> here are 2 main drivers of these layoffs:

> 1. Correcting pandemic overhiring

> 2. In the ~2010-2022 timeframe, tech companies poured all this money into speculative bets

Any data/sources on which this might be based? The pandemic was 6 years ago; do these "Agile" (the tech term) companies really carry many unproductive lines-of-business for so long?

> speculative bets that never went anywhere ... think Amazon's Alexa devices division, Google Stadia, and perhaps most famously the Metaverse itself

Organizations make speculative bets all the time. Is there an accounting of the profitability of Alexa/Nest etc.?

> end of the ZIRP era would have caused companies to kill these inherently unprofitable projects

if you plug in the years 2020-2026 in the Fed Rate - Unemployment chart here at [1], it shows that from 2020 - 2022, rates were near zero while unemployment spiked during Covid and then fell. From 2022 through 2023, rates rose sharply while unemployment stayed relatively low. 2024-2025 the labor market softened. You can add the Federal Funds Effective Rate and the Unemployment Rate easily through the menu.

Unemployment stayed low through the rise in rates for almost two years prior to 2024. Given that companies operate on a quarterly reporting basis and program/project decisions are at least on that cadence, I don't think that the line you're suggesting that Rates-Go-Up -> Projects-Get-Killed -> Layoffs-Increase quite lines up with the economy-wide data in this exceptional case of 2022-2023.

We may have to look elsewhere for the reasons behind the current labor market weakness ... cough..*economy*..*trade walls*..cough...*structural re-alignment* [2]...cough...

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1duFv

[2] 6% employment decline in 22-25 year old workers https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/app/uploads/2025/11/Cana...