Memory makers lock supply as US clean energy sheds 36,949 jobs

Two labour-market stories landed within hours of each other this week, and neither has much to do with the AI-hiring headlines that dominated the wires on 28 and 29 September. One is about memory chips, the other about clean energy.

Start with the memory market. On 29 September, GamersNexus published a written adaptation of a video originally released on 21 September, arguing that DRAM and NAND manufacturers have found a way to suppress the industry's historically cyclical pricing. The mechanism, according to the report, is long-term agreements with fewer customers: gamersnexus.net. Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix have, in the outlet's words, "diverted a flood of memory away from consumers." The result is a market where a handful of buyers set the terms and everyone else pays the spot price, or does not buy at all.

The price data is blunt. Since last September, average prices rose 137% for 2 TB NVMe SSDs, 183% for 2 TB SATA SSDs, 363% for 32GB DDR5 kits and 294% for 32GB DDR4 kits, based on the product listings GamersNexus sampled. DDR5-6000 64GB kits went from $240 to between $1,300 and $1,400, roughly 483%. A 4 TB Samsung 990 Pro that cost $390 in 2024 is now $1,100, a 254% rise. The outlet bought 128 GB of DDR5-6400 GSkill ECC Registered memory for $1,060 in 2024; comparable NEMIX 128GB kits are listed by third-party sellers at $6,800.

That is consumer hardware. The jobs angle is what happens when the same capital gets redirected.

GamersNexus quotes Amazon saying more users than ever will consider its cloud services because on-premises hardware has become so expensive. If memory-intensive work moves to rented compute, the spending shifts from a buyer's balance sheet to a hyperscaler's, and the labour that used to sit around local machines thins out. The outlet frames it as the endgame: hobbyists priced out, small businesses told to rent instead of buy. That is a demand story dressed as a supply story, and it lands on the same balance sheets that fund AI buildouts.

Apple's Tim Cook, in his final earnings call as CEO, put the scale of the squeeze in one sentence: "We reluctantly raised prices I would say and we did it because we're in what I would characterize as a 100-year flood on the memory pricing with exponential increases in memory prices." GamersNexus also cites a forecast that worldwide smartphone shipments will fall 16.7% in 2026, with the average selling price reaching $581, up 27.6% in a single year. Microsoft's Xbox unit, meanwhile, said: "Effective August 1, 2026, we will be updating prices worldwide. The price of XBOX consoles will increase by US$100 for 512 GB models and US$150 for 1 TB models. We will also be sunsetting our 2 TB model."

The clean-energy numbers point the other way, and they are worse.

On 28 September, Electrek reported that the US lost 36,949 clean energy jobs in 2025, ending four straight years of growth. The figure comes from E2, which analysed employment data from the US Department of Energy. Clean energy employment fell to 3.52 million, the first annual decline since the pandemic, and the losses erased nearly 40% of the gains made in 2024. E2 attributes the downturn to federal policy reversals under the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress, which led companies to cancel or scale back projects. The geography is uneven. Losses reached 35 states. California shed nearly 21,000 clean energy jobs, the most of any state, while Florida gained about 3,800. Energy efficiency, renewable energy and EVs all lost jobs; battery storage and grid work, along with biofuels, posted small gains. E2's project tracker recorded 142 clean energy manufacturing, generation and storage projects cancelled or downsized in 2025, according to Electrek.

One caveat matters. Electrek notes that the employment figures show the extent of the decline but do not establish how many of those jobs were lost to a particular policy change.

The broader energy industry shed an estimated 86,000 jobs in 2025, according to DOE data cited by E2. Clean energy accounted for roughly 43% of that decline, yet it remains the largest part of the energy workforce at more than 3.5 million people. Oil and gas companies employ 958,000 workers, coal companies 125,000 and nuclear companies 70,000. E2's full Clean Jobs America 2026 report, with state, county and industry detail, is expected in October. Until then, the 36,949 figure is an initial finding.

So the two stories sit side by side. Memory makers are converting a commodity into a contracted one and pricing consumers out, which pushes compute demand toward the cloud. Clean energy is contracting because policy support was withdrawn, which pushes workers out of the sector entirely. Neither is an AI story in the narrow sense, but both are about how AI-era infrastructure spending is financed and who pays for it.

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook said on 29 September that AI infrastructure spending is pushing up inflation first, and that only a small fraction of the $2 trillion in planned investment has actually been spent, according to finance.biggo.com. The same day, Eunews reported that ECB President Christine Lagarde warned of an AI bubble and risks to markets from corporate debt. On 28 September, BBC reported that a UK minister said the country needs a plan in case of "unprecedented" AI job losses, a line City AM also carried.

The hiring data is ambiguous. CFO Dive reported on 28 September that White House economist Kevin Hassett argued AI creates jobs rather than kills them. MarketWatch reported the same day that choosing AI-exposed college majors could dent job prospects and lower pay. Newsweek reported on 28 September on data showing it may be easier for Gen Z to get a job without a college degree. ABC News asked how AI will affect the post-grad job market. NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth reported that Fed researchers see AI changing the Texas workforce but far from a job apocalypse.

Three sources disagree on direction, and the honest position is that the evidence is not settled.

What is settled is the memory price data and the E2 jobs count, both of which have hard numbers behind them and both of which describe workers and consumers being pushed, not pulled. There is one more labour-market signal worth flagging. economy.ac argued on 29 September that AI's effect is showing up as a hidden divide rather than mass redundancy, a framing that fits the clean-energy result: jobs disappearing quietly through cancelled projects, not through headline layoffs. thestreet.com reported on 28 September that Microsoft cut hundreds more jobs as restructuring deepened, which is the other pattern: cuts announced in tranches, without a single dramatic moment.

For readers trying to work out what this means for their own plans, the practical takeaway is narrow. Memory prices are being set by contracts, not by spot demand, and the E2 numbers are initial. Both will be revised. The direction of travel, though, is visible in the primary material: long-term supply agreements on one side, 142 cancelled or downsized projects on the other.