美国国家公共电台 NPR--Recent tech layoffs cause fears of another dot-com bust

Recent tech layoffs¹ cause fears of another dot-com bust²

Transcript³

Tech companies are laying off thousands of workers in a reversal of their hiring boom during the pandemic. Should we worry about another dot-com bust like the one in 2000?

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Meta, Amazon and Twitter have all announced job cuts in recent weeks, adding to a growing list of tech layoffs. Are we headed for another dot-com bust, which helped create the recession back in the early 2000s? Adrian Ma and Darian Woods from our daily economics podcast The Indicator⁴ take a look.

DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE⁵: So we've all heard the story about how the pandemic changed consumption patterns a lot, like a lot more laptop and Netflix at home, working from home, et cetera, et cetera. But at the same time, the Fed was making interest rates very, very low, and so that meant that tech investors⁶ could afford to make these big bets that might pay off way into the future.

JULIA POLLAK: And so tech companies expanded really rapidly to take advantage of that opportunity, and investors were 100% behind that strategy. Investors said, grow at all costs; go for broke.

ADRIAN MA, BYLINE: So that's Julia Pollak, chief economist⁷ at the job site ZipRecruiter. And Julia says Facebook's parent company, Meta, is a prime example of this. During the pandemic, its staff grew by around 50%.

WOODS: But then the world changed. By spring of this year, the pandemic had eased in the U.S. A lot of people didn't want to be tethered to their TVs and their phones and Peloton so much. Plus, because of all the inflation, the Fed had started raising interest rates, and there were recession fears. So ad revenue shrank, and venture capital was running dry. And as these headwinds started building, tech companies quietly started to pump the brakes on their hiring spree. Nick Bunker is with Indeed Hiring Lab.

NICK BUNKER: We saw the real pullback earlier this year. We could see job postings start to come down.

MA: So we had a period of exuberance⁸ where investors are chucking money at tech companies, followed by a big fall in tech stocks and a lot of headline-grabbing layoffs in the tech industry. Could this be another dot-com bubble in the bursting? Well, this is where Nick essentially⁹ told me to take a deep breath.

BUNKER: What we're seeing now sort of rhymes with the year 2000 in some sense, but I don't think it's at quite the scale.

MA: So for a sense of that scale, in the past year the stocks on the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange lost about 25% of their value, which is a lot. We shouldn't downplay that. But during the dot-com bust, the Nasdaq fell by almost 80%.

WOODS: Another thing that Nick said to keep in mind is that the tech workforce¹⁰ is pretty small compared to the overall workforce in America.

BUNKER: If you try to line up, you know, the companies that we're talking about with their sort of share of overall employment, somewhere around 2% of all employment.

MA: Another reason we should not worry about tech dragging down the rest of the economy right now is that the job market is still pretty strong. And Julia Pollak at ZipRecruiter, she says when you look at the data on all the sectors¹¹, not just tech, the economy is adding 60% more jobs each month than it was before the pandemic.

POLLAK: Weakness in Silicon¹² Valley and on Wall Street is still largely being offset¹³ by strength on Main Street. And there's very little risk of these tech layoffs causing us to go into a recession.

MA: There have been tens of thousands of tech layoffs, but Julia says a lot of big tech companies are still much bigger than they were before the pandemic because of the hiring sprees they went on.

WOODS: OK, so there you go. So do we have a dot-com bust?

MA: Not right now - at least not yet.

WOODS: Darian Woods.

MA: Adrian Ma, NPR News.

1 layoffs   

临时解雇( layoff的名词复数 )； 停工，停止活动

参考例句：

• Textile companies announced 2000 fresh layoffs last week. 各纺织公司上周宣布再次裁员两千人。
• Stock prices broke when the firm suddenly announced layoffs. 当公司突然宣布裁员时，股票价格便大跌

2 bust   

vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部

参考例句：

• I dropped my camera on the pavement and bust it. 我把照相机掉在人行道上摔坏了。
• She has worked up a lump of clay into a bust.她把一块黏土精心制作成一个半身像。

3 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

4 indicator   

n.指标；指示物，指示者；指示器

参考例句：

• Gold prices are often seen as an indicator of inflation.黃金价格常常被看作是通货膨胀的指标。
• His left-hand indicator is flashing.他左手边的转向灯正在闪亮。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 investors   

n.投资者，出资者( investor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a con man who bilked investors out of millions of dollars 诈取投资者几百万元的骗子
• a cash bonanza for investors 投资者的赚钱机会

7 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。

8 exuberance   

n.丰富；繁荣

参考例句：

• Her burst of exuberance and her brightness overwhelmed me.她勃发的热情和阳光的性格征服了我。
• The sheer exuberance of the sculpture was exhilarating.那尊雕塑表现出的勃勃生机让人振奋。

9 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

10 workforce   

n.劳动大军，劳动力

参考例句：

• A large part of the workforce is employed in agriculture.劳动人口中一大部分受雇于农业。
• A quarter of the local workforce is unemployed.本地劳动力中有四分之一失业。

11 sectors   

n.部门( sector的名词复数 )；领域；防御地区；扇形

参考例句：

• Berlin was divided into four sectors after the war. 战后柏林分成了4 个区。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Industry and agriculture are the two important sectors of the national economy. 工业和农业是国民经济的两个重要部门。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

12 silicon   

n.硅(旧名矽)

参考例句：

• This company pioneered the use of silicon chip.这家公司开创了使用硅片的方法。
• A chip is a piece of silicon about the size of a postage stamp.芯片就是一枚邮票大小的硅片。

13 offset   

n.分支，补偿；v.抵消，补偿

参考例句：

• Their wage increases would be offset by higher prices.他们增加的工资会被物价上涨所抵消。
• He put up his prices to offset the increased cost of materials.他提高了售价以补偿材料成本的增加。