and others acknowledge has its pros and cons. Mariners in this sector — whether they are entry-level deckhands, midtier mates and engineers, or crew-leading tankermen and captains — are usually on duty at sea in tight quarters and bunk beds for a month or more.On the bright side, however, because of an “equal time” policy, full-time crew members are given roughly just as much time off for the same annual pay.“When I go home, you know, I’m taking essentially 35 days off,” said Capt. Ryan Buckhalter, 48, who’s been a mariner for 20 years. For many, it’s a refreshing work-life balance, he said: None of the nettlesome emails or nagging office politics in between shifts often faced by the average modern office worker trying to get ahead.Still, Captain Buckhalter, who has a wife and a young daughter, echoed other crew members when he admitted that the setup could also be “tough at times” for families, including his own.Capt. Ryan Buckhalter piloted the Millennium Falcon on Elliott Bay.A checklist in the wheelhouse of the tugboat.Crew members say they value knowing that their work, unlike more abstract service jobs, is essential to world trade. And average starting salaries for deckhand jobs are $55,000 a year (or about $26 an hour) and as high as $75,000 in places like the San Francisco area, with higher living costs.The company also offers low-cost health, vision and dental care for employees, and a 401(k) plan with a company match. So the chief executive, Matt Godden, said in an interview that he didn’t feel that wages or benefits were a central reason that his company and competitors with similar offerings had struggled to hire.“Right now a lot of companies are really hurting,” Captain Buckhalter said. “You kind of got a little gap here with the younger generation not really showing up.”If the labor market, like any other, operates by supply and demand, managers within the maritime industry say the supply side of the nation’s education and training system is also at fault: It has given priority to the digital over the physical economy, putting what are often called “the jobs of the future” over those society still needs.Mr. Harvey adds that his industry is also grappling with increased Coast Guard licensing requirements for skilled roles, like boat engineers or tankermen, who lead the loading and discharging of oil barges. The regulations help ensure physical and environmental safety standards, Mr. Harvey said, but reduce the already limited pool of adequately credentialed candidates.Women remain a rare sight aboard. Some captains make the case that this stems from hesitance toward a life of bunking and sharing a bathroom with a crop of guys at sea — a self-reinforcing dynamic that company officials say they are working to alleviate.“We actually do have women that work on the vessels!” said Kimberly Cartagena, the senior manager for marketing and public relations at Centerline. “Definitely not as much as men, but we do have a handful.”Several economists and industry analysts suggested in interviews that another way for companies like Centerline to add crew members would be to expand their digital presence and do social media outreach. Mr. Godden, Centerline’s chief executive, said he remained wary.“If you did something very simple, like you set up a TikTok account, and you sent somebody out every day to create varied little snippets, and you get viral videos of strong men pulling lines and big waves and big pieces of machinery,” Mr. Godden said, then a company would risk introducing an inefficient churn of young recruits who would “like the idea of being on a boat” but not be a fan of the unsexy “calluses” that come with the job.Crew members say they value knowing their work is essential to world trade. But in the long term, he said, there is reason for optimism. He pointed to the recent establishment of the Maritime High School, which opened a year ago just south of the Seattle-Tacoma airport with its first ninth-grade class.“I think their first class is looking to graduate a hundred people, and then they got goals of getting up to 300, 400 graduates a year,” Mr. Godden said. He has been meeting with the school’s leaders this fall and is convinced they will help create the next pipeline in the profession.“Yes, labor shortages may increase or decrease depending upon how the market works — but I always have this sense that there’s always going to be this sort of built-in group of folks who cannot — just cannot — stand seeing themselves sitting at a desk for 30, 40, 50 years,” he said. “It’s this hands-on business almost like, you know, when you’re a kid and you’re playing with trucks or toys, and then you get to do it in the life-size version.” More

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    U.S. Job Growth Remains Strong, Defying Fed’s Rate Strategy

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    Employers added 263,000 workers in November, even as some industries showed signs of a slowdown. Wage growth exceeded expectations.America’s jobs engine kept churning in November, the Labor Department reported Friday, a show of continued demand for workers despite the Federal Reserve’s push to curb inflation, largely by tamping down hiring.Employers added 263,000 jobs, even as a wave of layoffs in the tech industry made headlines. That was only a slight drop from the revised figure of 284,000 for October.The unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7 percent, while wages were 5.1 percent higher than a year earlier, a bigger rise than expected.Those signs of strength perpetuate a strange duality: While a strong labor market may benefit workers in the short term, it could strengthen the Fed’s resolve to raise rates even further, which would increase the likelihood of a recession in 2023.“It upsets some of the narrative going into the report, which was that things are slowing down,” said Neil Dutta, head of U.S. economics at Renaissance Macro. “The reason that this matters for everyone is that the Fed still sees the labor market as the mechanism by which they can solve the inflation problem.”Despite steady employment growth, the impact of higher interest rates is already evident. Hiring in goods-producing sectors like manufacturing and residential construction — which are more sensitive to rising borrowing costs — has slowed substantially, and the number of hours worked fell, mainly because of those industries. But robust hiring in health care and hospitality, where wages have also grown most rapidly, powered continued gains.Wages continue to increase, though still not at the pace of inflationYear-over-year percentage change in earnings vs. inflation More