Job market is awful

[Flowerpowerz]

I work in pharma (general field) and the job market is horrendous. I’m seeing a huge trend towards AI which is not surprising. Perhaps more concerning is the massive uptick of offshore partners aka shipping work out to India because they are cheaper than people in the uk and USA. I have several friends in several related companies (technology, IT, coding) that have lost jobs due to this. They are being expected to share knowledge with their Indian colleagues before their redundancy kicks in.

I have honestly never known it so bad. My linked in is a sea of “open to work”

is it just me or has anyone else noticed these trends? It’s worse than ever

I have read that recruiters are using AI to screen applications. The AI I assume trawls for key words .Recruitment agents are going to find it increasingly difficult to field candidates. My son says that he has received his applications bounced back within minutes with what looks like an automated email.

I decide to use AI to help write my CV and I did not recognise myself in this new version. I also felt that it would set me up as being a huge disappointment and quite frankly an imposter. I couldn't use it but was an interesting experiment.

I think things are only going to get worse. I don't think any government can tackle this......we are not an island despite being an island. The forces at play are global.

It's frightening reading this thread.
I have this dark, horrible feeling that what we are seeing now is the beginning of the end of the first world. I feel deeply in my consciousness that a U turn has started; the developing countries are getting more work, more skilled, richer and more powerful, whilst the developed countries are losing their scaffolding; we are getting weaker and we are getting much poorer.
In the future, our next generation will be doing the worst jobs in society or won't be able to get a job at all.
I think we are seeing the start of a seismic change.

So very true! My daughter is a junior designer. She just had the horrible experience of a small company inviting her for a job interview in order to steal her ideas but not actually employ her.

I read an article recently about a company that was using AI to screen applicants. They had a go at using it with their own CVs, and the CEO's CV was rejected in seconds. 😂

This AI nonsense means that quite often, real people never see a CV.

DS graduated last month applied for four jobs, interviews for two, he got both jobs.. his partner is applying for jobs all the time. She can't get an interview at all. She does have a job but not in the field she studied.

It's a mess in the north even if you're in a city.

I think we are starting to see the end of the hegemonic west. But think that the massive shift not necessarily be like a set of scales with winners and losers. Ultimately unless technology, and AI and robotics in particular is not used to create abundance alongside governments that regulate the market, distribute goods and services and give a basic guaranteed income we are all screwed.

That's brilliant

My brother is really well qualified in his field and can’t get a job. I do think the job market is especially awful at the moment.

I never understand why anyone ever thinks their accidental luck at birth means they should have more rights to anything than anyone. Even those Indian and Polish people.

Such privilege we were born with in UK and Ireland. ‘Those people’ aren’t even close to taking their fair share of it off you with their call centre job.

But yes the privilege of it is breathtaking. I never mind people moaning about how hard things are for them but instantly feel revolted the minute people start implying other humans on this earth shouldn’t have the same privilege.

Not shelf stacking, but I imagine that supermarket delivery jobs can’t be that difficult to get. A lot of young people won’t have the license for these. My local supermarkets seem to always be short of delivery drivers for online shops.

The reality is that a lot of places don’t replace people who leave jobs because they can’t afford to pay employees. I have heard people say that staff are needed but can’t afford to hire.

For those of you with graduates, please tell them to watermark their work with ‘for interview purposes only’ because some unscrupulous companies invent imaginary jobs so they can steal ideas from keen graduates.

I agree. We thought we could offshore the low value work we didn't want and keep the high value work but are finding that's not the case. It sucks for us in the first world but there is no real reason we should always be at the top of the pile.

Elon Musk thinks it won’t be a problem because we’ll all be unemployed at home at leisure and the government will just hand out money to everyone. 🤨 And we’ll all just do jobs like a hobby (and not get paid) to reduce boredom. Or something 🤔🤨🙄 Read something about him being interviewed and challenged as to how this would work in practice. He seemed annoyed and unused to being questioned. 🙄

It’s all right for drug addled billionaires though. They just get to play with other people’s lives

It's the worst I have ever experienced. Think the country is in a really bad way. So many issues caused by bad policies and only getting worse.

I’m slightly more optimistic that this is the closing of our current chapter and the start of the new AI centric world. Society is going to look and work very differently in the next few years, UBI will be a necessity for the millions unable to find work.

I am sceptical only because I do not believe that politicians are really paying attention to the effect this will have on society and on the lives of ordinary people. Sure, they are invested in reaping the rewards at a national level, but that very much is based upon the liberal national state actor model seen under capitalism.

What do you think will happen in five years to change things?

not being snarky - would genuinely love to know

I think politicians and government in general are pretty locked in to this but there’s little to do other than observe and plan right now. The lag of AI impacting jobs and careers may seem slow so far but with the recent releases of particularly advanced models it’s only a matter of time before we see significant shifts in employment statistics or simply jobs not being replaced when people leave or retire. Once the robotics take off that’s when we will see huge changes and moves towards UBI or similar support structures.

In 5 years we will have vast numbers of robots in the workforce and the AI breakthroughs will be staggering. We won’t be seeing a boom in jobs creation anywhere in the world in 5 years.

I work for large bank and thousands of jobs have been offshored to India over the last 15 years or so, I think in total about 20,000 people work there now. These would have mostly been entry level jobs. You multiply that across all the other banks who did the same and sectors and it's no suprise we are in a position where beginner, entry level roles are hard to find and get into.

What a pp said

Try insurance, also health and safety

'Boring' sectors but generally reliable and pay decently

Surely industries are going to realise all of this offshoring and AI means that people won’t be able to afford to purchase their products and services? Surely they’ll realise they will shoot themselves in the foot and it’s not going to be a great way to run a business in the medium term? They’ll all go under. Or am I being naive?

I listened to an interview where he was talking about that just yesterday.
It was the one with The Economist.
He didn’t seem annoyed though.

He predicted that within ten years from now, AI and robotics will create a system of immense automated productivity and render traditional human jobs obsolete.

He suggested that if/ when that happens, governments should issue a Universal High Income to their citizens.

The interviewer asked whether that would lead to inflation.
Musk replied that because robots will create a massive abundance of goods and services, that abundance will back up the newly issued money.

Basically, the money won’t lose its value since there will be no shortage in goods in services that can be purchased with it.

Yes and no. Take today’s logic out of the equation, because you can’t apply today’s economic understanding with tomorrow’s new world because the two are like oil and water.