September 8, 2022 • 19 mins
A lot of people out there have some regrets about their education. Just about 2 in 5 American graduates regret the major they took with almost half of humanities and arts majors regretting their choice. After the Great Recession, the country took a big shift to STEM majors and generally those students were happy with their decision. Andrew Van Dam, Department of Data columnist at The Washington Post, joins us for the most regretted and lowest paying college majors.
Next, as the uneven economic news leads to fears of a recession, people are worried about their job security as companies look to cut costs. The four kinds of employees most likely to get laid off in a downturn are new hires, high earners, millennials, and recruiters and coders. Aki Ito, senior correspondent at Insider, joins us for how those who benefitted from the Great Resignation are most at risk.
Finally, as overall pandemic worries continue to fade, one of the biggest curiosities continues to be log Covid, what causes it and who is the most susceptible? A new study says that psychological factors such as depression, anxiety, and loneliness, could be better predictors than physical ailments. To be clear, it is not a causal relationship, but there is an association. Siwen Wang, research fellow at Harvard and lead author of this study, joins us for what to know.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Thursday, September eight. I'm Oscar Ramieres in Los Angeles
and this is the Daily Dive. A lot of people
out there may have some regrets about their education. Just
about two and five American graduates regret the major they took,
with almost half of humanities and arts majors regretting their choice.
(00:21):
After the Great Recession, the country took a big shift
to stem majors, and generally those students were happy with
their decision. Andrew Van Damme, Department of Data columnists at
The Washington Post joins us for the most regretted and
lowest paying college majors. Next, as the uneven economic news
leads to fears of a recession, people who worried about
their job security as companies look to cut costs. The
(00:43):
four kinds of employees most likely to get laid off
in a downturn are new hires, high earners, millennials and
recruiters and coders. Aki Itto, senior correspondent at Insider, joins
us for how those who benefited from the Great Resignation
are most at risk. Finally, as overall pandemic worries continue
to fade, one of the biggest curiosities continues to be
(01:05):
long covid, what causes it and who is the most susceptible.
A new study says that psychological factors such as depression, anxiety,
and loneliness could be better predictors than physical ailments. To
be clear, it's not a causal relationship, but there is
an association. Sue En Wang, research fellow at Harvard and
lead author of the study, joins us for what's now,
(01:26):
It's news without the noise. Let's dive in aerospace engineering
four point seven million, Chemistry economics also quite high. And
then on the other end of the spectrum, we have,
say a theology major who can only expect to earn
about two million over their career. Joining us now is
Andrew Van Dam, Department of Data calumnist at the Washington Post.
(01:49):
Thanks for joining, Andrew, I am delighted to be here.
All right, let's talk about the most regretted and lowest
paying of college majors. So we're seeing is that almost
half of those in the humanities and arts majors are
regretting their choices. Who knows what the job prospects are like.
We're seeing a lot of people that are going to
(02:10):
stem majors are having a lot to maybe better time
with job prospects and higher paying jobs. They're not regretting
it as much. But we're seeing that at least nearly
two and five American college graduates have major regrets about
the majors they went into. So, Andrew, I know you
guys crunched the data there at the Department of Data.
Tell us a little bit more about what we're seeing. Yeah, so, um, well,
(02:32):
about half of hums and arts majors regret their major.
Of only a quarter of engineering majors and slight little
more computer science, math and health majors do. So folks
who are in those STEM subjects science, technology, engineering, math,
and everyone add an extra and that would be medicine
tend to have substantially lower regrets. And yeah, that probably
has something to do with the higher pay there's but
(02:54):
there's another factor work too, and that is that since
the Great Recession, are Asian has kind of pivoted towards
being extremely focused on STEM education. You'll remember Barack Obama
calling it a spot nik moment in his State of
the Union address that we need to rally focus on
STEM and compete with our international rivals such as China. Now,
(03:16):
if you're a humanities major, you are suddenly seeing everyone
focusing on stem. You're looking at your degree and thinking,
wait a minute, did I miss the boat here? Well,
we're seeing some data behind that too. By one, we're
seeing those people that went into you know, history, English, religion,
they're graduating less than half of the students that they
did in the early two thousands when that was kind
(03:37):
of their heyday, when a lot of people were going
into those fields. It is incredible the shift that has
happened in just a decade. Computer science maders have nearly doubled,
nursing vaders have nearly doubled in Meanwhile, we're looking at
history religion that have been cut almost in half. And
the religion in particular, though, is one of the lowest
earning majors, along with a lot of the fine arts
(04:00):
and some of the humanities. What do we see when
we look at vocational schools and vocational programs, because I mean,
you're you take some of those things and then their
lead to very good jobs, but sometimes you're kind of
a little more narrow in the approach. So how do
people feel about those That is a fantastic question because
all of the things we're saying would make you think
that vocational majors would be thrilled because they're graduating with
(04:23):
a specific job. They can walk out of school and
often you know, have a job out for almost immediately,
So you think they should be thrilled about the major.
But a large proportion of almost a third have regrets.
Now we have a theory for that, and that is
because a large number of vocational students are in for
profit programs, and for profit education is almost universally far
(04:44):
more regretted than people who went to a classic public,
nonprofit or nonprofit type of school. Now, tell me a
little bit about because it's not all bad news. Let's say,
with people that have gone into humanities and arts, there
are a lot of experts that are kind of praising
the fact that, you know, you're learn a lot of
critical thinking, you learn how to ask those hard questions,
and that really matters a lot in a lot of
(05:06):
different fields. So while maybe you're not taking a STEM
course or a STEM major that leads you kind of
down a pipeline, the other opportunities and humanities are, it's
kind of open up differently. They present themselves differently. Yeah,
so if you look at things by the person's percentile
in the profession, you will see that the top quarter
(05:27):
of say, history majors, are far more than the bottom
quarter of any STEM majors. So a lot matters on
who you are, not just on what you study, and
a lot of history majors and other humanities majors do
find that later on in their careers the communications and
critical thinking skills that they learned as a humanities major
(05:48):
are quite valued even in traditional STEM fields, and so
they are able to catch up and sometimes even gain
ground on people who started out and stim because they
have skills are highly valued in that field are not
widely taught in STEM courses. We always like to talk
a little bit about the money and find out where
everybody lands, souf when we're looking at these majors, who's
(06:11):
on top and whose way at the bottom. So in
terms of earnings, it's probably best to look at lifetime
earnings rather than earnings in any specific year, because if
you spend longer in school, you're going to have less
earning time over your life, even if you earn more
year to year. So taking into account that entire life cycle,
(06:32):
the highest earning majors are engineering typically such as chemical engineering,
where the typical graduates gonna earn five million dollars over
their career, or aerospace engineering four point seven million. Chemistry
economics also quite high. And then on the other end
of the spectrum we have say a theology major who
can only expect to earn about two million over their career,
(06:54):
or drama major around two point four million. Well, it'd
be interesting to see more down the line. Obviously we
need more data to go through all this, but how
any of this stuff we're seeing right now will compare
to kids these days, you know, wanting to be like
influencers and video content creators. There was a story recently saying,
you know that more and more kids want to go
(07:15):
into those kind of fields, So who knows what kind
of college majors that demands. But then again, you know
what they do after that, and you know, creating these videos.
That would be pretty fun to see some of that analysis.
It certainly would, and I could imagine the humanity is
paying off fairly big to that segment because again, it
it teaches you critical thinking and communication skills. Andrew Van Dam,
(07:38):
Department of Data calumnis at the Washington Post, thank you
very much for joining us. Thank you so much. It
was fantastic. They've been doling out much higher salaries to
these new hires than their existing employees as a result,
(07:59):
you know, because they're earning more, they have more of
a target on their backs, so to speak, compared to
some of the existing employees. Joining us now is aki Eto,
senior correspondent at Insider, Thanks for joining us, Hocky, thanks
for having me. Well, let's talk about the four kinds
of employees that might be most likely to be laid
off during an economic downturn. So right now, we're definitely
(08:22):
in uneven economic times. They're seeing forty year high inflation.
The Fed does look like it will probably raise the
interest rate again. There's fears of a recession that a
lot of people are still worried about. And one of
the things that happens when that's going around are layoffs.
A lot of times, you know, businesses aren't trying to
cut wherever they can, and sometimes they have to get
rid of some personnel. So we're still, you know, in
(08:46):
this tight labor market, but we're starting to see a
lot of these cracks happen. We're seeing layoffs happen at
startups and other companies. Some metrics say forty thou people
have been laid off so far, so people worry, am
I next? So there was some data going around showing,
you know, the kinds of people that have been getting
laid off recently. So akie tell us who could be
most at risk right now? So a workforce data provider
(09:09):
called Reveal your Labs looked at, you know, about seventeen
thousand people who have been laid off since March. They
looked at their linked in profiles to be able to
answer questions like, um, you know, how much tenure did
the people who were laid off have versus you know,
those who escaped the layoffs, How much did they earn?
How old were they were, kind of jobs did they perform?
(09:30):
And what they found was really interesting because there were
certain traits that people had that made them more vulnerable
to these layoffs this time around, and new hires ended
up being one of those particular ones. And you know,
we always hear that same you know, that whole saying
last in, first out. You know, then so the new
guys on the job might be at risk here, yes,
(09:51):
so the new guys always at risk, you know, during
a downturn, but this time there especially at risk because
of the very hot job market that we've had over
the last year. You know, companies have been forced to
compete just so fiercely for new talent that they've been
doling out much higher salaries to these new hires than
their existing employees as a result, you know, because they're
(10:14):
earning more, they have more of a target on their back,
so to speak, compared to some of the existing employees
who are earning a little bit less at the moment. Yeah,
and that's one of the themes that we had seen
throughout the pandemic, right the Great resignation, people leaving for
better pay, better conditions, better work life balance, all of that.
And there's this kind of theme that's running through all
(10:36):
of these will get to the rest of them right now,
but that you know, one of the big takeaways is
that if you benefited a lot from the Great Resignation,
it's possible that you could be at risk just because
of the way things have changed. So the next group
of people high earners, right, So this kind of is
in the tale of the new hires. You know, a
lot of people getting a better salaries as they started,
(10:57):
but even long time employees higher earners. When companies are
trying to trim some of that out, that's where they
look too first A lot of times, right, I mean,
you know, layoffs are always about cost cutting, and the
way you cut the most cost is by cutting the
people who earn the most. So this is pretty intuitive.
This is always what happens in recessions as well. When
(11:18):
you look at a bunch of different occupations, there seems
to be like about a ten dollar difference between the
people who are laid off and everybody else. The people
who are laid off seem to be earning about ten
thous dollars more than everyone else. So that does go
to show you know, if you earn a lot of
money at your company, then that puts you at risk
as well. Alright, this next group has never really had
(11:41):
a lot of good luck. It seems like h millennials
in the current round of layoffs. I think you know
other metrics, right, we're looking at the different things, different
data that we have here in these current round of layoffs.
They millonnaials made up sev the workforce, but of the layoffs. Yeah,
so you know your your apps reoely right that millennials
(12:01):
have had it very hard over the last decade or
decade and a half. You know, over the last year though,
they were really one of the biggest beneficiaries of this
booming job market. They were finally able to get out
of their low paying jobs and you know, move into
these positions where you know, they had better titles, better pay,
better working conditions. But because millennials really took advantage of
(12:25):
this moment of a really tight job market, as a result,
they are more vulnerable right now to Gen Z workers.
For example, they switched jobs a lot during the pandemic too,
but because they're still so young, they're not earning enough
to really make it worthwhile for companies to cut them,
whereas millennials they're you know, starting to earn quite a bit,
and so as a result, they have much more of
(12:47):
a target on their backs. Recruiters obviously, right, you know,
if companies aren't hiring, they're not going to need the
services of those looking to help hire more people. But
coders also figure into this when we're talking about startups
and all sorts of companies handling you know, the people
that are handling the back end of things you would
think there are some of the more critical employees that
(13:07):
would be sticking around. Yeah, I mean, you know, software
engineers for example. Tech companies tend to, you know, really
hold on to software engineers until the very end, because
you know, engineers are considered so core to what they do.
But this time around, it does seem like software engineers
have been overrepresented in the layoffs. And I think that
really goes to show just how much these software engineers
(13:31):
ended up getting overpaid during this great resignation. UM companies
were just going so overboard and giving engineers such crazy
salary offers that they're now kind of stepping back and
thinking like, oh, we went too far, we can't sustain this,
we can't afford this anymore, and so they're cutting a
lot of their software engineers as a result. Aki Eto,
(13:52):
senior correspondent at Insider, Thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks so much for having me. What we found is
that these psychological conditions are even stronger predictors for long
COVID as compared to those physical conditions you just mentioned,
(14:14):
like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. In our coal court, joining
us now is Suin Guang, research fellow at Harvard and
lead author of this latest study on long COVID. Thanks
for joining us, you Win, thank you. It's my owner
to be here. Well, let's talk about long COVID right now.
You know, in a lot of ways, we've seen the
pandemic subside. Many have been infected, many have had their
(14:37):
vaccines and booster shots, but a big curiosity that still
remains in all this is long COVID. You know. So
these are people that have been infected with COVID and
then the symptoms remain for sometimes months after even they
might be testing negative. And one of the big things
that we don't know is why exactly it happens and
who might be more susceptible. You know a lot of
people have said if you're a compromised or have hypertension,
(14:59):
different physical things you know, could increase your risk for
long COVID. But this new study, so when that you
were working on, shows that some psychological stressors are also
indicators of a more likelihood of this. So depression, anxiety, loneliness,
a lot of times these are predictors of experiencing long COVID.
So tell us a little bit more about the study,
So Win, thank you for the introduction of our research
(15:22):
and thank you for interest in our research. So briefly,
what we did was from early in the pandemic, we
followed more than fifty four thousand people for a year
over that year and more than three thousand contracted COVID nineteen.
So we also about your COVID symptoms and how long
they lost it. We found that psychological distress prior to infection,
including depression, anxiety, worry, perceived stress, and loneliness were significantly
(15:47):
associated with increased risk of long COVID. These was not
explained by health behaviors such as smoking, or by physical
health conditions like asthma, And interestingly, what we found is
that these psychological conditions are even stronger predictors for long
COVID as compared to those physical conditions you just mentioned
like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. In our cohort. Finally, among
(16:11):
those who developed long COVID, we found that people with
higher psychological distress before getting COVID were also had higher
risk of getting daily life impyramid due to long COVID,
and they report more symptoms of long COVID. Yeah, there's
a lot of interesting stuff in here. I mean, if
people had reported two or more types of these distressors,
it increased their risk by that's how much it could
(16:34):
have increased it. So they're just more susceptible to all
that stuff. And to be clear, having stress and anxiety
and depressionalities doesn't necessarily mean it's going to cause long COVID.
You know, it's not a causal effect per se, but
there is an association about having a lot of these
stressors in your life. So what we did was an
observation study, so we can not say it's causal. But
(16:57):
after you try to account for those demograph epic factors
like age, sacks, raise, ethnicity, and also those physical conditions,
we try to disentangled effect whether these psychological conditions are
more strongly predictors than those physical conditions. Now, a lot
of times when we're talking about long COVID, as I mentioned,
(17:17):
you know, these are prolonged symptoms after having COVID, A
lot of times people say they they experienced, you know,
the brain fog, being very lethargic, just being super tired,
and a lot of people will say, well, a lot
of they're just kind of carrying this in their head.
It's just a psychological thing. For them, and to be
clear again that that's not what the study is showing
as well. I mean, it's not that it's all in
(17:39):
your head. It's a purely psychological thing. There are some
physical symptoms that do persist as well, But just because
you've had some of these symptoms before, it does not
mean it's just a purely psychological phenomenon exactly. So our
results should not be misintegrated as supporting the have with
hypothesis that it's all in our heads. First of all,
(18:00):
among those who develop long COVID, around half of them
did not have any psychological distress at baseline. And most importantly,
when we excluded people who only reported fatigue had it
those kind of psychological and neurological symptoms as their long
COVID symptoms, the results were almost identical. Yeah, I mean,
(18:22):
I I know that all of this just really makes
more of a call for giving more people access, obviously
to mental health care. We saw people go throughout the
pandemic and really suffer a lot, their mental health suffered
a lot, And again, you know, just having these things
before could make this very novel virus, you know, treating
our bodies in a crazy different way than they've ever
(18:42):
felt before could also exacerbate some of those things. So
I know that's been one of the calls as well,
is to pay more attention to it and have better
accessibility for mental health. Yes, exactly, especially with our findings
that these are even stronger predictors than those well established
risk factors of those physical conditions. We definitely need to
(19:04):
understand that mental health conditions and physical well being are
so strongly interconnected, and we need to make cure accessible
and improved the quality of care for those who need it.
Sue and Wang, research fellow at Harvard and lead author
of this latest study on long COVID. Thank you very
much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Have
a good one. That's it for today. Join us on
(19:33):
social media at Daily Dive pod on, about, Twitter or Instagram,
leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
us the stories that you're interested in. Although us and
I are radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
This episode of The Daily Divers produced by Victor Right
and engineered by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar Room Mirrors and
this was your Daily Dive
It's Thursday, September eight. I'm Oscar Ramieres in Los Angeles
and this is the Daily Dive. A lot of people
out there may have some regrets about their education. Just
about two and five American graduates regret the major they took,
with almost half of humanities and arts majors regretting their choice.
(00:21):
After the Great Recession, the country took a big shift
to stem majors, and generally those students were happy with
their decision. Andrew Van Damme, Department of Data columnists at
The Washington Post joins us for the most regretted and
lowest paying college majors. Next, as the uneven economic news
leads to fears of a recession, people who worried about
their job security as companies look to cut costs. The
(00:43):
four kinds of employees most likely to get laid off
in a downturn are new hires, high earners, millennials and
recruiters and coders. Aki Itto, senior correspondent at Insider, joins
us for how those who benefited from the Great Resignation
are most at risk. Finally, as overall pandemic worries continue
to fade, one of the biggest curiosities continues to be
(01:05):
long covid, what causes it and who is the most susceptible.
A new study says that psychological factors such as depression, anxiety,
and loneliness could be better predictors than physical ailments. To
be clear, it's not a causal relationship, but there is
an association. Sue En Wang, research fellow at Harvard and
lead author of the study, joins us for what's now,
(01:26):
It's news without the noise. Let's dive in aerospace engineering
four point seven million, Chemistry economics also quite high. And
then on the other end of the spectrum, we have,
say a theology major who can only expect to earn
about two million over their career. Joining us now is
Andrew Van Dam, Department of Data calumnist at the Washington Post.
(01:49):
Thanks for joining, Andrew, I am delighted to be here.
All right, let's talk about the most regretted and lowest
paying of college majors. So we're seeing is that almost
half of those in the humanities and arts majors are
regretting their choices. Who knows what the job prospects are like.
We're seeing a lot of people that are going to
(02:10):
stem majors are having a lot to maybe better time
with job prospects and higher paying jobs. They're not regretting
it as much. But we're seeing that at least nearly
two and five American college graduates have major regrets about
the majors they went into. So, Andrew, I know you
guys crunched the data there at the Department of Data.
Tell us a little bit more about what we're seeing. Yeah, so, um, well,
(02:32):
about half of hums and arts majors regret their major.
Of only a quarter of engineering majors and slight little
more computer science, math and health majors do. So folks
who are in those STEM subjects science, technology, engineering, math,
and everyone add an extra and that would be medicine
tend to have substantially lower regrets. And yeah, that probably
has something to do with the higher pay there's but
(02:54):
there's another factor work too, and that is that since
the Great Recession, are Asian has kind of pivoted towards
being extremely focused on STEM education. You'll remember Barack Obama
calling it a spot nik moment in his State of
the Union address that we need to rally focus on
STEM and compete with our international rivals such as China. Now,
(03:16):
if you're a humanities major, you are suddenly seeing everyone
focusing on stem. You're looking at your degree and thinking,
wait a minute, did I miss the boat here? Well,
we're seeing some data behind that too. By one, we're
seeing those people that went into you know, history, English, religion,
they're graduating less than half of the students that they
did in the early two thousands when that was kind
(03:37):
of their heyday, when a lot of people were going
into those fields. It is incredible the shift that has
happened in just a decade. Computer science maders have nearly doubled,
nursing vaders have nearly doubled in Meanwhile, we're looking at
history religion that have been cut almost in half. And
the religion in particular, though, is one of the lowest
earning majors, along with a lot of the fine arts
(04:00):
and some of the humanities. What do we see when
we look at vocational schools and vocational programs, because I mean,
you're you take some of those things and then their
lead to very good jobs, but sometimes you're kind of
a little more narrow in the approach. So how do
people feel about those That is a fantastic question because
all of the things we're saying would make you think
that vocational majors would be thrilled because they're graduating with
(04:23):
a specific job. They can walk out of school and
often you know, have a job out for almost immediately,
So you think they should be thrilled about the major.
But a large proportion of almost a third have regrets.
Now we have a theory for that, and that is
because a large number of vocational students are in for
profit programs, and for profit education is almost universally far
(04:44):
more regretted than people who went to a classic public,
nonprofit or nonprofit type of school. Now, tell me a
little bit about because it's not all bad news. Let's say,
with people that have gone into humanities and arts, there
are a lot of experts that are kind of praising
the fact that, you know, you're learn a lot of
critical thinking, you learn how to ask those hard questions,
and that really matters a lot in a lot of
(05:06):
different fields. So while maybe you're not taking a STEM
course or a STEM major that leads you kind of
down a pipeline, the other opportunities and humanities are, it's
kind of open up differently. They present themselves differently. Yeah,
so if you look at things by the person's percentile
in the profession, you will see that the top quarter
(05:27):
of say, history majors, are far more than the bottom
quarter of any STEM majors. So a lot matters on
who you are, not just on what you study, and
a lot of history majors and other humanities majors do
find that later on in their careers the communications and
critical thinking skills that they learned as a humanities major
(05:48):
are quite valued even in traditional STEM fields, and so
they are able to catch up and sometimes even gain
ground on people who started out and stim because they
have skills are highly valued in that field are not
widely taught in STEM courses. We always like to talk
a little bit about the money and find out where
everybody lands, souf when we're looking at these majors, who's
(06:11):
on top and whose way at the bottom. So in
terms of earnings, it's probably best to look at lifetime
earnings rather than earnings in any specific year, because if
you spend longer in school, you're going to have less
earning time over your life, even if you earn more
year to year. So taking into account that entire life cycle,
(06:32):
the highest earning majors are engineering typically such as chemical engineering,
where the typical graduates gonna earn five million dollars over
their career, or aerospace engineering four point seven million. Chemistry
economics also quite high. And then on the other end
of the spectrum we have say a theology major who
can only expect to earn about two million over their career,
(06:54):
or drama major around two point four million. Well, it'd
be interesting to see more down the line. Obviously we
need more data to go through all this, but how
any of this stuff we're seeing right now will compare
to kids these days, you know, wanting to be like
influencers and video content creators. There was a story recently saying,
you know that more and more kids want to go
(07:15):
into those kind of fields, So who knows what kind
of college majors that demands. But then again, you know
what they do after that, and you know, creating these videos.
That would be pretty fun to see some of that analysis.
It certainly would, and I could imagine the humanity is
paying off fairly big to that segment because again, it
it teaches you critical thinking and communication skills. Andrew Van Dam,
(07:38):
Department of Data calumnis at the Washington Post, thank you
very much for joining us. Thank you so much. It
was fantastic. They've been doling out much higher salaries to
these new hires than their existing employees as a result,
(07:59):
you know, because they're earning more, they have more of
a target on their backs, so to speak, compared to
some of the existing employees. Joining us now is aki Eto,
senior correspondent at Insider, Thanks for joining us, Hocky, thanks
for having me. Well, let's talk about the four kinds
of employees that might be most likely to be laid
off during an economic downturn. So right now, we're definitely
(08:22):
in uneven economic times. They're seeing forty year high inflation.
The Fed does look like it will probably raise the
interest rate again. There's fears of a recession that a
lot of people are still worried about. And one of
the things that happens when that's going around are layoffs.
A lot of times, you know, businesses aren't trying to
cut wherever they can, and sometimes they have to get
rid of some personnel. So we're still, you know, in
(08:46):
this tight labor market, but we're starting to see a
lot of these cracks happen. We're seeing layoffs happen at
startups and other companies. Some metrics say forty thou people
have been laid off so far, so people worry, am
I next? So there was some data going around showing,
you know, the kinds of people that have been getting
laid off recently. So akie tell us who could be
most at risk right now? So a workforce data provider
(09:09):
called Reveal your Labs looked at, you know, about seventeen
thousand people who have been laid off since March. They
looked at their linked in profiles to be able to
answer questions like, um, you know, how much tenure did
the people who were laid off have versus you know,
those who escaped the layoffs, How much did they earn?
How old were they were, kind of jobs did they perform?
(09:30):
And what they found was really interesting because there were
certain traits that people had that made them more vulnerable
to these layoffs this time around, and new hires ended
up being one of those particular ones. And you know,
we always hear that same you know, that whole saying
last in, first out. You know, then so the new
guys on the job might be at risk here, yes,
(09:51):
so the new guys always at risk, you know, during
a downturn, but this time there especially at risk because
of the very hot job market that we've had over
the last year. You know, companies have been forced to
compete just so fiercely for new talent that they've been
doling out much higher salaries to these new hires than
their existing employees as a result, you know, because they're
(10:14):
earning more, they have more of a target on their back,
so to speak, compared to some of the existing employees
who are earning a little bit less at the moment. Yeah,
and that's one of the themes that we had seen
throughout the pandemic, right the Great resignation, people leaving for
better pay, better conditions, better work life balance, all of that.
And there's this kind of theme that's running through all
(10:36):
of these will get to the rest of them right now,
but that you know, one of the big takeaways is
that if you benefited a lot from the Great Resignation,
it's possible that you could be at risk just because
of the way things have changed. So the next group
of people high earners, right, So this kind of is
in the tale of the new hires. You know, a
lot of people getting a better salaries as they started,
(10:57):
but even long time employees higher earners. When companies are
trying to trim some of that out, that's where they
look too first A lot of times, right, I mean,
you know, layoffs are always about cost cutting, and the
way you cut the most cost is by cutting the
people who earn the most. So this is pretty intuitive.
This is always what happens in recessions as well. When
(11:18):
you look at a bunch of different occupations, there seems
to be like about a ten dollar difference between the
people who are laid off and everybody else. The people
who are laid off seem to be earning about ten
thous dollars more than everyone else. So that does go
to show you know, if you earn a lot of
money at your company, then that puts you at risk
as well. Alright, this next group has never really had
(11:41):
a lot of good luck. It seems like h millennials
in the current round of layoffs. I think you know
other metrics, right, we're looking at the different things, different
data that we have here in these current round of layoffs.
They millonnaials made up sev the workforce, but of the layoffs. Yeah,
so you know your your apps reoely right that millennials
(12:01):
have had it very hard over the last decade or
decade and a half. You know, over the last year though,
they were really one of the biggest beneficiaries of this
booming job market. They were finally able to get out
of their low paying jobs and you know, move into
these positions where you know, they had better titles, better pay,
better working conditions. But because millennials really took advantage of
(12:25):
this moment of a really tight job market, as a result,
they are more vulnerable right now to Gen Z workers.
For example, they switched jobs a lot during the pandemic too,
but because they're still so young, they're not earning enough
to really make it worthwhile for companies to cut them,
whereas millennials they're you know, starting to earn quite a bit,
and so as a result, they have much more of
(12:47):
a target on their backs. Recruiters obviously, right, you know,
if companies aren't hiring, they're not going to need the
services of those looking to help hire more people. But
coders also figure into this when we're talking about startups
and all sorts of companies handling you know, the people
that are handling the back end of things you would
think there are some of the more critical employees that
(13:07):
would be sticking around. Yeah, I mean, you know, software
engineers for example. Tech companies tend to, you know, really
hold on to software engineers until the very end, because
you know, engineers are considered so core to what they do.
But this time around, it does seem like software engineers
have been overrepresented in the layoffs. And I think that
really goes to show just how much these software engineers
(13:31):
ended up getting overpaid during this great resignation. UM companies
were just going so overboard and giving engineers such crazy
salary offers that they're now kind of stepping back and
thinking like, oh, we went too far, we can't sustain this,
we can't afford this anymore, and so they're cutting a
lot of their software engineers as a result. Aki Eto,
(13:52):
senior correspondent at Insider, Thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks so much for having me. What we found is
that these psychological conditions are even stronger predictors for long
COVID as compared to those physical conditions you just mentioned,
(14:14):
like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. In our coal court, joining
us now is Suin Guang, research fellow at Harvard and
lead author of this latest study on long COVID. Thanks
for joining us, you Win, thank you. It's my owner
to be here. Well, let's talk about long COVID right now.
You know, in a lot of ways, we've seen the
pandemic subside. Many have been infected, many have had their
(14:37):
vaccines and booster shots, but a big curiosity that still
remains in all this is long COVID. You know. So
these are people that have been infected with COVID and
then the symptoms remain for sometimes months after even they
might be testing negative. And one of the big things
that we don't know is why exactly it happens and
who might be more susceptible. You know a lot of
people have said if you're a compromised or have hypertension,
(14:59):
different physical things you know, could increase your risk for
long COVID. But this new study, so when that you
were working on, shows that some psychological stressors are also
indicators of a more likelihood of this. So depression, anxiety, loneliness,
a lot of times these are predictors of experiencing long COVID.
So tell us a little bit more about the study,
So Win, thank you for the introduction of our research
(15:22):
and thank you for interest in our research. So briefly,
what we did was from early in the pandemic, we
followed more than fifty four thousand people for a year
over that year and more than three thousand contracted COVID nineteen.
So we also about your COVID symptoms and how long
they lost it. We found that psychological distress prior to infection,
including depression, anxiety, worry, perceived stress, and loneliness were significantly
(15:47):
associated with increased risk of long COVID. These was not
explained by health behaviors such as smoking, or by physical
health conditions like asthma, And interestingly, what we found is
that these psychological conditions are even stronger predictors for long
COVID as compared to those physical conditions you just mentioned
like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. In our cohort. Finally, among
(16:11):
those who developed long COVID, we found that people with
higher psychological distress before getting COVID were also had higher
risk of getting daily life impyramid due to long COVID,
and they report more symptoms of long COVID. Yeah, there's
a lot of interesting stuff in here. I mean, if
people had reported two or more types of these distressors,
it increased their risk by that's how much it could
(16:34):
have increased it. So they're just more susceptible to all
that stuff. And to be clear, having stress and anxiety
and depressionalities doesn't necessarily mean it's going to cause long COVID.
You know, it's not a causal effect per se, but
there is an association about having a lot of these
stressors in your life. So what we did was an
observation study, so we can not say it's causal. But
(16:57):
after you try to account for those demograph epic factors
like age, sacks, raise, ethnicity, and also those physical conditions,
we try to disentangled effect whether these psychological conditions are
more strongly predictors than those physical conditions. Now, a lot
of times when we're talking about long COVID, as I mentioned,
(17:17):
you know, these are prolonged symptoms after having COVID, A
lot of times people say they they experienced, you know,
the brain fog, being very lethargic, just being super tired,
and a lot of people will say, well, a lot
of they're just kind of carrying this in their head.
It's just a psychological thing. For them, and to be
clear again that that's not what the study is showing
as well. I mean, it's not that it's all in
(17:39):
your head. It's a purely psychological thing. There are some
physical symptoms that do persist as well, But just because
you've had some of these symptoms before, it does not
mean it's just a purely psychological phenomenon exactly. So our
results should not be misintegrated as supporting the have with
hypothesis that it's all in our heads. First of all,
(18:00):
among those who develop long COVID, around half of them
did not have any psychological distress at baseline. And most importantly,
when we excluded people who only reported fatigue had it
those kind of psychological and neurological symptoms as their long
COVID symptoms, the results were almost identical. Yeah, I mean,
(18:22):
I I know that all of this just really makes
more of a call for giving more people access, obviously
to mental health care. We saw people go throughout the
pandemic and really suffer a lot, their mental health suffered
a lot, And again, you know, just having these things
before could make this very novel virus, you know, treating
our bodies in a crazy different way than they've ever
(18:42):
felt before could also exacerbate some of those things. So
I know that's been one of the calls as well,
is to pay more attention to it and have better
accessibility for mental health. Yes, exactly, especially with our findings
that these are even stronger predictors than those well established
risk factors of those physical conditions. We definitely need to
(19:04):
understand that mental health conditions and physical well being are
so strongly interconnected, and we need to make cure accessible
and improved the quality of care for those who need it.
Sue and Wang, research fellow at Harvard and lead author
of this latest study on long COVID. Thank you very
much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Have
a good one. That's it for today. Join us on
(19:33):
social media at Daily Dive pod on, about, Twitter or Instagram,
leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
us the stories that you're interested in. Although us and
I are radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
This episode of The Daily Divers produced by Victor Right
and engineered by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar Room Mirrors and
this was your Daily Dive
The Daily Dive News
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.