Job market is awful

Far too many people needlessly go to university.

they are scared into going.

It's awful out there and I don't think a lot of people understand.

I've been trying to get a new job to locate out of my town for over a year. People know I want to move and seem baffled as to why I haven't moved yet. I feel like I'm stalling but I just can't get a job!

AI is good for writing code and debugging but that's not just what IT is about. Developers spend time talking to other areas of the business, building or customising processes and workflows, integrating software with other systems, dealing with data inconsistencies, migrating data, improving performance, improving security, testing (though a lot is automated, we find it still needs manual input). AI is good for repetitive tasks but you'd still need an experienced developer to check that code and debugs.

Yes I completely agree that skilled trades are a great career for a lot of young people and more people should be going into them.

But they are not for everyone and this doesn’t solve the problem for the people whose skills are more oriented towards knowledge work. If we don’t support people who want this kind of work they will eventually seek work overseas.

What should they do instead?? Many jobs that don't need a degree want people with degrees these days, just because they can.

There has been decades or rewarding 'knowledge' at a level way above it's actual worth and devaluing societal needs like elderly and child care or social work. We have for years thought that someone who can draft a legal contract is much more valuable than someone who can protect our children from a dysfunctional upbringing. Someone who ensures our children are safe and stimulated and informed whilst we work are only valued at a 10th of the value of someone who travels into 'the city' to do what they do. About time the 'knowledge' economy became accountable to what it actually contributes for the rewards it gets.

yeah that's what they are meant to be doing.

I know a lot of I.T guys.

I.T. seems to be a very popular area to get into.

The I.T guys that I know all tell me that they don't do much. They also tell me that they don't know how to do most things. that if they are asked to do something, they look up on an internal system how to do it and then the system kind of does it itself

i do think i wasted my life living in the UK and ireland. I wish id gone to live in Spain. Too late now. I'm in my 40s and I cant see businesses in spain hiring me over 20 year olds

And yet, young Spanish people are leaving the country in large numbers. Unemployment is high and wages are low. Sure, the lifestyle can be great, but not if you can barely afford to get by.

Unemployment is low in spain for the specific job market that I am looking at. They always want English teachers (teaching english as a second language) in Spain.

The only thing is that Salary can be low and I'm nervous to move again.

However, the last time I was in Spain on a lower Salary than I am in England, I was so so so much happier in myself. Ive been utterly miserable in England. and I think that is what life is about - finding where you are happy.

I feel I made a wrong move, moving to England, I'm surviving on the money Im on, but Im unhappy all the time.

Im scared to make a move in case I make another wrong decision

I'm scared to make a move. But I wish I was braver sometimes. I see people making huge moves in life, not worrying and just seeing what happens.

Watch the IT crowd. That explains what they do

How to know which way to go in life, which direction to take. I remember my friend saying to me once 'I wish someone would just tell me what to do with my life'

I’m also glad I have one dc who I will hopefully be able to help if needed. She’s also doing two languages, has a EU passport and hopes to live in Spain for a time when she’s older.

It’s the worst I’ve ever known it and I’m late 40s. I’m in a ‘safe’ industry but after decades of renting I’m buying a (small) house next year and feeling terrified because if I lose my job and can’t find another I’m fucked.

I can’t see things improving. AI and automation are here to stay because when given a choice employers will always prefer not to spend on NI, pension contributions, annual leave etc. Within the next five years I expect there’s going to be a huge downturn in people’s mental health, much worse than what we saw during Covid. If you take away purpose and income then that will hit people really hard.

There are people in my department that should have retired years ago but can’t

I wanted to live in England as I thought it would be nice, but I have been unhappy in my life since Ive moved here.

The main thing: is the people. I start to feel like I'm living in a weird zombieland

In other countries, people are so friendly, kind chatty. They help each other along.

In England, many people I've met have been cold, unempathetic and seem completely unable to have a chat.

I went to Ireland last week. I went to a shop.I had never met the person working there. She heard me cough. She said 'ah do you have a cold you poor pet, I had one last week'. Then she started chatting about something else. Just a minor chatty interaaction with a stranger. i went into a cafe then, and the woman also chatted away.

Ive lived in the same town in England for two years. The people have always been unfriendly. I've gone to the same local shop for years. If I mention the weather or anything to get a small bit of chat going, they glare at me. So now I don't say anything.

A woman that I work with has an Italian student staying with her for the summer.

She said the student turned to her and said 'why are the people so weird here in England'

It's the unfriendliness that needs to be changed.

I've recently been offered 2 jobs after looking, applying and interviewing for a year without luck.

The 2 things that helped me were firstly, only applying for jobs with companies/organisations who did not or were not likely to be using huge AI trawls through CVs or applications. I stopped applying for all of those and that definitely helped my hit rate.

The other thing that 'helped' was that my DH lost his job and I had to just be determined that I was putting across that I was the best candidate for the next 2 interviews I had...those were the ones I was offered and I start in a couple of weeks at one of them.

What work to do you? Can you move to Spain on the digital nomad visa?

I don't need a Digital nomad visa. I have an E.U passport.

I wrote that I worked in 'Teaching english as a second language' before in spain. I don't work in it at the moment in England.

I would like to move back to Spain as I was happier in Spain, but I'm scared as people tell me that the TEFL industry is not always reliable, slightly lower salary, and they prefer to hire younger people

I would love to live in spain again, but now I am in my forties I feel so much more scared about making the wrong decision job wise. you have to really think it through when you are in your forties.

That's not how UBI works.

What do IT people do? Well, for the next few months I am designing a high performance compute cluster for a customer. This involves talking to dozens of stakeholders, all of whom will have conflicting views on what the cluster should do and how it will do it. My job is to come up with a cohesive architecture for the cluster that satisfies all of the hundreds of (often conflicting) use cases that the stakeholders have flung at me, while meeting budget constraints, and being in the realms of what is actually possible with the available tech. Then I need to start selecting software stacks that we can actually use to implement those use cases - this is tricky in itself as they often conflict, or have conflicting dependencies. Then I need to create a backlog of work to actually build the cluster physically (compute, network, storage), software deployment and configuration, disaster recovery and business continuity, acceptance testing, and "day 2 operations": monitoring dashboards, logging, scale out, user on/off boarding, quota allocation etc. Then I need to be available for a few months of "high dependency" once the solution is launched in case anything goes wrong.

I have never met anyone else involved in the project in person - in fact none of them even live in the same country as me, and the customer itself is in a country I have never visited.

People are more hostile and insular when their country becomes more diverse culturally etc. You'll find in Ireland and some other friendly countries you're thinking of most people look, dress, speak and behave much more similarly.

True, I'm slightly older than you and the whole pension thing focusses the mind.
But honestly, if you're that miserable in England and you know from past expeience how much happier you were in Spain, I'd go for it - you only get the one life after all. Having an EU passport is a tremendous advantage, and I presume you're bilingual?
And yes salaries are lower but so is housing, local taxes, utilities etc.

People in the YooKay are just going to have to accept a lower standard of living. Not everyone will be able to have a car or go on foreign holidays or change their mobile phone every year or have macciedees delivered every day.