It's almost irrelevant what the broader economy unemployment rate is. For example, where I live there was actually pretty strong tech employment growth in 2008 despite it being a bloodbath for the broader economy.
Now, I happen to agree with you that there is still a strong need for tech workers (previous comment on this topic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37881705), but most of those jobs are at significantly lower salary for a lot of people. The fact is there is a glut of recently laid off tech people looking for jobs, and saying "ignore your own eyes and experience" is not helpful.
The hurdle rate went up accordingly. A lot of business models that worked over the past decade are on borrowed time right now. Every company and employee's situation is different and talent is still rewarded, but many pre-revenue companies are facing a very different financial reality and can sustain a much smaller workforce.
Full-time workers: -22K
Part-time workers: +151K
Indicative of the overall trend, which is net of jobs added since the pandemic is part-time workers. The quality of jobs gained is deteriorating
I.E. - you have companies that are 70% product-engineering by employees doing a 10% cut - and only 10% of the cut is coming from product-engineering.
If it was proportionate - you'd see 70% of laid off employees being product-engineering - instead of 90% coming from recruiting, sales, and marketing - which only makes up like 20% of the company in the first place...
The rest of the economy seems to be doing fine. If recruiters and marketers and salespeople are going from "tech companies" to other companies and keeping similar wages - that doesn't at all seem doom-worthy.
why? funding?
Even in a profitable company like Google, which has existing revenue streams, some of the headcount is there to keep the systems running, but much of it is still investment in future growth. In an unprofitable company like (Uber? I haven't checked), they're losing money in the present in the hopes of earning more in the future.
Contrast with, say, Kellogg's, where most of the headcount is there to sustain existing revenues and production, and only a little is being invested into new product lines, cost-saving optimization, and future growth.
As interest rates rise, it makes today's revenue more preferable and future revenues less important. That has a strong impact on the valuation of companies like Uber and Google, and a weaker impact on the valuation of companies like Kellogg's.
A company that is still pre-profit but has a bit of revenue might need to cut its expenses to become profitable, even at the expense of future growth. A company that is pre-profit with no revenue might want to keep its employees to launch products ASAP, but with investment drying up it could go bankrupt first.
And at a company like Google, the shareholders may be interested in pivoting towards the Kellogg's model to keep the share price high. So they lay off a bunch of cost-adding developers, and focus more on stretching today's advertising revenue as far as possible. The only future development being pursued will be the ones where payoff is so big that it's worth it even at a high discount rate, so perhaps AI.
a job at Chipotle is on par with a job at OpenAI
This economy is not healthy and there's a zero percent chance we get out unscathed. Good luck, stay diverse and don't lock yourself into some crazy mortgage or other debt
Contrast with the market for "jobs" paid from investment rounds where the "work" is playing with computers and the objective is "growth" instead of profits. If the output of such activity was the production of actual, sustainable businesses (cf. short-term investment opportunities for small sets of sophisticated investors), then these employees would still be needed.