September US jobs data shows stagnant employment and lagging wages, as AI-driven layoffs deepen - World Socialist Web Site

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has delivered September's US jobs numbers and the verdict is in: employment stagnant, wages lagging, and 4.5 million people working part-time for economic reasons. 'Economic reasons' is the statistician's delicate way of saying they wanted full-time work and got a rotating series of Tuesday afternoons instead. Another 5.8 million have drifted outside the labor force altogether and would, per the count, still quite like a job. The World Socialist Web Site frames the whole business as deepening AI-driven layoffs, which is a bracing thing to read before nine in the morning.

Here is the part the earnings call leaves out. The artificial intelligence is not doing the job; it is the reason the job is being deleted. The corporate turn described in the piece treats AI as 'an instrument for eliminating jobs and intensifying labor' — two services for the price of one, which is exactly the sort of efficiency a shareholder letter can get misty-eyed about. The model writes the memo, the memo writes the reorganisation plan, and nobody in the boardroom has to say the word 'layoff' out loud because the algorithm has already said it in a font.

Meanwhile the wages are, in the technical term, lagging — behind what is never specified, presumably because the honest answer is 'everything, including the AI subscription.' And those 5.8 million people are, in the official vocabulary, outside the labor force, a magnificent piece of bookkeeping that keeps the unemployment rate looking like a garden party. The World Socialist Web Site will tell you this is simply what capital does when it gets a new toy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will give you the counts and nothing else. Neither of them will tell you when the promised productivity gains arrive, because they never arrive. The jobs, on the other hand, arrive at the exit every single quarter.