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.