Anyone else worried about the terrible job market?

[Sorryagain]

I’ve been self employed throughout my professional life - over 30 years. I was in one profession, then broadened out and added more skills and generated a lot of work in another industry.

Both industries are fucked. Tons of redundancies, no hires. Barely any contract work. Lots of people looking. LinkedIn is a cesspit.

I am used to the hustle - but I’ve never known it so hard, nigh on impossible, to get work.

Ive been applying for permanent roles I think I could do - but even with my tons of transferrable skills, such is the market that there are enough people who perfectly fit the job description that I don’t get a look in.

Im lucky in that I have a partner who works - but I want to work. I’m seriously terrified of how bad things are - it’s never been like this for me, ever.

I just wanted to see if others are facing this?

And because I think it’s a combo of AI and cost of living/economics, I can’t see how things will improve.

I think it’s a complicated picture- a lot of companies cutting fat to the bone to keep up share prices/ profits in a declining international and unstable situation

AI in certain industries - yes it’s an issue

a lot less and less profitable ‘middle men’ jobs as the rise of finding things online means less need of brokers in the middle - be it jobs/holidays/insurance /stuff

changing habits- meaning things like banking branches are going

university sector tightening up ( which in fairness my friend who had what she called a bit of a quite well paid non job for a good well) - she did feel lots of that went on - people who didn’t seem to have that much to do consistently or were always off - I realise some mumsnetters may well be in jobs like this so won’t see it this way- but she certainly felt there was plenty of scope for tightening up in many areas- lots of peripheral doing stuff for the sake of it rather than really needed

automation too in many areas has taken a lot of jobs- supermarket checkout etc

i don’t think all of it is down to the economy by a long way. I just think there are less jobs around in areas that mumsnetters in particular would pick to work in - far less general admin or marketing/PR/HR as an example

Too many people are clamouring for X roles, and meanwhile, we’ve outsourced everything to foreign shores. You see, modern businesses can’t turn a profit without cheap labor whether it’s producing the goods or offering the services. It’s the dirty little secret of our economy: in order to thrive, you need to exploit the margins, and right now, those margins are far from our borders.

Sorry, but that's a very outdated and naive view of modern universities. Most courses in most Unis are basic exam factories these days. The quaint notion of students reading their subject for the love of it and cosy tutorials with brilliant professors, etc are outdated by about 20 years. Most students are only there to do what they have to do to get their degrees. Most students don't have personal one to one nor small tutorial sessions with professors. In many, the tutorials and seminars are led by masters and doctorate students. The closest you get to a lecturer is a real live lecture where they're stood on the stage and you're one of a couple of hundred in the audience. For many, it's basically a "live in" sixth form. Yes, of course there are "old fashioned" genuine "love of learning"/research degrees in the top unis, but most people don't get a sniff near them. My son never met his allocated "personal tutor" - and he always maintained none of his lecturers would ever know who he was if they passed in the corridor - it was all very anonymous and remote. Made even worse by so much now being online. The reality is most go to Unis to get the piece of paper with "degree" written on the top, the sole purpose being to get a better job than if they didn't have a degree. The last 20/30 years have really screwed up our university system.

TaxGuru is quite correct. My son was very unfortunate as he went at 21 after 4 years working at quite a decent level- sadly it coincided in his 2nd year with lockdown and he decided it was a huge waste of time - went to do politics too which is a subject he loves. It was so non existent along with zero social side that he thinks he should have got 2 terms fully refunded as basically was paying for zilch- he went back to another tech job and now goes to lots of stuff and talks at Westminster and has 2 friends who work there- he gets his fix that way and earns more than they do too - I certainly wouldn’t be going these days with the debt involved just to indulge in more of your hobby or more sports. And where’s this presumption that parents can just help out so they can have a fun experience- we certainly were not in that position- my son was at uni and doing 17!hours a week for a tech company on top

I have the impression that lots of companies want to hire experienced people rather than invest in training the people they already have to progress. They feel like there is a skills shortage because they want an already experienced staff member without making a financial or time investment to help people develop that experience. At the same time, employees are frustrated by lack of progression, and there aren’t enough lower-level roles because people aren’t progressing up out of them.

I think this is because of reduced headcount budgets overall - where I work there was a senior and a more junior role vacant, now the junior role has been axed as not enough money for both, the senior role will need to do it all and someone experienced who knows what they are doing is required, so no opportunity for a keen less experienced person to come in and develop. This will be happening all over the country in other firms.

Been unemployed for 5 months now. Due to a bullying store manager. I could not tolerate anymore of the bullying, crying and other negative things which destroys MH. If the store never had him as a store manager, I probably stayed, even though I wanted to leave retail. Raised a grievance which did nothing. No jobs available at the nearby stores as well. Found out he was exactly the same at the previous store manager role he had - made many decent staff leave. I was the 8th one to leave due to his behaviour at the store I worked and that was 5 months. Not once he was ever questioned/investigated on why so many staff left in such a short time. I am excluding students who left in Aug/Sept as it was planned they were going to leave then. Two staff retired even though said to me that had another 1-1.5 years left in them - though passed state retirement age. Got fed up with him. I know one of them discussed her day with her DH and one of her DS and both said, you are at state retirement age, why make yourself stressed and tired. The next shift, she handed in her notice to retire then dealt with the company pension.

The problem is that most companies scan CVs and application forms via AI. From my experience, ATS (applicant tracking system) does not recognise transferrable skills, whereas if read by a human, they can see this. This is despite me adjusting CV each application to make sure the duties/qualities are on top of the list of duties and in my profile.

Then, being dyslexic, the interview process is not suitable for ND. I do have answers and examples for loads of STAR/competency based questions. If they are rephrased differently, I panic. It looks like that in some interviewers' eyes, I was not prepared, not the case. I attended one interview on Monday (not been notified outcome yet) and did request the questions to be sent to me 1-2 working days before the interview. They did that and sent the questions 4 working days. Felt relaxed during the interview.

When I get rejected at interview stage, I get zero feedback. "We won't be progressing further with your application" or similar. I need to know what/where I am going wrong. As without feedback, I turn up to interviews - remotely and in person giving the same answers etc, even though I have no idea my examples/answers were weak etc. All it needs is a couple of lines such as your answer about......, didn't show your strengths well. Ok if I had that, I would thought of a better example for future interviews.

I am scared that mid next month, my JSA runs out and will be getting UC. I would feel embarrassed getting UC as I deserve better than this.

There are lots of problems with the current system.
One is that the massive drive towards cost cutting and profit increasing (those poor CEOs must be fed) by large business in the past 40 years, and especially 20 or so, has meant off shoring jobs to countries with cheap labour and dubious employment law. Everything has been cut to the bone. Monopolies have developed and taken over corners of the market, reducing or eliminating competition and hugely reducing quality.
The SMEs in the UK have struggled for years because of the above and also the punitive business rates and the online retailers, often foreign owned companies, which manage to pay far less tax.

It has also meant that those who used to be employed in good and very respectable manufacturing jobs in the UK are now either chronically unemployed or under employed or are involved in the gig economy as JAMs. These people then need to top ups from the state because, as you say, the SMEs can't pay them a living wage and make a profit.
Another concurrent problem which is the financialisation of everything. House prices took off in the last few decades as financial services were deregulated and lending criteria massively loosened. People have only survived because of debt which has been pushed on them in the last 30 years. Everything is leveraged to a crazy extent, which inevitably means that it will come tumbling down at some point. There isn't a solution now as I see it.

This is such a shame but, I agree, it makes sense for the company. I have also heard of people being made redundant and the remaining staff being expected to take on more work.

Does not help things when you see a job advertised in an area where you can travel to. Click on the more info button and turns out to be 60 bloody miles further away.

there are far fewer factory jobs, manufacturing industry is in decline compared to when i was a teenager

It's been in decline for many years and has reduced to a tiny fraction in the last 50 years.

I was made redundant recently from a marketing / comms role. They are replacing my old job with AI. It’s cheaper and it does just a good enough job for them not to care that it’s not great.

Manufacturing is still 17% of our economy - that’s down from 25% in the 70s but hardly a “tiny fraction”. What has changed is the level of automation so over the same time period the number of people employed in manufacturing has drastically reduced - a production line that might have employed dozens of people before can now be run by a single skilled technician.

What automation did to manufacturing jobs, AI will do to white collar jobs.

Fair point.
I think of this when people talk about declining birth rates. When dc born today enter the workforce it’ll probably be much reduced.

Those figures are different to the ones I have read. Apart from that, the type of manufacturing is totally different. The UK was at the very front of the Industrial Revolution, producing goods from start to finish. We used to manufacture vital things such as steel, iron, textiles and ships. Nowadays, there is little of that and it all seems to be foreign owned. We might contribute to some part of the process but a lot of the sector seems to be things like beverages and pharmaceuticals. Very different to the type of vital and skilled manufacturing jobs that the UK used to have.

It's definitely seems likely that AI will remove the need for a lot of well paid white collar type jobs.

Sorry to hear that. I can see lots of jobs in sectors like marketing, advertising, PR and 'tech' going. I also think that a lot more public servants in administrative roles will be made redundant.

@rainingsnoring I guess the question would be why should (economically speaking) iron, steel and textiles be produced here? It’s much cheaper to produce these products in the same location as the raw materials are produced - and the UK produces no iron ore or cotton. So we produce stuff where the raw materials can be sourced locally to keep costs competitive - such as processed foods and drinks (our largest manufacturing industry) or that require extremely high skilled staff and specialised processes, such as pharmaceuticals and jet engines.

My partner has been looking for work for over a year after his contract ended. Never ever been out of work before, been self employed for many years. Luckily I have a permanent job and we are managing, just. But looking at downsizing and moving from the south east because the stress is crippling. I need the money I earn (quite high salary) to go further because I have no idea when or if he's going to get a job. He has applied for hundreds of jobs, had loads of interviews but just doesn't get the job.

This is a terrible time to be a civil servant. I really think within the next few years there’ll be more six figure job losses.

https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/civil-service-job-cuts-10000-admin-cost-cutting-drive-reeves

What jobs is ai doing 🤔

women are more likely to work in office roles such as admin, marketing etc, so unfortunately these job losses in those sectors are more likely to affect women.

That's really stressful, I'm sorry. What work does he do?

DP got made redundant for the second time in 2 years at Christmas. He’s working freelance for the company that originally made him redundant after they realised that the workload didn’t stack up to what he used to provide. I’m hoping he can get a contract back with them but he’s still looking for full time work and there doesn’t seem to be much out there.

hes in the creative industry - tech related.

Apologies. Yes Learning and Development/ online training.

Oddly at the same time, the roles were do have were seriously struggling to fill with quality applicants but only in the last 12 months.

Either we’re out of date, or people’s expectations are too high for their skill level, or they want to spend 5 days a week from home which we don’t offer. Never had an issue until recently - it feels more like people are hunkering down and staying put rather than looking to move.