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.

About quarter of a million new homes are built in the UK a year. We do have more stuff.

I have to say I don't know a single digital nomad as such, though I do know a lot of people who commute less often than I had to for most of my working life.

I feel forced into a Pollyanna attitude by the relentless negativity on here but I'm always strick by the illogical 'Britain is completely shit and far too many people are desperate to live here!!' rhetoric.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/moreadultslivingwiththeirparents/2023-05-10

BlackForestCake

its not just my experience either

I lived through the 70s. No one is saying we haven’t had tough economic times in the past but certainly we are facing uncharted ones now. What were the demographics in the 70s? In the 60s there was 1 pensioner to 5 workers, today we are at 3:1 & we aren’t far off 2:1.

I know! It's such a funny contraction.

There are loads of graduate entry jobs and a fair amount or apprenticeships at my workplace which is the civil service.

I would encourage your children to enter the professions (medicine, veterinary, law, accountancy) or tech. There will still be jobs for the foreseeable future.

One of my children is a vet and doing well and the other has an MA in an arts subject but is struggling to find work in that field. I think the arts are finished for most unless you are already rich.

Housing is shit, anywhere in London or the South East is out of reach for most unless you have a wealthy family.

You mention school places. The truth is, that in my County in the South East, some schools are already having trouble meeting their PAN (in other words, there are not enough children to keep the schools full). In areas where there has been a lot of house building, that's not true - yet - but schools in the South East (starting with primaries) will soon start not replacing retiring staff, followed by making redundancies.

You rent a room, too many people think they have to rent a whole flat to themselves, renting a room with shared kitchen and bathroom was the norm when I left home in the 80s, cheap, no deposit as such, no need for guarantor.

People are almost insulted if you suggest that as an option these days.

The construction industry is in recession and has been all year.
The pay now is less than it was 20 years ago. Benefits and working conditions are either non-existent or poor.

The developing world is unbelievably shit and there are literally people who live in mud huts there - living 8 to a flat in Britain is still shit but it's better than that, what's hard to understand?

Both my children rent in shared flats. Even a room with bills is several hundred pounds a month. All need a deposit and in most cases a guarantor.

Lots more pensioners and people over the pension age are working though.
https://ageing-better.org.uk/news/almost-one-million-more-workers-aged-65-and-above-millennium-new-analysis-reveals

The arts are big business in the UK. I know a couple of young sound engineers (and one in his 50s) who do very well. Multiple musicians with incredibly entrepreneurial mindsets.

i'm down south and most of my local towns and high streets are exactly the same

The construction industry maybe, but for domestic jobs there is defiantly a need and shortage or these tradespeople

definitely...

Not true, all governments are creating a "digital nomad visa" where you can be a legal resident for a year while enjoying your UK salary, I'm from Spain and our government recently implemented this visa. It's beneficial for the governments of less advantaged countries to have young people working online and spending their UK salaries on the local area. Many of these kids are settling in small towns, non touristic costal and rural areas and boosting the economies there hence why the governments are giving away digital nomad visas like candy.

how many 21 year old do you know that are renting their own place?

I knew quite a few growing up in London, plenty of people move to other cities, or other countries for work & have to rent a room. I rented at uni plus many dont have good relationships with their families or there isn’t space for them. You must have heard of this before?

@LutherVandrossessuit

No one has a right to be employed.

Of course they don’t. But a healthy society is one which tries to encourage young people entering the workforce to capitalise on their talents and strengths to generate a living for themselves and their families as opposed to funneling them all into the same industries.

Of course skilled trades are a good living and it’s pleasing that they are being recognized for the good careers they are.

But telling an entire generation that almost all of them should be heading for skilled trades is not a good idea: a) because people whose skills lie in other areas are being wasted and b) because it will rapidly create a glut of plumbers and electricians who can’t earn as much money as they could.

I am just tired of this being parroted all the time as the answer to all our economic problems.

@soupfiend do you know how much renting a room costs? Why would I think someone of NMW could have a hope of renting a flat to themselves! 😆

@Thepeopleversuswork agree, it’s incredibly patronising

I work in marketing, and I get people applying to low level marketing jobs who have done a masters in marketing but who can barely write a coherent sentence (pre-chatgpt). I’m probably one of the few recruiters who don’t care about degrees and instead I look for either existing experience or potential, but I think I’m in the minority.

So can AI.

I know so many people that have gone to university to avoid working. They don't plan on ever paying back the loan, purely because they will never earn enough. It's stopped people wanting to make a living and earn a decent wage. Anyone can buy a house if they start saving from a young age. I started saving from 16 with my first job, and by the age of 22 I moved out and bought my first flat. I didn't go to university because it was a waste of time. It's not impossible to do. Kids nowadays expect everything NOW. They don't want to wait. They rely on their parents to support them. They are lazy and I'm worried about the future of my own children.

For starters, governments want immigration. That's obvious. It makes their GDP figures look much better, immigrants provide cheap labour for the corporations who run things nowadays. Look at Musk's recent comments- he doesn't want foreigners but actually he does.
You need to consider that if we don't have immigration we have a number of problems such as:
GDP and tax receipts falling
Massive gaps in essential sectors eg medicine, nursing, care

The problem is that those who are anti immigration, and I'm not saying their concerns are 100% invalid, have absolutely no interest in contributing more themselves to offset the problems that would be cause. They just want to moan and moan and make racist remarks and take no responsibility themselves by paying more tax or doing voluntary work to care for the elderly, for example.

when I left home in the 80s, cheap, no deposit as such, no need for guarantor.
People are almost insulted if you suggest that as an option these days.

I think people get frustrated when posters extrapolate an experience from 40 years ago to today. Things have changed a tad hence the thread…

No, we don't need immigrants economically @Strikeoutnow .
On this very thread, people are complaining about the lack of jobs.

If there are 10 jobs and 10 people want them-fine.
If there are 10 jobs and 12 people want them-not fine.

If the NHS can provide 10 nurses and those nurses can look after 10 patients-fine.
If the NHS can provide 10 patients and they cannot look after 12 patients. Not fine.

If the NHS employs another 2 nurses from the immigrant population to look after another 2 patients from the immigrant population-that does mean the NHS grows but it is not helping the non-immigrant population. The NHS may be growing and it may need more workers but it is to service the immigrant population.

Then along come those who say that we need those immigrant nurses to service the NHS but do we? Or do we need them to service the ever growing immigrant population.

All the figures seem to agree that our birth rate is falling, so how can we be needing more and more houses, jobs, health facilities?

Is it rocket science to suggest that if the birth rate is falling but the population is rising that a great deal of that must be because of immigration.

We employ more immigrants because there are more immigrants to be catered for.

Quite often, when a lot of jargon is taken out of the equation, things are simpler than they seem.