The unemployment rate has hovered around 3.7 percent for months. But it’s the TikTok-famous “stop hush” and live-tweeted layoffs that really explained what was happening in the US job market in 2022, a moment of newfound worker power and remarkable turmoil.
While government data can tell us that the world is changing rapidly three years after the pandemic, internet trends — the ones that took off and the apps we’ve come to rely on — illustrate how people are responding to a new and evolving normal.
Negroni sbagliatos catapulted into fame and onto cocktail menus, underlining that people were ready to spend money on fancy happy hours again. Instagram feeds filled with beach and mountain shots as “revenge trips” took off. We collectively learned what “vibe shift” means just as we realized the economy was going through one.
Below is a rundown of some of the year’s more colorful memes and moments — and what they usher in 2023.
Between high inflation and years of workplace change — including pandemic layoffs, work-from-home burnout, and most recently a struggling return to the office — the economic status quo seemed like an increasingly bad deal for many Americans in 2022. Beyoncé pushed the discontent on your favorite music app and immediately released a hit titled “Break My Soul.” The lyrics included “And I just quit my job I’m going to find a new drive”, which inspired the internet to ask if Queen B was encouraging everyone to join the Great Resignation.
In fact, people were so conflicted about work this year that they needed new words to describe it. The TikTok discourse gave us “stopping quietly,” a trend in which employees do the bare minimum. Then came “career dampening,” discreetly creating a backup plan while in your current job. At the same time, employers reported “worker hoarding,” avoiding firing people after being burned for months during which there were far more vacancies than applicants. The job data made it clear that the labor market was out of balance, but it was the public debate that revealed how much.
Money printer Go ‘Brrrr-okay’
The Federal Reserve this year reversed two years of floor rates and raised borrowing costs at the fastest pace in decades in an effort to contain rapid inflation. Actual prices were slow to respond, but Reddit wasn’t. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed Chairman, used to be featured in memes with the catchphrase “money printer goes brrrr” showing how he made money cheaply and easily. In 2022, the memes got an update – to Shrek. Today’s memes compare Mr. Powell with the 2001 film character Lord Farquaad, who famously stated, “Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
The grumpiness on the Reddit discussion boards came as the Fed’s actions cost many investors money. Prominent cryptocurrencies plummeted, and asset prices in general fell, with stocks down about 20 percent from the start of the year. Financial markets are likely to remain tense into 2023: inflation is slowing but remains high, and the Fed is poised to raise rates at least a little more to keep them in check. Basically, the memes are likely to remain grim.
TikTok was crazy about butter boards for part of this year: slices of the spread topped with flowers, fancy salt, honey or other flavorings. Was this a delayed response to the low-fat, fat-free fads of recent decades? Evidence that influencers can make us do something? One thing we can say for sure: it was expensive.
That’s because prices for food – and dairy products in particular – have risen sharply this year. The costs of butter and margarine were 34 percent higher in November than twelve months previously. Food in general increased by 10.6 percent.
But as the continued popularity of the butter shelf underlined, people buy food even when it gets more expensive. While retailers reported that some lower-income consumers began to withdraw from discretionary purchases and prioritize bare necessities, spending overall was fairly resilient despite a year and a half of rapid price hikes and months of interest rate moves by the Fed.
So far, inflation also remains high and extends well beyond the dairy aisle. A popular price index is still 7.1 percent above its year-ago level, much faster than the typical annual rate of 2 percent.
Barbie core
Americans continued to shop in 2022, but what they buy is undergoing quiet change. Americans had been buying up commodities like sofas and clothes early in the pandemic, but they are slowly shifting now their purchases back to services.
Social media popularized over-the-top fashion in 2022, including “Barbiecore” (very pink, named after the pop and upcoming movie) and “avant apocalypse,” which paid sartorial tribute to the coming end days. But another big trend of the year – buying used clothes, #thrifted – may have more accurately reflected the year’s changing economic energy. Clothing store sales are slowing, according to official data, and downright downright when you subtract clothing inflation.
Do you have a reservation?
When the world opened up again and Americans started spending on experiences again, restaurant tables in particular became a hot item. Walk-in tables increased 14 percent from 2019, while tables with online reservations increased 24 percent, according to data from table reservation app OpenTable. The numbers confirmed what residents of New York and other cities could tell you (and did in several media dissections): It was a battle to get a table in 2022 as waitstaff shortages collided with demand to hot dinners.
OpenTable’s data shows that happy hour has surged especially in 2022. People eat earlier and after years of missed work drinks, this is the comeback tour of the overpriced cocktail. It’s one more reason that Negronis made with Prosecco, popularized by a promotional video for the “House of the Dragon” show on HBO’s TikTok account, is having a moment.
No room in the inn
As it turns out, people missed the beach as much as those 5 o’clock martinis. Cue the ‘revenge journey’.
Holidaymakers en masse made up for their travels delayed by the pandemic in 2022, and while they had great adventures, air traffic recovered sharply and came close to 2019 levels. Hotel revenues fully recovered. At the same time, some travel-related industries skated by with an extremely thin workforce. Accommodation employment is just 83 percent of February 2020 levels. Employment in air transport has increased overall, but industry groups have complained of labor shortages in key areas such as air traffic control.
As hotels, motels and airlines struggled to operate at full capacity, room rates and rates skyrocketed and major disruptions became commonplace. As of September, air travel complaints were more than 380 percent above 2019 levels, according to the Department of Transportation. The mismatch underlined that key parts of the U.S. economy are struggling to rebalance after the pandemic-induced tumult, even if people want to be in #holiday mode.
Peak wedding
In some cases, pandemic trends collide with demographic trends — and nothing showed that more clearly than the many wedding photos that filled Instagram feeds this year. After years of historically few ceremonies leading up to the pandemic, this was probably the biggest year for weddings since 1997, according to data and forecasts compiled by the Wedding Report, a trade journal.
The pop, the combined result of a pandemic-postponed wedding and a large group of marriage-age millennials, translated into fully booked venues and vendors. It also raises questions about the economic ripple effects: Will those couples have children and send birth records, which already ticked up slightly in 2021? Are they going to buy houses? We can find out in 2023.
Grandmillennial
America’s younger generations do more than get married. Since the start of the pandemic, they have been forming their own households and buying houses in greater numbers. In the process, they’ve helped fuel strong demand for homes and popular interior design trends — including “grandmillennial,” affectionately dubbed “granny chic” on Pinterest, in which the young-ish repurposes floral wallpaper and old-fashioned light fixtures for a cozy yet updated look. look.
But many millennials, who are roughly between the ages of 26 and 41 and are in their peak home buying years, may be losing their chance to become real estate influencers. When the Fed raised interest rates this year to quell rapid inflation, a wave of would-be homeowners began to discover that the combination of higher mortgage payments and high home prices meant they couldn’t afford to buy. Sales of new homes have fallen in particular. Fed rates are expected to continue to rise in 2023, which could be a tough road ahead for a generation struggling to make the leap into homeownership. And after a year of serious economic changes and far-reaching policy adjustments, it is uncertain what is to come: A recession? A benign cooling of inflation?
On the bright side, we’ll have social trends to help us interpret the data, and occasionally to help us find the lighter side of it. To quote Corn Kid, a precocious veggie lover who rose to TikTok royalty in 2022, “I can’t imagine anything more beautiful.”
Reporting contributed by Lora Kelly, Isabella Simonetti, Sapna Maheshwari, Emma Goldberg and Lydia DePillis.
