Aibu for being increasingly worried about the job market?

[gymboe]

another threat of redundancy here. Business not going well and to be honest we are full steam ahead with AI.

a quick search in my large town in south of England:

• 5 x nhs jobs (4 of which I am not qualified for and one is really terrible pay as just three days per week)
• school jobs: just three and very low pay
• our high street is mostly made of charity shops and vape stores. Retail doesn’t offer what I want.
• a big employer now hardly owns any office space. There are just a few jobs. I’m not qualified.

I do have a degree but found myself in a specialised account/client mgmt type role. Pays around £50k.

10 years ago there were loads of these type of jobs, decent salary even if you had to start low, good career progression, hundreds of them and tonnes of temp agencies. And the nhs had loads of admin jobs. Not to mention school jobs being plentiful.

where the hell have they all gone?

this is a huge issue. Massive. I’m really worried.

Honestly though I think sometimes we get what we deserve as a society.

I remember arguing with people years ago that if they bought everything online their local economies would tank and there wouldn't be jobs for people in their towns. And they just poo pooed it.

And now it's happened, and these jobs don't exist, the towns are empty, and what's more the service from the online retailers is crap because they know you have no other choice. And full of scams too. But they said, don't be silly, I like ordering from home and not going out.

I remember thinking even before that that cell phones would make work life balance shit, and allow a differernt kind of expectation from employers. What did people say - no, people can always choose not to get one if they don't want one. Don't be silly. I want one because i like it.

People aren't willing to stand up for anything, it's just satisfy my wants now while I sit on my lazy ass, so this is the bloody result.

AI will use up our water resources to keep its precious data centres cool, will make human beings ever more self-centred, short sighted and stupid, and will then dispense with us, because we are a toxic waste of space on a planet we seem intent on trying to destroy. To preserve and develop AI, human beings will need to be sacrificed, so that AI gets the resources it needs. Congratulations to humanity.

Great post @Echobelly

Very sobering but I agree with you @Walkaround

How are they managing that? Remote ≠ worldwide. You must live in the same country as the role for tax reasons, unless you’re self-employed or have non-dom status. I’ve never seen a legitimate role that lets you just move abroad and keep working remotely.

As awful as this is and I want to be wrong with a late teen son. I predict there will be a war. War brings employment and unity in a country. After every huge stock market crash there has been a war

a decade after

1907 huge stock market crash also markets closed in 1914

Ww1 1917

1929 Wall Street crash into the Great Depression

Ww11 1939

Again ten years after the crashes.

So mass unemployment and unrest easy to manipulate by propaganda taken into war.

Gives Men employment

Call me cynical ........

I know someone who does just this, and has done since Brexit. Lives in Europe and commutes over weekly. Job is in banking (US firm with office in London), so well paid, and stays in a hotel M-Th. Terrible carbon footprint though, no idea how she justifies that.

@PloddingAlong21 The people who will be left behind are the ones who don’t learn how to utilise the tools to make them more efficient and productive in their actual job roles.

The issue isn't AI taking jobs. If I was to explain what my job entails, people would think it's exactly the type of job that would be perfectly suited to AI. So I've tried to use AI to assist in my work, and I've quickly discovered that it's a pile of shit. It spews out garbage that's too vague and generic to be useful, and it struggles to follow simple tasks with specific instructions.

The issue is that AI has allowed people to generate slop CVs and slop cover letters to apply for thousands of jobs. So now when I go job hunting online, I have to compete with hundreds of applicants for each individual job role, because those applicants were able to quickly apply in 2 minutes by generating AI slop.

And of course, when I filter for the types of jobs I might like, I have to sift through dozens of adverts that involve testing AI systems for companies that I've never heard of. Of course, these companies never reply to any applications. More AI slop. But sadly, there's no way to filter out AI slop adverts online, so it makes it extremely difficult to find a job I might like.

So the issue isn't AI taking jobs. The issue is that the slop you have created has completely destroyed the job hunting process.

so true

AI will kill us. all

But then, would you have people working, just for the sake of it? If AI can do it? Like hamsters on a wheel? I get your point, but a good analogy, would be banning tractors, to create work for field hands. Or the printing press, so there are more jobs for copying.

I think it would be better, to change the "game", that is, the financial / political world, to allow for people not having to work. Or create the next, new, population advancing roles. Same as how "software engineer", wouldn't have been a job in the middle ages, surely there are future professions, on the cusp of becoming A Thing.

The problem is that AI is the answer to entry level jobs. I can get AI to build a financial model and slide deck that I would have got an entry level analyst to build. AI can do it just as well. Not perfectly, no. But a junior analyst wouldn’t have done it perfectly either. And with a bit of back and forth I can get AI to do it in a fraction of the time a junior analyst would have. It’s around 1hr AI vs 1 week of a person.

I really worry about our kids getting graduate jobs.

Economic Advisors to the govt, one of my DC is one , do you think they are going to go? If so it will be even more of a shambles - not in UK.

Hard agree

Ok, let’s assume people don’t work, robots or AI do all the jobs. People just do fun stuff.

Government brings in UBI because people need to pay for things such as food and housing. Traditionally governments have taxed work and spending to bring in income. They spend this income on a combination of government projects and services (education, defence, health etc), maintaining the government machine (civil service, MPs & associated costs) and supporting those without an income from work.

In a world without work and a UBI, they need to support everyone.

Which they can only fund from tax receipts, which can only be raised from work and spending…

So they tax spending - result is people buy less because their UBI no longer goes as far. Government decides to increase the UBI to encourage spending in order to raise more tax revenue, but their current income is down due to reduced tax receipts from reduced spending. Catch-22.

As no one works they can’t tax workers, they have to tax those that supply AI services. Which makes supplying AI less attractive to those suppliers. They find that whatever revenue they generate they end up paying a hefty whack in tax so government can pay for the UBI. They increase the price they charge for AI services to businesses, who in turn put up their own prices they charge the consumer. The government then needs to increase the basic UBI to enable people to pay for goods otherwise they have a declining income from taxing AI and production as demand falls due to lowered spending power.

Oh, and if the government are using AI to replace the civil service and they’re being charged more by AI companies each time they increase the tax take from those companies in order to fund the UBI for non-workers, then the hamster has moved into government, hasn’t he?

I may have got the wrong end of the stick as I’m not an economist, but it seems to me that it’s impossible for a government to produce income for tax purposes from its own endeavour, it needs outside receipts to bring in any income.

If 99% of the population are detached from creating any wealth at all, they’re just engaged in spending money handed to them by the government which was raised by taxing the 1%, then, well, were doomed to failure, aren’t we?

Ridiculous comment.

OP, “ do have a degree but found myself in a specialised account/client mgmt type role. Pays around £50k.”

Was sales part of your role? Was this role in asset finance?

I have recruiters after me every other day. Spoke with one yesterday about a role and he came back today with two more.

Parts of the job market may be weakening but the number of vacancies across the country remains largely the same.

Blaming AI without actual evidence that your job can be replaced by AI seems ridiculous. More likely the rise is due to the struggling economy. As you say, your employer’s business is in trouble, that’s why your job is at risk. The lack of similar jobs elsewhere is likely because other similar companies are experiencing the same thing.

And you think the Tories will oppose AI? 😂

Businesses don't replace people with AI because of tax and regulation, but because they'd rather not pay shedloads of unnecessary wages.

Why employ 50 people and an IT worker, if you can just employ AI and an IT worker, then sack the IT worker when it's all running itself?

I'm a mental health nurse, a role which thankfully I can't really see how could ever be replaced by AI, but I still think it's highly concerning. I think people will get poorer and poorer if things carry on as they are. There will be a significant lack of entry level or even just normal minimum wage jobs.

And even in my role, graduates are struggling. Recruitment has been frozen in my trust for over a year due to the NHS being broke. There is a restructuring of all band 7 staff. I'm concerned it might eventually come down further to clinical staff.

People will still need carers, I fear, especially given the current state of our national demography. My dad's carers are all fantastic but they are all from Nigeria. Almost as if British people think caring is below them?

Unemployment will solve that - people can care for their own relatives. No need for anyone from Nigeria to look after your Dad, then.

Same here with my grandma.

Well, there is, though, because he's a tall adult man with advanced MND and between us, me and my mother can't lift him.

Excuses, excuses…

I can't tell if this is a joke or not? I'm a 5'4 woman in her thirties and my mother is a 5'2 woman in her mid-sixties. We could not physically lift and cart about my 6 foot dad who is almost completely immobile without the help of carers. Don't forget that "carers" aren't just needed for people who have simply become incredibly old; plenty of people who aren't even old (like my dad) have physically disabling conditions that come on unexpectedly.