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.

Apprenticeships are on the increase in many areas, recognising the value of real life experience. My job (Physiotherapy) was degree only up until about 5 years ago, now it, and various other professional healthcare roles are accessible via Apprenticeships, which I think is brilliant. I did my degree straight out of school, was dealing with dying patients and their relatives at 20 years old and i was in no way ready. Doing these courses via apprenticeships brings people in with proven communication skills and life experience, which is fantastic. My friends daughter has recently become an accountant via an Apprenticeship route, and is earning over 40k in her first year of work with no uni debts, there are lots of opportunities for smart young people with ambition, determination and confidence.

As long as you can gain skills there is employment options. It could be a university degree, the engineering sector in the U.K. is doing very well for instance, but equally it could be more "blue collar" skills eg car mechanics will always be needed and it's a skilled technical job these days due to how cars are built (tinkering yourself on a Sunday simply isn't an option with modern cars). There's a burgeoning home services sector if you want to run your own business, the going rate for cleaning here is £20 an hour, £30 for gardening and for trades like plastering, plumbing and decorating it's almost a bill cheque they are in such short supply!

Gone are the days though of a job for life, you need to keep your skills up to date and watch for trends so you don't get stuck in a dying sector. Of our dc (just out of university) one is an engineer, one is a technician and one is finding herself

We do not have a falling population. Because of people living longer & immigration. We have a problem with demographics with more over 65s than under 15 yr olds.

Renting isnt 'the norm' in 'europe'

Depending on the country we have lower home ownership levels than many countries and even in countries where the majority of people rent, the spread is pretty even between home owners and renters.

Its not even the norm in the south east, with the majority being home owners although the south east is a big region so there are variations within this.

Plus with an aging population we’ll be increasingly less productive.

We have had productivity problems for years & never really recovered from the 08 crash, low interest rates just masked it.

@TinselQueen

Even this is a fallacy, my dc is currently house hunting, 2 years out of university because she and partner have good jobs, might not be zone 2 London but its 2-3 bed houses and very much the south of England. I certainly couldn't afford a house at that age.

Many of the jobs that you can do remotely will be first on the ai chopping block.

You know they said something similar when the printing press was invented? Same in the agricultural revolution, then the Industrial Revolution.

Every time new tech comes along, people catastrophise and claim we are all going to be out of work. Self checkouts meant nobody would be working in the supermarket, but now they employ those staff to do the shopping we are having delivered. Employment evolves, people will always be required.

Everyone will still need plumbers, electricians, builders, retail assistants, nurses, surgeons, carers - there are many physical jobs that can't be offshored and need apprenticeships ,not degrees

I definitely think it’s going to be incredibly difficult for younger people to buy their own home, that being said neither of my grandparents owned their homes and rented for their whole lives so in some ways it’s going full circle. There’s needs to be support for younger people to get their own property if they wish.

AI and RPA will replace generic tasks but it also takes an awfully long time to learn some of this and initially will only be able to do generic tasks. We do have an aging population so some AI and RPA will bridge the gap in not having a large enough workforce.

The push for everyone to have a degree before entering the workforce is a bit much and I’m a believer in people working their way up and being able to gain experience, or being offered apprenticeships which isn’t as easy these days.

I also think as a society we need to hold ourselves to account too, work ethic in some parts of our population is incredibly poor, and someone else has mentioned littering, anti-social behaviour etc as problematic but what do we do about it?
It’s down to us to pass down values that are conducive with being productive and a decent member of society.

This is so true. Things do evolve and jobs will too.

I disagree, we need people to do the unfashionable manual work that enables society to function. Bin men, lorry drivers, brickies, care assistants, food production. We don't need people with a degree to do those jobs.

I was the first in my family to go to uni. Think I was the first year to have tuition fees, but my debt was nowhere near the size of kids' now.

I'd always assumed both my kids would go to uni, but I'm really not so sure. Firstly, the money I thought we'd be helping them with is going to be swallowed up my the mortgage; although as they probably won't leave home for a while, that's also in their interests.

As a teacher, I'm seeing fewer 6th formers want to go to uni and to be honest, getting a degree apprenticeship seems to be the way forward. And seems harder to get into than uni. It's no exaggeration to say that any student, regardless of grades, can get into a university if they want to, which means we're often sending students who shouldn't be going.

Secretarial work used to be everywhere, where has that gone?

When I started out working 35 years ago, my office had 3 secretaries, and the rest of the staff were in technical roles. I now work in a different company, same size, same industry and we have 3 admin staff. The job title might have changed, sure they do less typing for other people, but they are still integral to the running of the office.

I can believe that my next door neighbours would rather pick up dog shit than change a nappy.

working in a London office of a large tech company - over the past ten years the shift from hiring ‘grads’ to hiring in places like Eastern Europe and India was definitely a trend. At first I was sceptical but you got hard workers with excellent qualifications and English language/grammar - often better grammar than then UK grads.

I would say the new Labour labour laws will mean this trend is going to continue at pace!

What?

Have you missed every single beration of 'gentrification', god forbid white middle class people move into cheaper areas and make steps to improve it, improve the schools, open shops and businesses

Everyone will need a degree. Some will even need two degrees

I graduated in the 1990s. Back then they said within people would soon need two degrees instead of one. Still waiting for that.

We’re finally seeing what 40+ years of British governments not championing British interests looks like. The country has been spectacularly mismanaged, it’s truly tragic.

People suggesting trades will save people forget how physically demanding those jobs are.

Any trades I have to my house say their knees, backs, necks etc. are screwed and some of these are relatively young guys.

You have to be very fit to do these jobs and if you injure yourself the NHS won't be much help.

I worry a lot, I have a child about to turn 16 and we joke about her getting a Saturday job....but they don't exist anymore. At least, not in the volumes and ways they used to.

She is an artist, an amazing artist. But will it pay the bills? She wants to go to college after GCSEs, and I worry what job she will end up with afterwards won't be what she dreamed of.

My middle child is 13, bright but not "exam" bright. He'll come out with low GCSE results, despite trying hard. He is the most caring soul on this planet, and I could imagine him as a paramedic but doubt he'll make the grade.

My youngest is super smart, I mean, off the charts mensa smart, be interesting to see what route she takes?

We have settled on the fact our kids are likely to live with us for the longer term. I moved out as a young teen, DH moved in with me at 24yo and my rent was £500 for a 2 bed semi. Doubt my kids will have that opportunity, can't even rent a room for that these days.

@Lentilweaver

"I had to keep a game face and not show panic."

I do not know this 'game face' that you speak of. Is it like a pheasant, a rabbit or a 'are?

Secretarial work used to be everywhere, where has that gone?

Traditional secretarial skills are redundant due to everyone learning to use a computer keyboard at school, and voice recognition software. Most bosses don’t want a traditional secretary, they want an executive personal assistant who may be female or male but certainly a university graduate.

Uni only provides an advantage if you’re going into vocations like teaching, solicitor, doctor. Otherwise it’s just a waste of money, where anyone can go and pay a lump sum of money to take a degree to do a job that others get into without Uni. Kids go there mostly for the lifestyle and social aspect, with the degree being secondary.

My friends daughter has recently become an accountant via an Apprenticeship route, and is earning over 40k in her first year of work with no uni debts, there are lots of opportunities for smart young people with ambition, determination and confidence.

40k today is equivalent to about 20k in the early 00s.

Uni only provides an advantage if you’re going into vocations like teaching, solicitor, doctor. Otherwise it’s just a waste of money, where anyone can go and pay a lump sum of money to take a degree to do a job that others get into without Uni. Kids go there mostly for the lifestyle and social aspect, with the degree being secondary.

I don’t think that’s true, when I started work my managers didn’t have a degree, I needed a degree for an interview, younger people needed a specific degree. Many employers use it as a CV sifting tool.