Feeling dread: redundancies everywhere

[LemonT17]

I think this may be my first ever post... I'm wondering if anyone else is feeling absolute dread at the state of the job market, at local, national and global levels?

In South Wales, you have Legal & General (1000 jobs), Admiral (500 jobs) and I'm sure I've seen posts from employees at Principality Building Society too. You then have the big Welsh universities who have been through multiple iterations recently.

More broadly, you have Canva announcing this week a 22% reduction in their global workforce which includes many UK employees. Microsoft reducing 60k global workforce, and Virgin Media 02 also announcing cuts this week. And I'm sure many many more across the UK that I've not yet heard of.

I worry about so many people entering the job market at a really difficult time, where the job market is already so tough when competing against AI screening tools, and now lots and lots of talented people are all looking for the same few jobs available.

When I mention this to my peers they all seem non-plused and that I am worrying about nothing. Am I over reacting?!

A quick search of Findajob show plenty of tradie jobs like roofer, installer etc, plus care work in my area.

If the job was considered to be a 'essential' role during the pandemic, one that you could not do from home, then it is more likely to be future-proof.

What is vanishing is all the nice middle-class comfortable careers. Especially if you sit at a computer all day and don't actually work with your hands.

This process is inevitable in late-stage empire in a declining civilisation.

I work at a uni and my job has been restructured out of existence. I'm about to have to interview for the new restructured jobs. Dread is a major part of life atm!

Ive just been made redundant after 26 years. Landlord wanted us out and gave us 3 weeks notice to pack up a huge shop and leave. I'm devastated.

With the exception of delivery drivers.

We cannot conceive of it now - robots doing it all. But we never would have imagined where we are now so.....

Even delivery drivers may not be that safe, once drones are used frequently for all of the small packages. I do worry about young people coming out of Uni/college now with no hope.

If you spent 6 years at university and 20 years building a career requiring 1 set of skills would you then be delighted at 50 to be having to embark on a career as a roofer to make ends meet? Also you seem to not understand that working in an industry like that also requires experience and you don't have skills from a desk job that will transfer.

My husband in particular will be more than happy to take A job to have A job if it comes to that but it doesn't mean it doesn't feel like a kick in the teeth to lose your career.

Exactly this.... Do we need humans to build the drones?

No.

we dont even need humans to design them

I’m sorry to hear he’s up against it. It’s so tough, I think you mentioned IT sector. There’s a few feeling it atm.

Perhaps the robots won't kill us all and they will just do everything for us and we can live in a money free utopia? 😬

Why don't Brits take to the streets and protest like the French are doing today?

I think it’s good to be aware of the situation and have a few options up your sleeve if it comes to it, but there’s no point giving yourself over to worry if it may not happen.
There are still jobs out there if you are resilient and persistent so don’t feel that it would necessarily be horrendous if you do get made redundant. Many people survive it absolutely fine.

I think its a real concern as the world pivots to an AI enhanced workplace. Its the next revolution, much like tech in the 80s and steam in the past.

I’m lucky to have retired but if I was younger I would be looking to retrain in healthcare, a trade or go into the military or similar.

The weather is a bit rubbish, and our sofas are just too comfortable.

It’s so sad and made me feel sad for humanity when we all saw this coming. Sadly part of Agenda 20/30 is the removal of all small medium sized businesses ( not owned by the big conglomerates/corporations) and a destruction of the middle classes. So many things warned about 7 years ago were classed as conspiracy theories and yet every single conspiracy theory talked about back then and since has come true and continues to.

I was warning people over 5 years ago to pay down their debt if they had any and if possible, pay off their mortgages. Financial security going forward for those in middle class jobs has been a ticking time bomb for many years. There’ll be those that still say ‘nonsense!’ And yet if they open their eyes they can see it all unfolding around them … job losses, businesses going under, food shortages, threats of war … need I go on?

I feel for you all, all those that worked their asses off to get where they got and worked damn hard to get all they own. None of this is fair. The billionaires bleeding all folk dry, AI taking over our world and lives getting destroyed one way or another every minute of every day. I won’t mention the convid bollox, god help you if by this stage in the game you don’t realise what that was all about. There is no answer our opportunity to stop all this is well passed, because the bigger percentage of the population didn’t listen x

Obviously everything above is true. However in the short term these jobs are always recruiting
Bus driver
Phlebotomist
Care
Professions allied to medicine apprenticeships
Civil enforcement officers
SIA trained security, training is cheap and short
Child care
Trained tradesmen

Im really worried about redundancies at my company... we've made loads already.
But I also worry about the trickle down. We no longer have a cleaner, I no longer get my hair done, my nails done, botox etc. We have cancelled all rebuild work on our house and are not doing the garden or the garden office anymore. I know all this sounds super entitled (me crying over not being able to afford botox or a garden office... I get that) But my point it - we were giving money to local people and companies. Now all that money goes to the super market shop and to the bank in interest rates on the mortgage.

rich get richer.

I would be first to the barricades if it wasn't for my knees.

Yes, it's very worrying. What's even worse is that AI is taking out whole sectors at a time (and yes, it is happening, right now) which means that job losses aren't 'spread out' but effecting whole communities. And of course, with more people out of work that means less discretionary spending on sectors that aren't immediately impacted by AI (builders, hairdressers, gardeners etc). I don't think the tech bros have thought about who's going to buy their shit when they've replaced all of us with machines.

AI will be causing swathes of job losses within the next few years. I’m hunkering down and restricting unnecessary spend - expecting lean times ahead.