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.

I would imagine agricultural work is also something that is quite skilled. You cant just rock up and be as fast as someone who does it all the time.

Not Brexit again FGS

SOME people wouldn’t want to do it regardless of pay, and some people wouldn’t be physically capable, but if the pay is high enough, there will guaranteed be people willing to do any job. We have a workforce of 37 million people!

The pay isn’t that bad? Are you kidding? It’s 23k - 35k for a labourer. That’s not even an average salary for the most experienced labourer, doing hard graft. As I said, the issue is pay.

Yeah, I agree with this too. Even if some system of UBI could be implemented so I had enough money to live on, I want to work and use my skills. My main skill set has always been writing and aggregating information really, combined with specialised (but not massively specialised) knowledge of my field.

It depresses the hell out of me to think AI can produce a 2-page briefing paper in five seconds which would have been a few hours work for me previously. Sure, I don't love every part of my work (and I'd happily do fewer hours) but I enjoy writing and research, and feeling like my knowledge is useful. It's taken me years to get to this point in my career and work is a big part of my identity. If AI can do the bulk of it all now... what's it all been for?

I don't think you are right. I think what will happen in the end that the world will wake up to the fact that the economy will only work if people have money to buy things. In the end, people will be paid not to do paid work and companies will pay tax instead of paying people.

But the interim until that balance is achieved will be bloody and it is just starting now.

Your suggestion of protecting "workers rights" actually means protecting people's right to have to go to work and do a job that is completely meaningless and can be better done by automation. That makes no sense in its own right, and still less in a global economy where other countries won't hang back from taking full advantage of AI and robotics.

The problem is that AI will still need people to work on it who will have to be paid a lot. Then they will want to spend their masses of money on, for example, restaurants, so we'll need people working there and operating machines, then people may demand more human interaction etc so businesses will have to pay people to do that, then you end up in the same situation we are in now, where UBI just becomes a benefits equivalent, businesses are saying they have to pay employees to do things anyway plus maintenance on the robots so why should I pay so much tax then we're back to where we are now! Maybe with fewer jobs but also there is a predicted global population crash coming. Once the boomers die out we are into an inverted pyramid so fewer and fewer working age people in each generation compared to those above it, unless people decide to have larger families because the ubi is paid per person ( again a problem of whos paying for it and why should they?) So same arguments as now, but made worse because fewer people will be working to support more people on ubi alone including a growing elderly population.

this is possibly an incomprehensible fever dream as Ive got the hirribly lurgy.

" . . . .The population increase plus AI is going to annihilate the future of this country"..... would they not compliment each other symbiotically .... I mean or the huge increase in nonagenerians and centenerians could be looked after by robots and a new influx of immigrant labour ... It s the popular misconception that migration is bad that is the problem , when in reality migration of any sort is VERY good for demographics and economy ....Also - ageing robots don't need bum-wipers )but can proportionately cause productivity to explode , resulting in increased government revenue

....and an enlightened government , Most probably a left or liberal one , not a Reform-nazzi or ToryGreed / AlanBstard one .... would introduce a Universal Basic Income , and we would all have to work LESS , instead of - as now - work endless night shifts and 60 hour weeks to funnel our money and wealth upwards into the pockets of the rich and billionaires - who buy up all assets and force up the price of everything for us !

Surely primary aged children would need actual humans to supervise them?I suppose AI might work for some secondary school situations.

To be fair, it could probably just replace the government. Would anyone really notice if Kier Starmer was replaced by a robot?

mmmmm i disagree, i think paying people to do nothing, via taxes and UBI wont work at all, people will be idle, you know they say about the devil and idle hands??
Why should anyone bother going to school, bettering themselves and learning if there is absolutely nothing at the end of it?

How would you decide who would get what? we are all very different.

As to the World waking up to the economy will only work if people have money? well, thats a very recent concept.
Before unionisation, the vast majority of people had very very little, with wealth held by a tiny number.

We could easily go back to that, extremely wealthy individuals and corporations don't usually give away money if they can help it.

So, the only way is to limit technology to manageable levels.

But all of this assumes AI will actually deliver as promised.

mmmmm i disagree, i think paying people to do nothing, via taxes and UBI wont work at all, people will be idle, you know they say about the devil and idle hands??

You want people to be forced to do jobs that are meaningless because automation can do them at least as well?

I think it's less meaningless for someone to stay in bed all day scrolling than that.

And some people will do that. Others will use their freedom from being chained to a job to get creative or help others.

Taxation is going to have to change, for sure. Companies are going to have to understand that if they want anyone to be able to buy their products and services they have to pay tax to be paid out as UBI, instead of wages to be paid direct.

Yes but I'm sure a 'classroom monitor' could be paid way less.

It very soon will be.

It would have to be significantly more on top of UBI though for people to want to do it. But then you would get into ' whats the point of school if there are no jobs and the parents are home all day' It would be endless playgroups! Eventually if everyone said ' whats the pointvof learning' there would be no one educated enough to maintain the robots!

Not only are jobs scarce but the hiring systems are awful. A friend had to go through seven consecutive interviews for a mid level IT job in one firm. Thankfully he got it but still...

It depends what they base the stats on, if it is based on people actually claiming unemployment benefits then it will be flawed because for many being made redundant it's near on impossible to claim anything so it's often not worth the bother.

Falls flat on its face, eg Tesco paid out approx 6bn in wages, made 2.5bn in nedt profit.

Sure some companies make more than they pay out in wages but you'd be asking these companies to subsidise less profitable ones.

Bear in mind that many workers need in work top ups.

Paying people a UBI of 37k pa, prob the min needed to be able to live and buy goods in enough quantity, then how do you propose to get the spending power someone on 100k pa etc has to people sat at home?

UBI can only work in a limited way.

Hence the need to prevent mass unemployment.

I'm in the health and safety profession, and a qualification that can really be desirable is the diploma level Nebosh h&s course but it's difficult to do because a) it costs thousands and b) if your employer was willing to pay to do it, it's a very onerous course and ideally you need to be allowed to have regular day release to do it, I've worked with people who've tried to do it at night college and struggled miserably after being at work all day every day.

Not many come with a house, when I was with an ex 25 years ago, we went to a tied cottage he got with a job and it was shit! It was in the back of beyond, it was thick snow outside, it wasn't heated, the window frames had bits missing and big holes in and we'd moved a long way from home. After just a few weeks the farm owner in his big nice farmhouse decided he didn't like my ex and we had to move all our stuff back home and go back to a mortgage and both being unemployed. People had been due to rent our house and we had to screw them over. Another farm worker was made to live in a van and wasn't even allowed access to a shower! Often times farmers make agricultural workers live in manky caravans.

Why am i as a skilled, qualified health and safety professional on just £30.5k! This is what doesn't make sense in our country! It's becoming pointless to be skilled!

We would become an inheritocracy. Everything would be determined by who your parents were and what has handed down to you from past generations. Particularly in terms of property and where you live. Without jobs, there would be very limited scope to better your situation.

That sounds awful. Ours are in brand new 3 or 4 bed houses. I wouldn’t expect someone to live in something I wouldn’t. I do think farming has change a bit in that respect