If you've been eating the same for the last 20 years and you've been gradually gaining weight over the last 20 years, then it's your diet.

If you've been eating the same for the last 20 years and you suddenly gain weight, it's likely not your diet, it's something else -- exercise, illness, et cetera.

You're overfocusing on one single component of a fairly complex system. Government spending, COVID impacts (pent up demand, supply chain disruptions), a massive war in Europe impacting multiple crucial raw materials - they all have a part in the stagnation / borderline recession we're seeing. Anyone claiming it's "simple" or due to one single factor either has an agenda or doesn't understand how complex economics are.

I mean, both can be true. ZIRP wasn't made over the recessions either. Tech has been in that rush for at least 12 years now. If not longer. You mention 15-20 years after all.

We had at least one recession during your time period. It doesn't preclude another one.

>labor shortages in the post-pandemic era have led many employers to hold on to workers and hire less-skilled workers—even though they expect demand for their goods or services to weaken in the future. As a result, unemployment remains low, and labor productivity has declined."

I see this as a natural consequence to their actions, though. You require "Junior" engineers to have 3+ years of experience, discourage apprenticeships in lieu of short internship stints and headhunting acedemia, and overall try and compartmentalize engineering roles. So no surprise that labor in the Gen Z won't be as skilled as the Gen X that rose entire industries from the ground up. It's due (but not limited to):

- tech being more complex. How many people worked on Google search in 1999? How many work on search alone in 2023, let alone the other 30+ division Google has now.

- top talent more and more seeking out their own business ventures. Same questions as above. More startups and more Ycombinators to fund them. People really want to be or to fund "the next big thing" in a rate not seen since the Dot Com era.

- simply being ubiquitous. You can work in tech without being in a tech company. If you don't like the hustle of FAANG or high frequency trading, there are plenty of places who just need to maintain their website outside of tech. This won't drive growth as much, but it pays the bills.

There's many factors behind this, but I will emphasize that people requiring top talent need to invest in them. Schools don't have the same goals as employers, and schools as is are becoming more cost prohibitive as is.

The Max timescale is even more interesting. Almost every time one of those gray-shaded recessionary periods begins, it's preceded by a graph segment that looked exactly like the last couple of years.