Comment by tyrabound
13 hours ago
I suspect there is still a good amount of shedding the defensive-hiring going on from the pre-AI, low interest, high growth inflation front-loading era. Now all that is crumbling, interest is rising, growth is contracting due to several factors, and AI is clearly crushing manpower demands. What do you do under these new circumstances with an excess of staff you largely hired as capacity and defensively?
It may be a bit controversial, but I believe the male tectonic shifts going in right now under our feet are also driving much of the shift regarding “immigration” because billionaires don’t need immigrants as much anymore and they’re also causing systemic problems in things like the housing market. In fact from what I’m hearing, there is concern that immigration is now becoming a potential cost due to the major changes in society rather than a profit center by scaling up marginal returns from every immigrant you can import by hook or crook, i.e., the more people you import, the more you can undermine salaries and increase revenues and thus, profits.
> they’re also causing systemic problems in things like the housing market
The rest of your post sounded rational. This part doesn’t.
Failure to build more units (NIMBY) and properties being held as investments (non-US nationals are significant in some markets) are the two causes I would point to. Of course every additional family that needs housing drives up the cost a little, but I really don’t think that can be responsible for the massive increases in housing valuation.
Depends on the market, Australia has a massive issues due to migration for a few reasons; the big one is that the rate of growth attempted means that the rate of public infrastructure build is also high. This is expensive, and since the migrants are not earning more than the naturals, the GDPpc is not growing to balance the increased cost of infrastructure.
The other big issue is density is expensive; it costs much more to build an apartment at the 10th floor than a detached house. Combine that with density being inherently a bit shit, you get less quality and less housing for the money spent.