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.

Isn’t that more to do with fact you you say you’re in a fairly well paying specialised role?

The job market generally is terrible. My company recently advertised a £35k role and we had 200 applicants in 1 hour, at which point we closed the applications.

Dh's company has had 500 applicants so far for a role they advertised a week ago. Many of them are highly qualified and the company will be able to take their pick.

This government have made matters worse with the NI hike and the workers rights bill. Although it's a small mercy that they've rowed back on day 1 rights I suppose but still, employers will be even more cautious about hiring once that legislation goes through because it'll become even harder to get rid of shit performers. I saw someone interviewed recently who said the UK is fast becoming uninvestable.

Re my partner, tough for him too. Creative job, not doing great. Taken a second job to get some money in.

Hallelujah at least he’s taken a second job!!

creative jobs quite insulated for time being

I don’t want to out myself but my job is similar to sales. In that a few years ago i could move around (you might sell IT, or services, or software etc)

I am a high level admin person really. A few years ago, I’d have been able to get a job in the council, or a hospital, or a college/uni, etc. these jobs are drying up! The number of jobs round here is pathetic

I’m a solicitor and we’re already seeing firms shedding very large numbers of business services and paralegal roles, either off-shoring them or just needing fewer due to AI.

I’ll give it about a year before paralegal roles drop off a cliff completely - pretty much everything they do can be done by AI.

Paralegaling was a great entry into the profession for many (including myself). That avenue just won’t be there; possibly for the best because the need for small armies of lawyers is also going to reduce.

It’ll be a much smaller, more niche profession in future.

I work for the NHS and there's been a job freeze in our trust for over a year. The couple of vacancies that manage to get approved through panel are always internal only. DD19 struggled terribly to get a part time job despite having loads of experience. Thankfully she managed to secure a position in a coffee bar which she loves and gets enough hours. The competition for her job was fierce with literally loads of applicants. She is starting uni doing a marketing degree soon but I'm wondering if there's any point. She's super bright and it feels a waste if she doesn't but will it ever lead to a job? It's all so scary and depressing

Every week at the moment.

The big ones are in a constant race to be at the top. Google's Gemini is winning right now, and so Open AI started a 'code red' to catch up. And anthropic were just 'oh here's the best coding AI in the world, but you know, whatever'. And Musk's grok is just filth, which some want.

GPT 5.1 was released weeks ago and they are releasing a reasoning model this week.

It's crazy how fast it's moving.

My husband (senior marketing job) was made redundant in July 2024 and has only just got a new job...it has taken around 800 applications, a handful of interviews and a whole lot of stress and worry. He is on a WhatsApp group with about 15 peers who were all in the same boat last year.

Luckily I was able to find a 'returnship' to my previous profession and have kept us afloat (just) but it is looking increasingly scary as companies race to embrace AI - even though it's great at some things and really fairly crap at other stuff....

It’s really bad. My industry will be fully automated in about 5 years

Only if you can out manoeuvre the overseas workers who will work 7 days a week for buttons!

What’s your industry?

I work in a financial services area

AI is here, for better or worse. But at some point there will be the backlash. Recruitment via AI is horrendous. It doesn't work for the applicant, and eventually employers will work out they are missing the best people. AI doesn't work for customer service.chst bits are useless, everyone reverts to calling, and currently there aren't enough real people to answer the phones. Offshoring to India doesn't work, the phone lines are shute and the language barrier is huge.

Consumer is King. We will go where we feel we get good service. USP's are swinging back towards personal customer contact.

AI diagnostics in some health care areas is great and proven.

Employees in my industry always used to come in via a degree or office junior route. It worked well and meant there was always a nice mix of backgrounds in the office.

Most companies don't do either of those anymore. It's too expensive compared to what they can actually produce in their first couple of years in the office. Most places recruit grads with 3/4/5 years experience these days.

It is a real worry. My company has had lots of redundancies this year and is automating many processes with AI. I have a degree and a masters but as they're humanities subjects they're essentially pointless and since I don't have a specific qualification, skill or trade I'm stuck in low paid admin roles. The only work where I am seems to be warehouse work, care or seasonal retail. I'm late 30s and have no idea whether to train as something specific would even be worth it

AI is probabilistic, very good in certain task, makes up most probable scenario when it doesn't know the answer.

Garbage in, garbage out. Human oversight to spot the garbage, but we are all getting so lazy.

Very hard to know what to advise the kids to do.

Ask AI to explain why it always show clock arrows at ten to two. The answer explains how AI s logic works.

It relies on the most repeated training data (regardless of correctness).

There will be AI Compliance roles in the near future, could lean into that space.

Yes there are very few job vacancies at the moment OP. The picture is UK-economy wide although some industries are doing a bit better than others.

The reasons are:
Brexit has knocked 4-8% off UK GDP (there are varying estimates). The missing percent would pay a good chunk of everyone on MN's wages.

Global economic uncertainty eg Trump tariffs, Ukraine war is contributing to higher prices and lack of investor confidence.
This Govt's NI rises aren't the major contributor but they haven't helped either. Employers have paused hiring.
People in jobs are hanging on to them for dear life - there is very little movement in the labour market
And AI has made it a lot easier to apply to multiple vacancies so employers are wading through treacle with the amount of AI applications they are getting. They will adapt to this over time but most haven't yet.
The job loss effects of AI doing your job for you haven't really kicked in yet.

This was a good article I saw recently.
https://www.thepersistent.com/phoebe-gavin-finding-a-job-mid-career-layoffs/

How do you say no to big tech? 🤨

Indeed it is a worry. Time to look for roles that AI cannot replace, retrain if necessary.
I was speaking with one of my sons this week - a degree at uni is going to be replaced by a trade, probably an electrician, qualification. And this is one of the main reasons - you cannot use AI to replace physical trades at the moment.

It's terrifying. Everyone isn"t suited to becoming an electrician or a mechanic or a plumber. I lie awake at night worrying about my kids, both in jobs vulnerable to AI.

I have two dc & 1 dgs. No more dgc on the horizon as both dc think why bring more children into the world with such a shortage of jobs & housing & an insane col.

I am going to advise my kids not to have kids. Neither seem v keen anyway.

I have been looking for work since August, have two degrees and lots of experience but only one interview so far which I didn’t get. Most places don’t even reply to your application these days, it’s pretty dispiriting.

I tried to get a part time retail job to see me through while job searching but didn’t even get a reply from Tesco, Waterstones, etc.. My teens are also struggling to find any kind of employment. It’s dire out there.