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

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj639rx147eo

Can confirm redundancies are being made in the discretionary spending sector. My partner works for a huge employer (ready meals, sandwiches, pasta salads, pasties, etc). 10% of staff are being culled across the board so that includes managers, IT staff and factory floor.

You’re right, that’s happening because there’s an entire new overlord class of venture capitalists who buy companies, asset strip them, then work to “capture” their customers so they’re locked in and milked for more revenue in exchange for a rapidly degrading service. Get rid of the workforce, give customers a worse experience, tell the investors (who are increasingly other VC overlords) how great it’s going.

The really terrifying bit is that AI isn’t delivering anywhere near the measurable benefits to justify the biggest capital investment in history it’s become. It makes Tulip Mania look relatively sane.

God help the CEO who goes all-in on AI to run things, then finds the costs of using the tools going up and up and up because it’s time to make the investment back. Those companies will then be the “captured audience” being milked while getting an ever-worsening product, but having let all their skills and experience go they’ll have no choice but to let it happen.

The actual stats show redundancies are not at a high level compared to recent years. But lets not let the facts get in the way of anecdotes Redundancies - Office for National Statistics

Often people don’t make the cut at interviews. There might be so many midwifes but if they don’t reach the required scoring they won’t get the job.

did You read it?

“The Home Office scheme allows registered employers to recruit workers from overseas who meet a certain skill level. The rules were tightened in July 2025 to restrict the scheme mostly to graduate-level employees who would be earning at least £41,700”

“More than 100 of those businesses were added to the skilled worker sponsorship list after the rules were tightened. Being on the register does not mean applications for individual visas would be approved.”

I was talking about people over state retirement age. A lot of them are working because they need the money, so fair enough.

But some are working because they want to.

I’m not seeing more redundancies than I would consider the norm in private sector IT/education industry which is where I am. It’s ’that Time of year’ when they start getting ready for reforecasting the budget, q4 efficiencies to meet the year end targets and restructuring to appear as attractive as possible to private equity investors.

Without wanting to crap on the “told you so” party too much, there are a lot of “first to go to uni” types affected by this now who have first hand experience of what happened when automation and globalisation came for working class jobs because we watched it happen to our parents. Now it’s happening to us too.

Not sure about AI. I recall the argument over computerisation in the late 70s/80s.

Supermarket jobs are hard to get unless to know someone! The online tests are ridiculous especially when you know the people who managed to pass the tests. Aren’t either going to be helpful etc or won’t have time to help!
My DD already works in a supermarket but failed the M&S online test! She is actually a team leader!! Yet you shop in M&S there are no staff on the shop floor and one poor sod looking after at 20 self service tills!!

I feel like this about back when jobs were advertised in newspapers. I saw and applied and got jobs that I would have never come across in a key word search for jobs.

NI hike + higher minimum wage + AI boom + tougher employment laws = job losses + fewer hires

It’s not just redundancies due to AI etc
People are coming out of retirement/working for longer, couples with with children both needing to work (when I was growing up (80’s) families would usually have a Mum at home whilst the children were small).
Added to the increases in NI and minimum wage many places are doing the same amount of work with less staff.
We have a family business, as people have left, they haven’t been replaced. We are working longer hours ourselves and drafting in family members who are retired to help on busy days during the season.

I was talking to a friend that manages a cleaning company, they were looking got 1 person to work 4-8 in a school. For that one job they had over 300 applicants in 24 hours. It was a mixture of people looking to take on second jobs, parents that were looking for jobs around childcare, older people looking to top up pensions and people that had been out of work due to redundancies, desperately looking for anything to tie them over.

I was 19 in 1990 too.

I worked in shops, but not clothes shops as they looked boring!. If I didn’t like one I just went to another and got taken on. I went to university at 21 and did the same thing there, just went into town and had a word with a few managers and got a job in a bookshop that fit around my course. Smart uniform, staff canteen, the works.

It sounds like a fantasy world now.

I would have said the same till I read this

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj639rx147eo

Hardly. When Rachel Reeve put up NI, increased the NMW and scared the disabled community witless talking about limiting PiP, my employer mothballed a factory and halved the workforce.

Unless you are employed in a small number of occupations such as a Judge or an airline pilot there is no retirement age, only state pension age. You can defer your state pension and receive more or claim your state pension and continue working; obviously tax implications. Both my DGD and DF worked part time until their 80s.

This. 👏🏻

Is there any need for this reply? Its a fact a lot of employers are using redundancies more to get rid of certain employees. Thats all I was saying. I didnt realise only mass layoffs are shit 🙄

Well then it is likely to be a sham redundancy, because a role is redundant not a person.

Indian based consultancy ? A lot of companies are not calling it redundancy because they would have to declare it and it is by way of a separation agreement and therefore dont have to announce/declare it.
Also its not just AI, it is cheaper resources in other countries, proof will be in how long this arrangement persists for if the uk ever stats to recover. This has happened in previous recessions, but the quality of work produced was then dire. Maybe that will have changed, but from my recent interractions there is still a ways to go.

Yea....that was my point.

My company and my previous one are offshoring IT to India. And lots of other roles too. Ai and cheaper people in India and Eastern Europe

Same reply as when it was posted above-

did You read it?
“The Home Office scheme allows registered employers to recruit workers from overseas who meet a certain skill level. The rules were tightened in July 2025 to restrict the scheme mostly to graduate-level employees who would be earning at least £41,700”
“More than 100 of those businesses were added to the skilled worker sponsorship list after the rules were tightened. Being on the register does not mean applications for individual visas would be approved.”