To think we need to start talking about the lack of jobs?

[Newmeagain]

This is prompted by quite a few threads I have read recently, from parents of young people looking for jobs or posters themselves struggling with finding a job.

I feel like a lot of responses are completely out of touch and people are not aware how hard it is right now. There are no “supermarket jobs” etc that you can just pick up.

I think this is having a particularly significant impact on school leavers and graduates looking for their first full time job, students wanting part time work and also anyone over 50 who suddenly finds themselves unemployed.

Or they'll tell you they want to work x hours a week but can only do that between 6am and 4pm on a Monday, 12pm and 8pm on Tuesdays with a 6am-11am Sunday. Hours that they know literally no one will employ them for.

You literally need to fight against it. There are people out there that are taking jobs educating the AI to take more of our young people’s jobs. We need to stand up against that use the checkout with a person on it even if it’s inconvenient for a few minutes.
Hang up if AI calls you to discuss your bill if we all do it they won’t implement it and they won’t fuck your young people over
But it is the only way
AI is rubbish. It makes mistakes critical mistakes so currently it should not be replacing any of us if it is that’s worrying.
But we’ve got no incentive to train the damn thing

On another forum after COVID I got slaughtered for pointing out that if people insisted on working from home they just prove that their jobs can be done by the cheapest person anywhere in the world.

I have a friend who used to employ 22 and now employs 7. The rest of the work is being done by technical wizards in the Philippines who he pays a very, very good salary for the Philippines but half the UK cost, and the rest by AI.

What do you mean there are no supermarket jobs? How do they fill positions when current staff leave or retire?

Well, he is not a good person
I hope he doesn’t have children and I hope he gets absolutely taxed to high heaven for it

I think it’s obvious when you look around. In my supermarkets the staff are middle aged or older, when I was younger lots of my friends did a weekend job in the supermarket.

Restaurants - again lots of young waiters when I was a teen, now they are older. Same for bar work etc

Id agree here, however as an Asian myself, we also dont kick up much of a fuss so possibly stay at a certain level/safe and dependable. Which is what companies want these days. If you feel you want more/deserve more, companies unfortunately will pick somebody else.

On another forum after COVID I got slaughtered for pointing out that if people insisted on working from home they just prove that their jobs can be done by the cheapest person anywhere in the world.

A company can do this & do so regardless if staff wfh or not.

You're misrepresenting that figure.

That was a survey by the BMA ( a trade union) conducted over a week in July 2025 where around 4 thousand Drs were asked if they had substantive employment or regular locum work from August that year. Only around 1k responded and just over 30% said they did not, and of the Drs at the end of FY2, the number was 52%. That's Drs completing their foundation training.

It didn't identify reasons for not having planned work from August in that figure.

A few hundred Drs responding to a trade union survey about whether or not they have work from the following month without the survey explaining why does not equal the statement '52% of graduate Drs unable to get work'.

What a stupid response. He’s a businessman not a charity. He is choosing a successful business model by taking the best people for the jobs.

In the IT industry work is often outsourced to India simply because it’s cheaper. I think it’s unfair to say UK workers are entitled and not as hard working which is basically what some are saying on here, in the same way you often hear the IT industry say Indian workers don’t have the same level of critical thinking as UK trained staff.

Our term finished a week ago
Do you mean last summer?

I also think we need to acknowledge why this is needed - I honestly think a lot, not all, but a lot of young British people these days don’t want to do jobs such as care etc, a lot of them feel they deserve more without the experience and these jobs are below them.

I didn’t want to do a care job 20 yrs ago as a grad & I wouldn’t want to do one now. Why would I? The pay is crap, little job progression so how would I ever be able to pay a mortgage & have dc?

AI and robotics are still babies who are learning to crawl, but the rate of advancement is startling.

The Chinese have announced the opening date in 2027 of a hotel which is going to be staffed entirely by robots. They already use robot baristas and have robot guards at border points.

Fighting AI and robotics is as pointless s it was when static robots were introduced into car manufacturing plants. Companies that didn't do it went bust. The fight needs to be to get universal basic income of a really decent level established as early as possible.

It will happen at some point, companies cannot survive without consumers being able to buy their goods. The interim period looks a bit apocalyptic though 😢

It is always easier to get a new job when you have a job already, if you see what I mean.

You can run a business without being awful and pulling up the ladder behind you
As I say, I hope he gets absolutely smashed with taxes.
it’s not employing the best people for the job he’s employing the cheapest

You got slaughtered because your post doesn't make sense.

WFH doesn't prove anything like that at all.

Working in an office in the UK doesn't prove the work needs to be done in the UK.

As your friend demonstrates. He's not employing workers in the Philippines because he can't get people to work in an office in the UK because people want to WFH, he's doing it because it doesn't have to be done in the UK and is cheaper as you just said. He cares about profits and cheap labour and not the UK or its workers.

WFH has nothing to do with it. It's a complete red herring.

If it wasn't for him having put his house on the line and worked his guts out for ten years there would be another 7 high paying jobs missing from the economy.

@TamTam5 not entitled but I think Asians just go with the flow more. People here naturally know their rights and rightly demand it. From my experience, unless they desperately want you, they will move on and get someone else who goes along with things.

Its certainly cheaper in India but depends on the role. In my company the accounts are all done abroad by established companies then we review it here. They couldnt do what we do here. But in the next few weeks, 2/3 junior staff roles will go, that's over 200 heads.

Doing voluntary work is also valuable, either aligned to the field you want to work in, or actually, just any voluntary work. It shows commitment, reliability, gives lots of other skills (especially if in retail, as it helps customer skills etc). My daughter worked practically full time as a volunteer in a charity shop whilst looking for a retail job, and within a handful of months she got a paid job. She really enjoyed it too, and felt it was worthwhile on all sorts of levels. We may say that young people shouldn't have to jump through such hoops, but it gave her an edge and confidence over other people.

There is no such thing as a high wage for a stable hand. Working with horses is slave labour and dangerous as well

It's s not a red herring at all. Many employers in small companies wouldn't have dreamed about employing people overseas until COVID got everyone working from home and trained them that it was feasible, then employees refused to come back to the office and the benefits of having people in the office weren't there, so there was nothing to lose and everything to gain.

COVID WFH acted as one giant feasibility study for whether small companies employing small numbers of professionals overseas would work.

But working from home means you don’t commute - fewer jobs needed in train/bus stations, garages, newsagent, picking up a coffee n the way. Fewer office admin starter jobs, receptionists, cleaners.

If there are fewer human in real life interactions there are fewer jobs. This isn’t a judgement H hybrids WFH. But he’s in his 50s, has his professional and personal networks, wife, teens and a demanding computer engineer job, it’s not just the starter jobs, if there are fewer jobs with human interaction youngsters don’t meet work friends, start networking, go out after work on way home. Supermarket pickers and delivery drivers are jobs which have been created but they are not as much building a young life with potential friends and colleagues. Supermarket online shopping has created jobs just shifted them from the cashiers.

People don’t need excuses why they don’t go shopping in person other than they don’t want to and the online options are there, we all have the same choices. No one, people with children or not, are going to do things which are more time consuming, more expensive and with possibly less choice just to keep jobs available for other people.

I was just pointing out to the general comments on lack of student and starter jobs that we all contribute to this new normal in the world of real life work. So the youngsters have to think differently in ways that haven’t been thought of before.

Not sure this has been thought through. If robots do the jobs so none of us have jobs we have no money just who are they expecting will be their customers?!

The whole point of any system is to give the majority jobs to use their skills and support themselves who can then pay tax to support schools hospitals disabled. Take away the jobs the whole system fails.

Agree it’s very concerning for young adult dc.