Humans in work might be history as Robots take your jobs

Traditional Human jobs are at risk of becoming history -

Thanks to the rise of the robots, taking your jobs!

So, how long do you think your job is going to last? or your career? how long before you are obsolete and replaced by automation? Maybe not very long. Why?

The jobs market has changed much since the 2009 crash

Around 2009, I worked for a business that was being sold. I decided it might be a safe option to look around for something in case I was not required by the new owner. So, I started to keep an eye on the jobs market and continued this over the years on a casual basis.

In 2016 I was forced out of a job and went on the jobs market full time. I spent the whole of 2916 looking for work. Even with a good CV with 20+ years of experience in marketing, sales, business development and graphic design, no one was interested much.

Of around 350 jobs I applied for I had around 20 interviews. I even touted my CV to local companies offering free work placement experience, I sent out 100 and received no interest. So what was the reason?

The rise of the Robots - Some of  Amazon's fleet of robots

In a word, automation. Since 2009, robots and automation have made big in-roads into the workplace and the bad news is that these silent raptors are not done yet feeding on our jobs.

The warehouse of the near future - all robot, no human

 You may think your job is safe or your career choice wise. Think again. Are you an Accountant? Accounts clerk? Marketeer or sales person? You may think your job is safe, but you should prepare yourself for obsolescence.

All of the above jobs are rapidly moving towards robots only.

Proxy living is the future-  coupled to open source and big data

The future of our lives is that proxy living will take over our lives, that is robots and automation handling all our menial junk like paying our bills, sifting the sales and marketer's cyber guff that will be silently sent to your proxy assistant to deal with.

Your fridge will be part of the proxy chain -

it will report data on your food, to your proxy

With big data, your fridge of the future will analyse your food consumption, what goes bad, what you buy -  all this is valuable data to a supermarket or producer. So, your proxy will identify your eating 'likes' and will plan and shop for you, on-line and without you having to do it.

Big data  fed 'proxies' will be a new network of cyber citizens -

a digital network of cyber humans

Your shopping receipt is big data rich. What you buy and who you are is important data. As jobs silently disappear to automation, what about us humans?

The truth is that we will find that there is less and less work for us to do. As such, we will have to be funded to live by the government, by a Basic Income Payment system. This is affordable, but the government isn't even looking at this yet. This is madness. Mass unemployment is coming thanks to automation and many of us will be displaced from work.

Every technology scientist of note says the same thing -

we need a Basic Income payment system and soon 

So, who is safe in a job? Those that have transferable skills, those that can do jobs that robots currently can't.

You think I'm joking? I am not. I have been out of work before but it has never taken this long to get back into the jobs market. Some jobs I saw had over 100 applicants and this was for some low level admin job.

Many employers are trying to use the 'least cost option' model when recruiting, it ends up with the job coming up time and again because the person isn't suitable or leaves. Even job agencies privately agree with this situation.

Robot to robot interaction is the future

So what is the future? It will be that we will lose out jobwise to robots and automation, half the UK jobs will disappear at least. The government will have to pay out a Basic Income payment, to anyone over 16.

The current DWP benefits model is no longer fit for purpose, it needs replacing with a streamlined and simple system as I have set out.

This will allow those who want to start a business the financial safety net and create new wealth by buying and selling of new products or services, those in work will have extra money to spend, stimulating the economy, those pensioners will have money to spend, the people on benefits will have money too and can try a new risk free business venture.

This could all be a reality if it wasn't for the blinkered amateurs who cannot see what the future is. They will become subsumed by this cybernetic tsunami, the rise of the robots is happening, not tomorrow, it is already fluid and building.

The future could be good if we plan, not sit around denying it.

Employers who fail to read CV's and covering letters properly - I could have been a contender!

Potential Employers who don't

You might see an ideal job advertised and think 'I can do that.'

So you get your CV ready and maybe adjust it to suit and write a really good covering letter.

You might be lucky and get an interview, or never hear from the company.

Recently, about 3 months ago, I applied for a job and sent the CV and covering letter, carefully outlining my relative experience to the role, including practical workshop and repair experience gained over eleven years.

I got a reply, thanks but no thanks.

Funnily enough, as things go, the job came up again 3 months later. So I applied again. This is often the case, an employer takes the least cost, least qualified option and finds a few months down the line they need to advertise the job again, rather than do the sensible thing.

Anyway, I saw the same job come up again, so I sent in the CV and covering letter. I had a contact from the company and phoned them up.

The person there I spoke to said the reason they had not interviewed me before was due to a lack of engineering experience. So I said I had eleven years of repairs, electrical, hydraulic and mechanical , all things this company dealt with.

It was obvious that the company had neither read the CV or letter properly, either time. It also became apparent that the CV reader had no technical experience themselves and had not looked to see what one thing they did not know about was. Not the first time I have had this.

It just makes me wonder, how many other jobs have I missed out on because people don't read the CV or covering letter properly?

After Big Data, Robotic inter connectivty will mean Proxy Living for Humans will be the next stage of our existence

Big Data Proxy Robots - meet your new workers

We hear a lot of guff about 'Big Data' and the reality of this subject is that Big Data is big business.

Every time you check out at the supermarket, that barcode scanner is building a profile of you and your consumption.

Big Data users report satisfaction with the results it produces for them

So to whom is that data useful? Many.

Apart from Supermarkets gathering data on your purchase history, companies like Amazon and Ebay analyse your browsing and purchasing to use algorithmic self-marketing targeted at what you look at and things you might like to look at. Things you might like to buy, more importantly.

When the refrigerator of the future can 'talk' to the Internet about your fridge contents, how they are used or rot, is useful to Supermarkets and Growers.

Low hanging fruit - harvested by Agrobots

spelling the end for migrant pickers

The base end of the scale, in agriculture, is now embracing robotic workers to pick produce on a constant cycle operational basis, selecting for harvesting produce at optimum condition, it reduces waste and enhances profits lost to waste from 'off' products.

This is the infancy. The world is becoming more connected across many markets.

So where is this going next? Proxy living.

Automation and Robotics are cutting a swathe into our human jobs world. Norbert Weiner, the early computer scientist and modern cybernetician saw the danger to human employment from computer automation of work processes in the infancy of modern computing in the wake of WW2.

Think of our traffic signals, automated, train signalling, mostly automated, air traffic control, mostly automated. We are steadily relinquishing control to machinery as it becomes more reliable and safer. Google cars are in the vanguard of automated driving.

The ghost workers - ethereal servants

Where do we go next with all this? Proxy living.

As we embrace the digital enormity of the future, we can dispense with the crap in our lives, all the trivia of paying for this, renewing that, can be done by machines, on our behalf, by proxy.

We no longer will have to endure the sales calls, the pop up marketing, the dross, because we will build technology to do that and let us just get on with our lives. Not interrupted.

The jobs market is set to lose 9 million jobs in the UK

Permanently - lost to automation

Fundamentally, we Humans have to change for the imminent future upon us.

Education is modelled on a largely out of date 'sausage machine' type of system. It no longer serves. It no longer will serve a jobs market where 9 million jobs will disappear over the next 10 years.

We need to fill a skills gap that It diplomas can't staunch nor every man or woman having a degree. A risk averse society has been created by health and safety cranks, who have filled a void in the unemployables sector now that the racism industry has become redundant to ethnic minority discrimination and white indigenous people are crying racism.

A cheaper Benefits model than the DWP must be introduced

We need people that can change a tap washer and make things. We need the DWP to become a more skills and training based unit, it is not serving the current demands, it needs to provide real skills not half arsed work placements in situations that just fill a gap on a CV.

To take the place of the lost jobs, a Basic Income Guarantee system of say £12k a year paid to everyone over 16 will have to come in.

It will be cheaper to administer than the current DWP system which spends £389 million dispensing around £17 million in unemployment payments. Hardly a good business model.

In one sweep, we can brush away a hugely bureaucratic and top heavy department and replace it with a skills and training operation that encompasses Technical Schools from age 12 and allows people to pursue what they are good at, rather than just having an income to survive.

Humans will be freed up by machines, to do things that give them value, rather than be just wage slaves doing menial work. Self improvement colleges and groups will be the future, to upskill Humans which will provide its own economy to take the place of the High Street.

Retail is being driven off the High Street.

Think about your last 5 purchases, how many were made in person interacting with another Human? Maybe 1. That is why the High Street is dying a slow death.

Jobs that were there in companies 5 years ago are now not there.

The 'record number of job vacancies' are largely due to double counting and worse, with a job perhaps appearing on 5 or more job sites, it will be counted as 5 rather than the 1 it actually is.

Our future is not bleak. If it is managed properly, it will be good.

It needs to be managed by professionals not by blundering amateurs.

The times for amateurs in Government is over.

Our future rides on it.

The tripartite balancing act of houses, people and jobs - is it sustainable?

Will the future generations be able to keep all of the balls in the air?

Life can often be a precarious business. It is full of risk, from day one and before. So what of our situation now, how much risk is involved here? and what is that risk. And for the future?

We currently operate a situation of tertiary risk balance, we are essentially balancing three major risk areas which we have to keep in an equilibrium, otherwise our life as we know it fails.

This is outside of the commercial and business world. Did you appreciate the fragility of how we currently exist? Here are three essentials to consider:-

Increasing house prices, but for how long will they remain viable?

The housing market, long a topic of discussion at dinner parties, but small talk aside, where we live is a key factor in where we work and where we create jobs.

If you are in the jobs market, no doubt you will have signed up for alerts to see jobs advertised all over the country. But when you stop and analyse those, you see the variance in salary, according to area they are situated in.

With houses in London and the South East of England, you wonder how long the jobs market there and the property market will remain viable. But we've been saying this for years, low interest rates have maintained a calm sea for years now, but what happens when the wind gets up and creates choppiness and the rates fluctuate?

Frankly, I cannot see how the markets of houses and jobs in these areas can remain viable. For a business to operate in the South East or London there are big capital costs such as business rates and rents to start with before you start to make a bean of profit.

So what happens when the stores pull out of London? Will the property investors step in and buy up, turning these to residential use? The current model is sell on and not take a hit, but for how long can prices rise? Is it essential to be in London? Not anymore for some businesses, especially with home working and improved delivery services.

But this may lead us to our next subject of jobs and whether we will have one soon?

How relevant are your skills now or irrelevant tomorrow?

The prediction that 35% of jobs may be lost to automation and robotics in the next 10 years is well known. So how will you survive?

This brings a new dynamic into play. In two ways. Firstly, how will you survive? That is likely to be in the form of a Basic Income Guarantee. This will pay you £10-12k a year tax free.

But this is no comfort to the person with the massive mortgage who needs £70-100k+ a year.

Employment is changing, with automation to the fore, new jobs will be created in technology, but there will be a yawning gap, just as happened in the 1980's when people with 'hands on' skills will also be needed. They are in a shortage scenario at present, the answer is for you to get transferrable skills that a robot hasn't and you will have a future.

The BIG payment will also allow people to train up and get skills experience in new areas, but it has to be integrated. The DWP model is dead, it has to change and move away from a hectoring, nasty and sanction based control situation into a system of training and development.

It can no longer survive as a bureaucratic bureau that costs £389 million a year to run, paying out ONLY around £17 million in unemployment benefits. That is not a viable business model, it is a job creation scenario straight out of the Soviet Communist era. Time for a new way forward.

Future people - how will a shrinking demographic change our society?

So, where are the future people coming from to populate our jobs and houses? Not it would seem from the existing stock.

Many women are for a variety of reasons not having children. This can be from not conforming to a stereotype, financially because of high mortgage payments, or because they enjoy a career too much to lose the momentum and chances of progression.

The 'knackered mothers wine club' sector of women who are trying to 'have it all' and are just tired out because their lives are too hectic is not healthy for them or their families. 'Helicopter parents' who swoop in an out of their children's lives are another problem, lack of parental involvement, attention and substitution of attention by expensive gifts is harming the children.

A 'cotton wool' and risk averse society is in danger of creating false hazards, with children being put in fear of harm around any dark corner. They are being conditioned to be spoon fed dependency.

They need to be exposed to reasonable and controlled risk so that they can be useful in later life and not stand on the sidelines waiting for someone else to act. Recent work experience placements I observed, came with a long list of hectoring 'don'ts' and 'not allowed to' how are these kids going to function in life if they do not take risks?

The education dynamic has changed, with many more women going to university or higher education in general. The job market has adjusted more to a technology based economy away from a 1950's scenario of secretarial or shop work, where a woman married early and had a family early.

The birth demographic has changed from around 24 years of age to anything up to 42 or later. Of course this has a knock on effect, on education places, future jobs, indeed future social security, future housing.

Demands which were fairly smooth in passage, like a calm sea have now changed, in some areas, particularly with high housing costs, you are now getting career singles or career couples in place of families and swathes of the retired who were working once.

The educated and dynamic is one area of the ideal genetic pool you need to promulgate for future success, the educated and aspiring, to take up the high end jobs and high value housing costs. But also, the supporting cast of trades people isn't there either and this is worrying. Where before night followed day, will the sun rise tomorrow?

Nature makes compensations, those that may not be academically gifted are often extremely gifted with manual dexterity and understanding of machinery. We need to develop through technical schools these skills because we need them and will continue to.

Currently our system is sustainable, because of foreign investment buying into UK property. But unless the UK can encourage suitable immigrants with skills and acumen rather than uneducated people who choose not to fit in and just take benefits, it will start to slip. A points based system is long overdue to import quality skills.

The 'mechanisation' and march of the machines scenario isn't going away. These factors along with BIG, form a new society based on getting quality of life back rather than having to do meaningless jobs just to service living costs.

We will still need to make and design things but we need to maintain a balancing act to do so.

Get a job they say... 35% of all jobs will go in the next 20 years

So it goes....

So, you think I am being unrealistic?

The great Norbert Weiner, the father of modern cybernetics knew early on after WW2 that the computer was going to be the one machine that would result in the loss of human jobs.

As early as 1961, General Motors had installed robotic units on the production line, this had the effect of not only taking human jobs but also once the low-skilled worker was replaced by an automated 'fetch and carry' operation, this would knock on to elsewhere in the workplace.

The jobs market is shrinking and more so since the 2009 crash. The 'useless' regarded degrees such as Golf Course Management and the like have created a wash of graduates who will not find work easily.

The future human worker will need transferable skills and skills that a robot finds difficult. A 4 year old child has more dexterity than current robots, what the human can do easily, the robot can't and vice versa.

The modern employer seeks the least cost option, typically employing young, inexperienced and cheap labour. They look to pay the least on offer from a job application advert they post, but it is a false economy.

Having been studying the job market since the 2009 rupture, I have noticed two things, firstly that the 'least cost option' has led to another phenomena, that of the same job coming up about 1-3 months later because the post holder was not the right choice.

The employment agencies acknowledge that the employers want the least cost option, so think about that when you build a CV, how will you conceal your age if you're worried that may be a discriminatory factor?

Another things I notice from reading the job descriptions is the 'job and a half' syndrome, which tends to dovetail with my earlier point. Rather than create a job that is doable and would take one person and create a second part-time job in conjunction with that job, the employer tries to ram a 'job and a half' onto the one person.

This far from solves the job remit situation of employing staff to do a job in a company, what it does is foster mediocrity, with people too busy to really do the job properly, leading to stress and the person either going off on long-term sick leave or quitting.

The creeping tide of cybernation is coming, but it is not all bad news. The US Treasury has run an investigation into social security and they report that a base payment of 10 thousand USD to every person of working age and over would be cheaper than paying social security.

For us, this could be a good thing. The future could be that we buy or lease a robot that works elsewhere on our behalf and we charge the company and get paid for the robot working. Then we can do the worthwhile things we should not being slaves to society!