I'm starting to worry things could get very bad, very soon.

Not like in a year or two, but maybe in a few months. As in spontaneous recession type of thing. In the US mostly, but perhaps globally.

It sounds irrational to me as well as I think it or type it. But I can't shake the feeling, so I want to try to write it all down to see how rational it looks on paper.

A list of things that are troubling me ​

In no real order, here are the various things I'm stressing about.

I know a ton of really talented people who have recently lost their jobs ​

These are people who've been making over $100-200K in tech or tech-adjacent for over a decade. And they can't find work. I mean they can barely get interviews.

And when I say a ton, I mean multiple dozen that I either know or I'm one degree separated from. And again, these are not low-skill people. They're legit professionals that have never in their life had trouble finding or maintaining work.

I know a whole lot more than that who are right on the edge ​

As many as I know who have actually lost their jobs and can't get interviews. I know of many more who are in one or more of the following states:

• Not sure what skills they have that are useful
• Don't have the confidence or mindset for continuous learning
• Either don't understand or don't want to understand AI
• Are deathly afraid of anything "coding" related
• Aren't able to market themselves well to employers
• They're running out of money

This last one is the one that's really concerning me. It's not just that it's hard to see how they're going to thrive; it's that the situation is already dire.

Like, do you get a job at a fast food place? Do you start bagging groceries? Start driving for Amazon or DoorDash? And I'm talking about people who are very smart, with degrees, and have been in the workforce for a long time.

Nobody will talk to them, and they're basically living off credit cards and considering options.

It's terrifying, and my concern is that if I know of this many people in this situation, what does the rest of the country look like?

Tons of business leaders are explicitly telling us that they're looking to replace human workers with AI ​

Google has said this. Amazon. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff explicitly stated the company won't hire any new software engineers in 2025, citing AI-driven productivity gains.

• We don't even really have to believe them, because we're seeing tons of actual layoffs at the same time.

• Microsoft laid off 15,000+ employees in 2025, about 7% of its workforce, explicitly tied to AI investments

• Intel cut 15,000 jobs, Tesla laid off 14,000, and Cisco cut 10,000 in 2024

It actually goes much further back, and it's no-doubt multi-causal. We had the pandemic. We had over-hiring. We've heard all the arguments for what it could be.

Tech layoffs by year:

• 2022: 93,000 employees laid off
• 2023: 200,000 employees laid off (peak)
• 2024: 150,000 employees laid off
• 2025: 70,000 employees laid off (through July)

549 companies laid off more than 150,000 employees in 2024, and we're already at 69,672 layoffs in 2025 as of July 31st. The tech unemployment rate sits at 3.4%, but that doesn't capture the full picture of experienced professionals unable to find work.

AI keeps improving, and companies are stitching together the pieces to make it replace human workers ​

Hundreds or thousands of companies, and billions of dollars, are being spent on replacing human workers.

Some don't think this is possible, but they think we need to invent some super smart model that's better than anything we've ever seen.

We don't need that. What we need is scaffolding and piping that connects the dots and brings the right context together in the right way to solve problem x or y.

This is not as difficult as it seems, and I already have a ton of the precursors of this working, and I'm just one person. Now imagine billions of dollars and tens of thousands of people working on it.

The data confirm it's really bad out there ​

Then we have the actual layoffs.

Salesforce says AI bots now do 50% of the company's work. They're pushing what they call a "digital workforce" where AI agents handle customer service, sales, and even coding tasks. Microsoft reports that 30% of software coding work is already done by AI. These aren't future promises - this is happening right now.

And the prize they're chasing is worth the cost, because it means saving millions upon millions in hiring costs, payroll, health insurance, and all manner of employee-related complications in every business everywhere.

Getting rid of human work forces is a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity for the companies that get part of that pie. And they're spending on the R&D accordingly.

Harari's "Useless Class" ​

Separate from all these highly-skilled people who are having trouble finding work, I think about just regular people—many of whom aren't necessarily the smartest or most creative.

Yuval Harari talked about what he called a "Useless Class" in his book Homo Deus, which terrified me.

Just as mass industrialization created the working class, the AI revolution will create a new unworking class. The most important question for the future of humankind is not what to do with all the data, but what to do with all the people who are no longer needed.Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016)

Homo Deus History Tomorrow Harari

And then we have observations like these:

• In 2023, 28% of U.S. adults scored at or below Level 1 in literacy (struggling with basic sentence comprehension), up from 19% in 2017; only 44% reached proficiency (Level 3+), meaning over half are “partially illiterate”. (NCES/PIAAC 2023)

• In 2022, under 50% (47%) of adults could name all three branches of government; 25% couldn’t name any. (APPC Civics Survey, 2022)

• Professors at Stanford, Columbia, and Georgetown have warned that many incoming students are now unable to read full-length books, with one Stanford professor saying he was “bewildered” that students shut down when faced with entire novels or long texts after years of being exposed only to fragments and excerpts (The Atlantic).

• Columbia’s Nicholas Dames noted that one of his students admitted she had never been required to read a full book in high school—only short pieces like poetry or passages from anthologies (Education Next).

Combining those, I really start to worry about the ability of an average worker to compete with AI in the workplace.

And the point here isn't to beat up on ourselves. Life is hard right now. But it's important to acknowledge that AI is not usually competing with the best we have to offer, and we seem to be getting worse not better.

Finally, it takes tons of time and money to educate a human, and to keep them learning throughout a career. AIs can learn thousands of times more knowledge almost instantly, and they get smarter and cheaper every few months.

It seems too easy to see how that chart plays out.

The current non-AI-based companies and services are far from ideal or optimized ​

As I talked about in this piece, I'm very worried about a specific kind of company and product disruption from AI.

Current companies are inefficient versions of what they could be. And current products are bad versions of what they could beThe AI Creative Destructive WAVE

This is what scares me.

I think we're about to see millions of jobs lost—not just because the companies and products that survive will replace many workers with AI.

What I'm really worried about is those companies and services and products disappearing altogether—because they're replaced by more efficient companies and products that do the same thing but better and with fewer people.

There will still be people building those other products and services and companies, but it'll be far fewer because they don't have near the overhead.

What about the people in coding bootcamps and junior colleges? ​

I feel completely sad and hopeless when I think about everyone in junior colleges and coding bootcamps. Those taking online tech courses. Those trying to claw their way into tech and cybersecurity any way they can.

Why do I feel so bad for them? Because ahead of them in line are people with 10, 15, 20 years of experience. People with bachelor's degrees, master's degrees in the field. And they're being laid off. They're searching for jobs, searching for positions—and they can't find any work.

So answer me this:

How in the hell is a new college grad supposed to find a job when experienced professionals can't?

And worse than new college grads—what about junior college students? What about people seeking mentorship? What about those trying unconventional, scrappy ways to break in?

If people who did everything "right"—got the degrees, gained the experience—are being laid off, what hope does anyone have without those credentials and advantages?

Here's a related thought: Look at who's being laid off right now. How many have college degrees? Now look at who companies are keeping. How many of them have degrees, certifications, or any traditional credentials?

My question is this: Why are we still telling people to pursue credentials that take years to earn when those same credentials aren't protecting anyone from layoffs?

Even better question: Who are companies keeping? What attributes do they have? That's what we should be asking.

Most workers just check in and check out, and don't put in that much effort ​

There's a frequent counter-argument to the AI taking human jobs that goes something like this:

Yeah, AI might be able to do the job at a basic level, but humans are dynamic and creative! We can use our innovation and brilliance to do things way better than AI!

This is, of course, true. For some workers. Some of the time. But—by definition—most workers are not exceptional. Most workers, and most work days, are just drudgery. Answering emails. Writing up quarterly plans. Reviewing metrics. Building applications that do something with data.

A very large number of people dread Monday, and that's not because they show up Monday morning and bring all their creativity and brilliance. It's because it's clocking in and clocking out on a job they'd rather not be doing.

These are prime targets for AI replacement. And they are not the fringe. This isn't the bottom 5% of the workforce. This is the bottom 60-80%!

In other words, my read is that the replacement of jobs by AI isn't coming for the bottom few percent.

It's coming for all but the top few percent. Not all at once, of course, that will take years, but I think it's already started.

I'm worried people don't even have the money to be spending in the restaurants and shops ​

Another thing I wonder about is: I see how expensive everything is, and I know what the average salary / working wage is. I can't help but wonder:

• How the hell are restaurants so full?
• How is it that people are still going to the movies?
• Buying stuff at all the different shops?

I'm worried many could just be putting everything on credit cards.

And the data points in that direction. We Americans now have $1.21 trillion in total credit card debt as of Q4 2024, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That's up 57% from the pandemic low of $770 billion in early 2021. But what hits even harder is the average per household.

The average American household now carries $10,668 in credit card debt, with average interest rates at 22.25% as of Q2 2025. That's over $2,300 per year just in interest payments.

What's even more concerning is that approximately 9.1% of credit card balances have transitioned into delinquency over the last year. People are maxing out their cards and then struggling to make even minimum payments. Nearly half (46%) of American households are carrying credit card debt, and for many, it's becoming unsustainable.

So yes, the restaurants are full and the shops are busy, but it's increasingly being funded by high-interest debt that people can't actually afford.

The tariffs haven't even fully hit yet ​

Then we have the macro situation. I make decent money and every single day I'm like:

How the fuck did I just pay $20 for a burger and a Diet Coke?

And it's just everything. On a given day I might use a few different services, eat out a couple of times, and suddenly I've spent $100 when that would have been like $40 or $50 dollars a few years ago.

Putting me aside, I look around at everyone around me and I'm like, how in the hell is anyone affording this?

And every indication points to prices going even higher as a result of the tariffs. Economists predict tariffs will raise consumer prices by 2.3% in the short-run, equivalent to an average $3,800 loss per household.

Morgan Stanley expects inflation to hit 2.5% in 2025, up from their previous forecast. Goldman Sachs projects core inflation could reach 3%. I just don't know how much more we can take before something snaps.

Multiple small effects can cascade into a collective sentiment ​

And this is what I'm actually concerned about. It's not one of these things. Or two of them. Or ten.

It's the fact that many of them are happening at the same time.

It's the fact that they can affect and magnify each other and become something much bigger.

These are the types of scenarios I'm worried about.

1. A massive economic slowdown gets announced
2. A new AI Employee product gets announced that clearly can replace most workers
3. New layoff numbers get announced and it's hundreds of thousands of people
4. New data shows basically nobody is hiring
5. Enrollment in colleges plummets because there are no jobs to be had after you go into all that debt
6. Inflation jumps massively from the tariffs and/or other causes
7. People massively default on credit card debt and/or can't get any more credit, and the industry suffers
8. Homelessness skyrockets because people can't pay their rent, but now it's whole families on the streets
9. We start to see unrest and/or riots against "the rich" because there are no jobs, and people are being evicted
10. Crime goes up significantly
11. There is a loud demand for the government to outlaw AI replacement of workers
12. We get pulled into some new military conflict, either with Russia, or Iran, or China
13. The country continues to suffer financially because the world pulls away from the US and moves into the arms of China
14. Thousands more businesses go under because nobody can afford to buy their products or services

Like I said, I don't think any one of these would be that bad. And I generally understand that it's hard to cause a recession just all of a sudden. Everything takes time, and there are natural balances to big movements in economic health.

The problem is several of these are either likely or are already in progress. And that doesn't even include all the smaller compounding factors above.

Summary ​

1. Everything's too expensive, and getting worse
2. We already have massive layoffs for multiple reasons, which is also likely accelerating
3. Billions are being spent on replacing our 100 million knowledge workers with AI
4. People are putting more and more on their credit cards because their incomes don't cover their spending
5. We're already in a collective mental health crisis
6. Due to fragmented media and out of control m/disinformation, we no longer have a shared understanding of reality
7. We're primed by media to fight with each other because we no longer share a common reality
8. The US debt just hit $37 trillion dollars
9. All of the above are getting worse, not better

My prediction ​

I think there are many things happening right now—or that could happen soon—that could combine to create a narrative of panic in a population that's just barely holding on.

I just don't know what the country does if some significant percentage of our 100 million knowledge workers get laid off because of AI, which causes them to stop spending in the stores, canceling their services, which causes businesses to fail, which causes people to put even more on credit cards, which they can't pay back, which means people can't pay rent and mortgages, which might be someone else's income, etc...

It's a cascade.

I'm especially worried about the trigger being an extraordinary spike in knowledge worker unemployment in the next 2-18 months, which triggers evictions, worker Visa cancellations, foreclosures, a general blaming/targeting/fear of AI, which closes businesses, gets more people laid off, causes governments to overreact with legislation, etc.

All of which culminates in a general nationwide panic.

Again, not directly. The economy is quite resilient. I'm saying that these things can combine and multiply each other during a particular news cycle, or particular set of financial results, or job numbers, or whatever—which gets people talking on social media that turns into a narrative.

Which will then cause a panic.

And I think that leads to calls for one or more of the following:

• Redistribution of wealth
• A hurried UBI implementation
• A nationwide ban on foreclosures and evictions
• A law saying you can't use AI employees
• A law saying you can't fire anyone
• Etc.

Ok, but how confident / worried am I? ​

I'm not overly confident / worried that this will happen. It's just a really bad feeling. Maybe like 60%. Using the CIA levels for predictions, I'd put this one at:

• Virtually Certain: >90%
• Highly Likely: 60-89%
• Even Chance: 40-59% ←
• Unlikely: 10-39%
• Highly Unlikely: <10%

I hate not having a solution when I present problems, but I've talked about Human 3.0 and everything I recommend for becoming resilient / antifragile in a million other posts. I honestly think this is a bit beyond those if it happens and it's as big as I think it could be.

You can't be too resilient (without a farm/bunker) if the basic society / economy is broken for a bit.

My best advice right now is honestly—not trying to scare people—just to look around and appreciate what we/you have right now.

Because if this happens, right now are the good ol' days.

Let's hope I'm wrong, and that this pressure gets released some other way.