Fundamental change in labour market

[Babber101]

I remember reading a few years ago about the creep of technology in the modern workplace and near and off shoring and the impact it would have in years to come across most industries - I never really believed it was going to be as bad as many commentators said and thought there would always be a need for high quality UK based employees but every time I read the business pages now I see another ftse 100 stalwart shedding large numbers of jobs and you don't hear of many creating large numbers of new jobs. I appreciate bad news is more often headline grabbing than good news but the UK must have lost 10's of thousands of jobs in large/ftse companies over the bast 10 years partly due to the recession but also partly due to fundamental systemic changes in the industries - financial services, pharma, print media, energy and o&g to name a few.

I know unemployment is at a pretty low level - where are all these redundant former employees of large companies going? Are they becoming contractors, is it the baby boom generation taking VR or people having to leave well paid jobs to take a backward step with smaller, regional firms ?

Curious to hear other ph's view? From my own experience in financial services it seems to be a long slow creep of job cuts upon more job cuts as technology and improved systems/processes really kick in.

Maybe this process of large scale job shedding has happened before and is just part of the cycle and I'm just too young to have seen it happen but it does feel that average job security and quality of prospects is declining on the whole in UK Plc or am I being over dramatic?

[98elise]

I think job security is declining, but prospects have never been better.

My parents generation almost had jobs for life, but it was the same crappy job down a mine, or what ever the big local employer was (ours was a dockyard). There was little in the way of social mobility.

My generation had is slightly better where jobs became more service or tech focused. I had better prospects than my parents, but we were still held back by the general attitude of not going to uni etc unless you really needed to. we could see beyond the nearest big industry though.

My kids generation will mostly go to university, and the world is pretty much their oyster. The will bet a better education than me, and their horizons will be broader. The may not have the security my parents had, but they will have a far better life.

Given the choice of growing up in those 3 environments I would choose this generation.

[tankplanker]

I seem to remember reading a study that showed a reduction in middle income jobs and an increase in low paid jobs since 2008?

https://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/fil...

In my field, IT, I've seen a reduction in onshore, UK nationals and an increase in offshore resource, which has had a downward pressure on wages and made it harder to get into IT for grads. In the beginning of offshoring we would bring far more people onshore but the changes in rules, Uk Gov states that you have to pay them far more when they come onshore than before, and a reduction in visas has meant we bring far less onshore.

I would suggest that if offshoring had somehow been magically made illegal when it started we would see huge IT wages now as we only have so many good IT staff and massive investment in IT training to increase local supply.

I believe if we do not address the fundamental constraints of a 40 hour working week we will see an ever growing divide between those who worked hard and picked a profession or other highly skilled job and those who didn't.