How many Jobs are on-line in Schwab?.
https://fortune.com/2024/05/14/ai-tsunami-imf-chief-labor-market-job-loss/
4 replies (most recent on top)
AI has been around for years. It's just a hype for now and used as an excuse to lay employees off. Just a cover up for bad management decisions that cost the company a ton of $.
They call this creative destruction
AI is not the real threat to your job. Technology never was in past history.
Not keeping your skills current, and not taking responsibility of staying relevant, is the real threat.
You need to shed that "victim" approach. Technology has always transformed the workplace. When one type of job disappeared, another type of job emerged. Often better paid.
Think you meant on-the-line. Damn autocorrect.
Minimum there will be compression of existing roles. AI would allow for perhaps one fewer labor unit per 7-10 person team.
Max is that we eliminate call center representation, about half the IT and programming roles, and anything related to content creation and analysis.
But there are other factors.
Companies don’t employ only labor that they need. They overhire to prevent other companies from gaining skills as we saw in 2022. They hire to meet subsidy requirements when states give tax credits and other incentives.
They also hire (overlap) to build a younger pool of labor so they can transition out older workers, or, at the least, avoid having a single cohort placing succession plans at risk. I’ve been directed to hire a younger worker with less experience specifically to create an age gap. The salary offered wasn’t any lower.
And then there’s an influence and consumer issue with AI job destruction. American work models are unique in history and hard to defend. But they created a massive consumer driven economy with trillions in debt and a retiree population that is underfunded while the social safety net is being decimated.
If more than say 10% of jobs go to AI too quickly (within 5-10 years) we will generate macro unemployment and make those issues worse. In other words, if I could deploy AI agents and replace 2M call center workers globally before the US labor pool boomers retire i would see more defaults and less consumerism. If we wait that 5-10 years labor availability could sync.
One other factor will be climate. AI consumes water and power. It generates heat. Data centers, including mining, AI and general services will soon account for 10% of global energy.
So, either the US changes its economy, embraces less work and consumerism, and reduces energy consumption in other areas to service the network or we slow walk or don’t implement the network. (Network is AI and digital services)
There’s a lot of opportunity to reduce energy demand and integrate AI with people. Computers eliminated secretarial pools, but we employ millions more today.
Longer answer than you likely sought. But the Farm will not be an AI leader. We don’t lead in technology anymore. If the market accepts AI branch reps, analysis and call centers we could see 70% reduction in LE. I don’t think we get anywhere near that.
Don’t be afraid of AI replacing your job. Be concerned about your job because it can be impacted by a weak manager, the economy, new technology, illness or countless other issues. Have a solid savings account. Manage your finances so you can own your tomorrow or at least say ur----e off. Have a backup income stream. And never, ever, ever think that a corporation is your friend. I was a golden child for a decade. Now people who didn’t hire me and I didn’t recommend for hire are driving the bus into a brick wall at the bottom of the deep lake after setting fire to the seats.