AIBU to think redundancy crisis is not getting enough media coverage?

Nobody gave two hoots about the fact that the unemployment rate was over 25% on the north east during maggies reign.

no one cared in the 90s when people lost their homes as well as their jobs

I’ve been round this loop before and no one ever care

100% agree with @Brindlekindle

Up to 40,000 jobs are reported to are be going across the Civil Service (and it's various sub-bodies) over the next year. This includes core departments such as FCDO, MOD and Home Office. Some departments its over 50%, in others it's lower at only 25%.

I have friends in the private sector who are facing similar challenges; mergers where their 'department' is no longer needed, cutting back on areas that aren't making money etc, replacing people with AI.

It's all 'okay' when you look at it in isolation. Perhaps it is really the useless ones being sacked. Perhaps the jobs weren't needed. But when you start looking at the jobs market, and see just how bad it is...yeah, it's pretty worrying because where are all these people going to go to get jobs? It's not only 'older' workers being laid off, but younger ones as well or university graduates not getting jobs to start with.

I've never had as many applicants, from incredibly over-qualified candidates, for jobs as I have the last few months. It's absolutely bananas.

Retirement age is 67. No state pension till then. Why would they stop work?

Yes! We are desperate for staff in engineering but nobody is qualified or has relevant experience, very few applications, even for apprenticeships. Its well paid, its a growing sector, its skilled work. But tumbleweed from adverts.

Educations has been so focused on university and office based jobs that nobody has any practical skills.

There are adverse changes, but not as large as people seem to be thinking (so far).

Estimates for payrolled employees in the UK fell by 85,000 (0.3%) between May 2025 and May 2026. However, it was largely unchanged on the month, increasing by 3,000 (0.0%) between April and May 2026. This is based on administrative data from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

Job vacancies
Number of job vacancies
Quarterly change: ▼-7,000
Annual change: ▼ -18,000

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/july2026

Plenty of jobs available in agriculture, ag engineering and associated services. You can name your price as a specialist electrician, pump repair person or septic tank service person.

I’d also like to know what engineering sector has shortages so I can steer dc in that direction.

Blame NI and NMW/LLW increases. They have sent businesses under.

Pretty sure that’s not why 54 year old software engineers are being made redundant

I think many of us who were in an industry that's either fallen because of lack of use (restaurants, shops etc), or taken over by AI are going to be working in the care sector or building type thing just to keep bills paid. It's about the only sector that's still struggling to recruit as far as I know.

Things have been changing for a long time, it's just speeding up now. Even my own industry (newspapers) was cut back severely some 15-20 years back, esp photographers. Local paper photographers all went, most of the in-house national photographers went, using the occasional freelance but mainly relying on journo's taking phone snaps and similar for major newspapers. Journo's left to do the job other than major, important things when they'd send a freelance snapper too.

They may have been contributing but it's way more than that. What we use, what we spend money on, how we shop, how industries are working, AI, it's all been changing for a long time.

The majority of NHS redundancies are actually in ICBs, which are critical decision-makers in how to spend the NHS budget locally. ICBs were restructured in 2023/24 with a 30% budget cut, and are currently restructuring again with a ~40% budget cut. So taking into account the mass redundancies of a couple of years ago as well, it's actually well over 12-13,000 job losses just in ICBs, before you even get to considering NHSE. But it's fine because Wes Streeting called us all "unnecessary bureaucrats" to feed the media narrative that all forms of management in the NHS are bad. 🙄

It's different this time. It's impacting middle class professionals and their university educated children, so it's a 'crisis'. I was brought up in a Yorkshire mining area and you are right, nobody gave can shit about whole communities devastated by unemployment. Not just miners but all the sectors that relied on their wages, same with steel, same with textiles. But we were told it was an inevitable restructuring and modernisation and 'get on your bike and go and find work'
This is no different, just impacting different people. I'm empathetic by nature and do have some empathy for the current plite of AI takeover of jobs, but there was little empathy from the educated middle class when it wasn't them, as per usual, tbh.

Funny you should mention war; it's not always what it used to be, and all an enemy has to do is shut down the internet to cause utter chaos

Out of interest, exactly what use is AI then?

I am at risk of redundancy and most likely will be made redundant in a couple of months. Yes it is everywhere. My brother in law was made redundant last July and just managed to find a new job last month so a whole year of no employment and his new job is a massive pay cut.

My cousin has also just been made redundant in June and a friend was made redundant last October and still has no job.

I agree OP that all you hear about is youth unemployment.

It’s incredibly worrying and I have had many sleepless nights over this. I do think AI is a tsunami heading towards the workforce and think every single politician is burying their head in the sand over this.

It was in the news today, lots of people were getting visas to come and work in vape shops/corner shops

Really??? So older women who are 60 and have no other income or support, and won't get a pension until they are 67 are supposed to give up their job in favour of who exactly? And once they've waited through the statutory period for people who give up their jobs they can claim benefits, and we can all bash them again for scrounging.

In fairness I sat in many meetings with NHS bureaucrats and they always bought and astonishing number of people along and then half the meeting would go buy while they debated things among themselves. So based on what I saw there was definitely some bloating

There are jobs in AI Entry Level Ai Job in London (with Salaries) | Indeed United Kingdom https://share.google/nqrl5fu4ea8hliEOc

@NorthYorksNews

One of the issues with it is it doesn’t capture the large amount of unofficial employment in hidden economic activity

Nor do the unemployment figures capture people who are simply not working, i.e. early retirement etc and not claiming benefits.

I used to work as a contractor. We all knew that often agents just invented jobs as they just needed to gather in CV’s and mine people for information. As you become more experienced it becomes easy to tell which is a real job and which is just a fishing expedition.

And there has never been the consistent investment in former mining/industrial communities to rebuild, whole communities with no secure forms of decent employment. I too am empathic, but no one was loosing sleep over those losses.

I thought the same when I saw the power outage in the North pop up!

No one gets a visa to work in a vape shop.