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It’s October, and we still don’t have the September jobs report because the government shut down. But the data we do have shows a clear trend: Job growth is slowing, unemployment is ticking up, and cities like New York are seeing the weakest labor market gains in decades. If you’ve noticed more “Open to Work” badges on LinkedIn, heard stories about people applying to thousands of positions, or felt the chill in your own job search, you’re not imagining it: The job market sucks right now, and things have been headed in this direction since before Trump took office.

To wrap our head around how we got here (tariffs? offshoring? AI and automation?), we brought on the best person we could think of to explain it: Richard D. Wolff, a longtime faculty member at places like The New School and UMass Amherst, author of myriad books on economic methodology and class analysis, a founding director of Democracy at Work, and one of the most prominent Marxist economists in America. (Full disclosure: Rick’s work on class and labor were tremendously influential on Andrea’s work as a sociology student.)

In part one of our two-part conversation, Rick explains why today’s shaky job market is just the latest phase in a decades-long trend that began in the 1970s—and, in his view, a symptom of an empire (and economic system) on the verge of collapse. We also get into the flawed logic behind Trump’s tariff and immigration policies, the real reasons offshored jobs aren’t “coming back,” and why China’s working class is seeing wage growth while American workers are stuck in place.

Follow Rick’s work at Democracy at Work—and watch his Economic Update podcast.

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