This country as gone into terminal decline

[Carmes]

I have 2 young children in school.

I am becoming more and more anxious about what sort of jobs / careers they will have open to them.

I work for very large company with 10,000s of employees.

20 years ago whe I started work here there would be 100s of entry level jobs at any given time. These are jobs that don't require experience or a degree, ideal for a school leaver, and I know dozens of people who started their career this way.

Now there are maybe 10 jobs that would fit the same criteria.so. All the jobs have been offshored.
Now are the vacancies are for very specific technical skill set or experience.

This doesn't bode well for someone who has left school at 18'or even university.

People bandy about that we’re the 6th richest country but it’s not true - 6th in terms of largest economy, but divided per capita we’re only 32nd or something. Plus with an aging population we’ll be increasingly less productive.

Agree, people need to look at going in jobs you don't need degrees for that need a level of skill

AI is not going to plaster my walls or highlight my hair. There are so many jobs where AI is possible, but a human touch matters to some people and they will pay for that

Education seems to have gone through a ridiculous phase where almost every child is pushed towards university. For some that's fine, but for many they end up with useless degrees, tons of debt and are behind on work experience

Friends son is an electrician, got his ticket aged 24 I think, own business soon after, bought a house with his fiancee in 2023, first baby is 3 months old, they are loving life. He does a lot of renewable energy work but will do all sorts of jobs. Best thing we can do as parents is instill a can do attitude, sense of right and wrong, community spirit.

I dont think everyone is cut out to be an electrician or plumber.

I think the decline is very worrying but I don't think we have the society anymore to reverse the decline. I'm in my 50's and so are the majority of my friends and they also have concerns about the country and future prospects of grandchildren .

Britain is terrible now and this was really highlighted by two recent European trips . No litter , no anti social behaviour, no shouting / swearing / fighting , regular police patrols seen . Buses / trains on time , no potholes , no graffiti. A general feeling of good safe order and well maintained facilities . Coming home to Britain really highlighted how bad this country now is .

Green technologies, to relocate and rebuild when global warming bites harder, civil engineering projects, maintenance and upgrades as technology progresses. Off the top of my head.

It’s depressing, but think the OP is probably onto something.

Retail jobs are dwindling due to self checkouts.
Secretarial work used to be everywhere, where has that gone?

I have been watching these ONS figures and the latest release (December 2024) shows a further fall in vacancies for the last quarter of 2024, following a decrease of 31,000 job vacancies from June to September:
Vacancies and jobs in the UK - Office for National Statistics

I don't have a solution, but think there is something bigger going on...

The state this planet is in, I am glad I am on the this end of my life than the beginning.

Yep but that's sort of my point, those aren't entry level jobs. They are highly specialised at a time when university wil become more elitist

This article in the guardian really worried me. I just worry what unregulated AI will do to our society, jobs, livelihoods and future. Particularly when its development in is in the hands of profit making billionaires.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/27/godfather-of-ai-raises-odds-of-the-technology-wiping-out-humanity-over-next-30-years

That comes from Blair who set the 50% target

They aren't entry level jobs but if you are employed in a trade this is where those jobs can go when the housing crisis has passed. The world won't run without people who are practical and capable of keeping things going.

I worry a lot about AI. Too late for my DC to become plasterers.

I'm certainly very worried about my kids' future. DH has suggested, and I'm inclined to agree, we should encourage them to look move abroad for opportunities, but the downside to that is I don't see where! Certainly not America and none of us speaks another language fluently, and I wouldn't suggest Australia and NZ as I think climate change is going to make it hard to live in those places within their lifetimes at this rate.

We're in London and unless they get City jobs (which I don't see either of them doing, nor would want them to do just for the money) I'm not sure how they live independently as the cruddiest flatshare in outer London will set you back £800 a month these days and the meanest studio flat on the outer edges starts at quarter of a million to buy and we don't have 6 figure sums tucked under our sofa.

We do seem to be descending into oligarchy where only the mega rich have influence.

High streets are dying because people don't use them, because stores don't carry the same stock as they used to, and local councils haven't invested in making these areas fit for purpose for the 21st century.

It's funny how people want to blame immigrants for choosing an area they feel comfortable living in, but they don't have a problem with white people doing the same. You don't see "middle class" people choosing to live in areas which are less well off, or choosing schools for their children which have large numbers of immigrants in them. Ever tried suggesting a southerner moves north? Integration works both ways. Why do we only expect people who are new to the country (particularly the non white immigrants) to move somewhere they know nobody and doesn't even try to cater for them? How many people are so keen on integration, they move to an area with more immigrants?

There are about 15 people who moved to Australia from my small, rural high school over the period of a decade. They all moved to the same area, within about 5 miles of each other, and socialise primarily with each other. But I'm sure that's ok, right?

We do not have a falling population.

Britain has been in decline since about 1900 when America overtook it.

At the moment there is a problem with cleanliness etc mostly because councils are very short of money.

We are still the sixth biggest economy in the world.

Parts of the U.K. (mostly south east) have insane house prices but London has always been expensive - my parents couldn't afford to buy there in the 70s,

Try the north east - good houses and decent hospitals

Unless there is a sudden almighty turn of events like Universal basic income etc then we are in a downwards trajectory that I cannot see us escaping any time soon.

You walk around some towns in the north and they are now filthy shadows of their former selves with zombie high streets filled with parasitic businesses like takeaways, vape shops and Turkish barbers which do nothing for the existing businesses which tend to include charity shops and a scattering of dying local shops.

The mindset of those growing up in impoverished areas know no different- there is no aspiration anymore. The country has lost much of its soul.

It’s grim as fuck.

I know several people who have created thriving businesses recently that wouldn’t have existed 10+ years ago, so there are possibilities out there.

What we need is people to start thinking outside the box, innovating. At the moment I truly believe we’ve been squished so much that we’re almost permanently stuck in a pattern of fear and desperation. We really need to break free of this somehow.

But they will exist - sparkies, plumbers, farm workers, pest control people. Not jobs that can be outsourced to other countries or done by AI and all pretty essential. Not one of them needs a degree, just good training.

what we need to do is start respecting those jobs more.

Well, that's true, but we had more deaths than births in the UK and Europe last year.

This is the big problem. Government spending is forecast to keep rising yet tax revenue is no where near. We cant tax our way out of this. We need serious economic growth and reduction in spending. Which feels impossible as everyone wants their bit from the state. We are poorer in gdp terms than every American state, only the financial services sector in London is propping us up. Without that we’d be even poorer. Bright people will leave and are leaving. Meaning tax take could reduce further. It’s a bleak bleak outlook.

No, not just your country - the world.

The West is declining not so much the world.

The US is the only major western country showing serious growth, and the attitudes between here and there are night and day. Despite the horror stories, most people here would be much better off in the US.

Look at salaries here vs there, such a difference.

The UK is pretty fucked, an economy with growth based on ever increasing house prices, wage stagnation & an ageing population. People don’t want to hear it though.

Doing what?

My company have 3 people who do this from various places in the world. They are quantity surveyors.

My cousin is a marketing/PR person, he does it. One of my old school mates is a software developer, working for a London company, currently travelling round Australia. If a job can be done from home, it doesn't matter where that home is.

For every high street shop dying, there’s at least a couple of more online businesses making a decent go of it. I bought Christmas presents from a jigsaw company based in Yorkshire. I would never have found them without the internet.

Government and regulation needs a massive cull. I am involved in building a major piece of infrastructure at work - we submitted our outline business case last decade and still don’t have full business case approval. In that time the cost has doubled. If they’d pulled their finger out we could have built the infrastructure for half the price, and be well on the way to delivering the benefits.

East West Rail, a much needed new rail line, is about to spend a decade being bogged down by NIMBYs. Want your children to have jobs? Then you need to accept we are occasionally going to build in a field.

Parts of the U.K. (mostly south east) have insane house prices but London has always been expensive - my parents couldn't afford to buy there in the 70s,

There were plenty of cheap parts of London in the 80s