Covid 19 the future of Jobs and the population's demographic emergency 'reverse Tsunami.'

 

Covid 19 is one factor in the population's demographic emergency

Since 1960, 5 generations have had the ability to choose to have a family or not, the freedom of choice has significant implications for our future as a species. He's why...

Covid, Brexit and family planning have contributed to a 'reverse tsunami effect' on our society. Go back to my grandparents, from the Victorian and Edwardian eras and they usually came from families of anything from 5 + children from 2 parents, some were from 11 or 13 children families which was not uncommon.

Years ago, in a job I was in, the organisation found recruitment a problem, because the area had high housing costs and was not attracting the 20-35 year olds the business needed. This was the 1990s and the lack of humans to jobs is now becoming a real issue, even with the spread of automation. I conducted a straw poll about 10 years ago as an exercise of people I was at school with, I found that at least half had not had a family.

An analytical funnel graph - we can use this shape to 

easily illustrate the human generational declines by generation, below

In the above graph we can show the top blue area as the 1900-1920 generation, where many children in a family were possible. Green is the 1940's when due to the second world war, families were mostly 2 children. The 1950's and into the 1960's can be the orange and yellow bands, where the same 2 children average prevailed.

The grey last band is more transparent and shows how this era to the present day has changed the game. Here we see how many have chosen to avoid producing children for many reasons - they like their lifestyle, they like the freedom, they have exciting careers, environmental reasons and other reasons including housing costs.

In China, the 1 child policy has lead to 150 million males who will never marry or have a woman partner because males are usually first born and without a possible female as a second child, the deficit is obvious -  4 old people now rely on 1 young person.

The problem here is when the 1 does not reproduce and in time the recession in the nation's replacement people can lead to unviability. In China's case this will take many years.

For Britain, many EU citizens returned home, where wages have risen markedly in thrown countries since they came to Britain to live and work. Changes in immigration have deterred some new arrivals. The underlying problem is a general ageing working population.

A place I know has about 12 staff, 4 are under 40, the rest are over 45, most over 50 in this bracket. Recently, they advertised a job, it attracted over 30 applicants, 5 were invited to an interview and only 1 responded to that invitation. This is the second time they advertised the same job. 5 years ago the situation was different. 

In the UK since 1970 as a general datum point, successive young people not having families and 'replacing' at the least themselves has led to the UK having a reported less than 2 children per generation. Extrapolate this out ver 4 or more generations and you have a problem.

Automation has taken many jobs since 1960, but similarly, we are now seeing a population decline. A local rural primary school in my area has been under threat of closure for 15 years as the roll falls annually with few new pupils. You only have to see the empty seats on the small school bus going by to see how fragile the viability of that school is. Within 10 years I see this school closing due to lack of numbers.

This is worrying because these people are our future, if this pattern is repeated across the nation, we are in trouble. Obesity, other health issues like Covid, lack of population etc will all cull people, but without new people growing and replacing themselves, we are facing an uncertain future.

Automation is taking what were exclusive job roles - accountants, tax experts, solicitors as well as hitting the lower skilled and manual workers roles. But there is demand in some other jobs. An accountancy job attracted 200 + applicants, a social media role in the same company none.

The reverse Tsunami I talked about is coming - this is when the people 'wave' starts to fall back on itself, a situation I have identified with this term some years ago, the old fabric and structure collapses back on itself because the structure that should be behind it (people) is not there anymore.

We need to rethink our whole future as a species as a consequence!

The jobs vacuum - where have the jobs all gone, where are the new workers? Automation and cost cutting partly responsible

Supposedly record numbers of jobs available?

Bullshit... here's why not!

We keep getting a tired media mantra of 'record numbers of jobs unfilled.' Well that's not really true.

The reality is that many of the jobs advertised are the same jobs multiple counted, often on many different job websites and agency listings. So the single job may be counted 10 or more times.

On the one hand there may be good news, older generations retiring are create new jobs, if they are advertised and not subsumed into the organisations that previously employed the retiree.

Since WW2, the generations that grew up in the 1950's and 1960's were able to choose family numbers, a no children option was more available from the Mid 1960's and in the 15 year generations of the 1970's, 80's 90's and into the 2000's, we have seen a growing number of couples, married or not, choosing not to have children. So, theoretically, 'new' workers will not be around, except that many migrants have filled that void.

Shrinking industries and changing industries

dictate how we work now and in the future

The legacy of 'choice' has meant that coupled with the mass onslaught of automation and robotics, that whilst a swathe of jobs should have become available through retirement, we have hit a perfect storm where filling 'dead men's shoes' jobs are much the norm.

The speculative employment to meet new growth is not there much anymore, a system of 'job and a half' where job specifications lump on a long list of 'requirements' on the employee, means that the employee will be overworked and be running round from arseholes to breakfast time trying to keep too many plates spinning.

The sum total of this farrago is that the job doesn't get done properly. This least cost option approach produces a mediocre result. Often the same jobs come up time and again because of this overwork.

Another factor is pure the 'least cost option' approach by employers, hiring the most junior and barely qualified people they can pay the least too. As we see, these jobs come up again and again because the employer did not employ the best candidate, only the cheapest.

The jobs vacuum has come from the perfect storm. Automation has taken many jobs and in the UK will take 9 million out of the workplace in the next 10 years. Your last 5 purchases were likely done on a computerised device, not in person.

Extrapolate that out over a week, month or year and that is where the jobs have gone from, the middle level of employees. That said, we now have machines that can learn and write, so SEO writing jobs and web optimisation will soon go to those too.

The 'new' workers are mainly the so-called millennial generation and a rare and becoming rarer commodity as further childlessness pervades.

The future to come is proxy living. The human in the workplace is already becoming irrelevant!

Unless you have transferable skills and skills that a robot doesn't currently have.

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.