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According to the Challenger layoff report, US hiring is at its lowest since the Great Recession, with nearly 1 million layoffs this year. AI gets the blame, but the deeper cause is decades of offshoring, financial engineering, and policy choices that depress wages while flattering headline stats. The template was set in 1965 with the Border Industrialization Program, maquiladoras importing inputs duty free, paying cents on the dollar, then re exporting with tariffs only on value added. By the 1980s there were 1,000 plus plants, Ford and GE shifted tens of thousands of jobs, and media reframed losses as cheaper goods.
Tariff cuts on Chinese imports in 1979 plus a new corporate mindset hardened the shift. Jack Welch cut about 115,000 US jobs at GE by 1985 and pioneered white collar outsourcing. The Reagan years touted job creation while more than 1.6 million jobs moved abroad, only 28 percent of new jobs were high skill, and young workers’ wages fell sharply. The 1990s added NAFTA and China PNTR, 879,000 trade certified job losses with true totals far higher, longer work hours masked stagnation, buybacks and options enriched executives while households captured about 3 percent of market gains and took on nearly 40 percent of new debt.
The skills shortage story enabled H-1B expansion and loopholes. Outsourcing firms used cap exempt affiliations to file year round and undercut pay, with 2013 probes showing 36 to 41 percent labor cost savings versus domestic hires. Today firms cite AI while filing thousands of H 1B petitions. Amazon cut roughly 27,000 roles from 2022 to 2024 plus 10,000 to 12,000 in 2025, yet logged 14,365 approvals across sponsor tiers. A proposed 100,000 dollar H 1B fee will not fix exemptions, contractor loopholes, or the 2017 tax code that still tilts savings offshore. Clarity first, action next, press representatives to close loopholes and demand truthful job ads, then keep building community so the pressure compounds.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEA7vQKJ8aQ