Global unemployment points to a four-year bear market

Global unemployment and the bear market: AI as the perfect excuse

A textbook paradox: the world's largest economy is officially at full employment —4% unemployment— yet it lost 100,000 jobs in a single month. Spain, with a population seven times smaller, recorded an even worse January. In early February 2026, a warning was making the rounds with growing weight: a four-year bear market has begun, and what we have seen so far would be just the appetizer.

Why 2008 might turn out to be mild

The most repeated forecast is not a soft correction. Some argue the 2008 financial crisis will look like a joke compared with what is coming. The argument rests on three pillars: consumer credit granted to applicants with only weeks of work history, inflation that already puts zucchini at three euros a kilo, and governments that may have to choose between default and hyperinflation. According to this view, the snowball is rolling even though the headline aggregates do not yet show it.

Artificial intelligence: cause or cover story?

The collapse of headcount at a well-known social network —80% of employees laid off while the service kept running— has become the mirror many executive boards look into. There are two opposing readings. The first holds that AI is wiping out professions on its own: translators, online teachers, video editors, musicians. The second replies that the technology is the perfect excuse to cut a bloated workforce full of positions that were never productive, many tied to diversity policies. Both agree on one striking delayed effect: if juniors are not hired, there will be no one to replace the seniors when they retire.

The job market is already showing its teeth

Entry-level job postings are racking up frightening numbers: an administrative assistant position in Barcelona drew 759 applications in four days; a part-time cashier shift in Girona, 260 in twenty-four hours. In Switzerland, four known layoffs in the same week each wiped out 20% of their company's workforce. The job destruction data move at a different estimulante ilegal than official statistics, which take months to reflect it.

Consensus on the bear market is growing, but one piece does not fit: housing. With migration pressure and housing needs, property could hold its prices for years, well into the next decade. If stocks fall and homes do not, the average saver will be caught between two fires. Who remembers a crisis with that combination?