Today’s young people have endured crisis after crisis—social media upheaval, a pandemic, and political turmoil. And for many eager to finally start their careers, they’re facing yet another uphill battle: entering one of the toughest job markets in a decade.
Job postings are down, and unemployment among recent graduates has climbed to 9.3%, according to the Federal Reserve—its highest level outside of the pandemic since 2014.
But one lawmaker says this may only be the beginning.
Unemployment for recent college graduates could surge to as high as 25% in the next two to three years, warned U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) in an interview with Bloomberg, and it could cause a “level of social disruption that’s unprecedented.”
“If we eliminate that front end of the pipeline, how are people ever going to get to that mid-career spot?” Warner added to CNBC.
Soon there will be a critical mass of people who have nothing left to lose
Thanks to AI? More like thanks to governments of oligarchs and their tech bros who only care fucking making money for themselves. AI is not autonomous, it’s pushed forward by a bunch of selfish pigs
At the moment, the numbers on unemployment are being actively hidden by the federal government. As such, doubt is cast and no one can rally around any facts because there is no central source for those facts on the national level.
it also only accounts unemployement claims too, not the people who cant find a job, its probably higher than that.
Yeah the company I work for is having our 3rd or 4th Reduction In Force this year… Upper management is also pushing hard for us to all use more AI.
It’s great, not only are we understaffed with impossible deadlines, but we lost all of our tribal knowledge, and half the fires we are fighting are due to inexperienced workers using AI for everything.
We’ve fired everyone who does anything and we’re still hemorrhagging money and we’re all out of ideas D:
Self inflicted wounds…
I am willing to bet it’s at close to 25% now. We just don’t fucking count it because our government is trying to manipulate the public that everything is a-ok!
Exactly. The shutdown is a blessing in disguise for Trump and Republicans, because it delays the economic data. The stock market is still on the rocks because of delayed data from October.
Oh please, it’s not thanks to AI.
“AI can’t replace you but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with a chatbot that can’t do your job” - Cory Doctorow
I can’t argue with that one haha
I wouldn’t underestimate how stupid the average person is. An LLM could definitely replace half of them
I’ll bite. I don’t disagree that an LLM could make a far less skilled person able to do a job requiring more skills. But, which jobs do you feel could be entirely replaced by just an LLM?
The current people of the ruling class can’t do anything about it. Capitalism is going to proceed on its path, driving them to keep running over more and more people. It’ll only stop when enough of us have been fucked over that we can take the power away from them.
If you feel this is abstract or theoretical, just look at the utter inability of the system to stop itself from inflating the obvious AI bubble. It’s right in front of us. Everyone sees it. The ruling cass sees it. And they can’t stop inflating it. This isn’t random. Competition demands it. Imagine being the loser that decided to stop investing while your competitors actually get something out of it after the crash. That might turn you into a regular worker, making a living from a salary. A terrible thought.
The current people of the ruling class can’t do anything about it
They absolutely could do something about it as proven by how the current (US) administration has made things markedly worse than the previous admin. (If they can make it worse then they can also make it better)
The ruling class fought hard to get the current administration elected so they can get the benefits it gave them so far and it’s about to give them in the future. And the part of the class that didn’t, later came onboard. The tax cuts and subsidies are massive. They’re probably even gonna get bailed out of the AI crash.
The thing is, there’s competition for growing profits. Not merely in one product market or another, because firms buy each other across markets. So if a firm doesn’t profit maximize, it runs the risk of a profit-maximizer accumulating capital faster, eventually having enough to buy that firm. And so every firm that understands this risk engages in ever growing profits. And unfortunately growing profits means extracting more money from peoples incomes by increasing prices, reducing wages and reducing headcounts. These pressures push them to choose to do the thing that makes things worse for the employee class. They can make things better but practically competition makes them tend to choose worse. If a firm doesn’t, “another one will.” They only make things better when forced to by market pressures (e.g. labour shortage), collective action (unions, boycotts), or government action (regulation). They own the government (both parties), they’ve busted the unions, so they’re left to act on market pressures. And there’s plenty of workers looking for work.
This is also why I said that it’ll take enough of us being fucked over to changes this. It’s gonna take the form of us unionizing as well as organizing to take political power. E.g. grassroots campaigns to elect socialist candidates, as they’re the only ones who’d represent our interests. Like Zohran’s campaign.
I know, I just take (very very slight) issue with your choice of “can’t” rather than “won’t”
Haha, I see. You’re right. I used to reason in accurate logical terms about this, and “won’t” is the correct one from logical standpoint. Lately I don’t do that anymore. Reason being that people who don’t have this framework in their minds, about the system pressures and such, hear the “won’t” and assign it a typical level of agency. In most situations when someone won’t do something that they can do, there’s a higher probability they can go from won’t to would. So they feel like these actors in this system have a significantly higher propensity of doing the other thing than they actually do. If only Zuckerberg heard this or that argument, he’d see the light and stop being a piece of shit. If only he read that book, he’d stop fighting regulation. But that’s not how it works and it’s not about this or that individual. It’s an aggregate action that makes most actors act to further interests opposed to ours. So these days I use “can’t” to express how unlikely it is for the ruling class to do the other thing, even if it’s not logically accurate. Cause a lot of people aren’t looking at the system this way at all.
E: I think when working people grasp the near-impossibility of the ruling class going significantly against their own interest, they (working people) start seeing through the ruling class propaganda and begin reaching for the real solutions.
Super fair, I’m neurodivergent (though generally mask very well) and tend to notice small details like that (while forgetting that my perspective is often in the minority in that regard)
The current people of the ruling class can’t do anything about it.
Won’t. They can do plenty about it. They won’t.
If you feel this is abstract or theoretical, just look at the utter inability of the system to stop itself from inflating the obvious AI bubble.
Unwillingness, not inability. Those inflating the bubble will get bailouts at our expense when it bursts.
Yeah but five pedophiles will get billions and the shareholders will get the money without having to actually filter the money through services because without a job you die in America. Here comes the technofudal pedophile system. Have more babies so you can sell them to the kid diddlers in charge. Don’t want to? Too bad we will have masked “alpha male” cosplay Nazis kidnap them and take them to a rape island anyway. /jk
Well. You have to work until you are 84 to afford the healthcare and food you need to live. Companies hire 100 fewer people than they need to exploit workers and increase profits. So yeah. Ain’t no jobs out there cause those billionaires aren’t creating shit. Guess we are still waiting for those trickle down economics to kick in.
Guess we are still waiting for those trickle down economics to kick in.
Now democrats are on board and they’re calling it “abundance.”
Well, it looks like “the Great Reset” wasn’t just a right-wing conspiracy theory against the left. Looks like it was accurate, except it was the right wing who was going to do it.
Well the good news is I just saw a story today about using human brains to power computers so we’re doing the matrix with college grads I guess?
The student loans are never being paid back, just like the federal debt.
They shouldn’t have been loans in the first place. The government benefits from its citizens being educated. They already make money from it without charging interest so why did it ever need to be a loan in the first place?
I’ve been saying that for several years now. Before Covid, I read three different interviews with Musk, Gates, and Cuban, and all were warning about how pervasive AI was going to get, and how it was going to replace a LOT of jobs. They all predicted that it would start with driving jobs, due to self-driving vehicles, which would replace lots of truck drivers and Uber drivers. Uber and Lyft have never made a secret of the fact that eventually they want to eliminate their human drivers and replace them with autonomous fleets.
Once you start adding in fast food locations (which can be easily automated right now), many retail and warehouse positions, lots of office positions, etc., and 25% starts to sound like a conservative estimate. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 40% or even higher PERMANENT unemployment rate in a decade.
So what do we do with people who just don’t have robotic and software knowledge? We will have two choices - Universal Basic Income, or reduce the population by the unemployment rate. The question is which party will support which solution, and how will they implement their solution. I think we all know the answers to those questions.
The question is which party will support which solution, and how will they implement their solution. I think we all know the answers to those questions.
republicans will pick genocide, and if centrists are still running the democratic party, they won’t pick anything else.
Actually if anyone is definitely going to be replaced with machines and automation it’s software developers and coders.
So much for “learn to code bro” lol
Federal jobs guarantee
Oh well if a senator said it then by all means, let’s stop and take notice.
Bio degree, unemployed is very skewed towards health and should be seperated into its own category. you notice it is higher without including it, and its only 1 demographic dominating it, at the higher grad levels its men, but thats a legacy situation. plus lab/research requirement for most of these jobs are almost far and few between to begin with. and all thse biotechs are probably clamoring for outsourcing h1-b visas holders anyways, the other difficulty is x experience, and long commutes.
at least until recently state schools in cali were in pretty bad shape, as far as enrollment problems. last i read the news is they are trying to pre-emptively enroll students before hs graduation if they complete certain courses. this seems like a very temporary bandaid. because the cause was COVID online classes, means you dont learn anything at all, plus low job prospects have put off future students from applying.
employers are using AI to screen out resumes too, which is funny considering thier previous methods were not much different(which is some kind of software to screen out resumes, AI probably does it faster and more haphazardly). they get mad when the same method is used against them, AI generated resumes.
it does explains why some colleges are having enrollment problems, they saw the reviews, or the family members, friends told thier people close around them not to apply to colleges because of low job prospects.
