r/Zippia

The average person believes they have a 22% chance of losing their job in the next five years, according to one survey, a higher share than even during the global financial crisis of 2007-09. The cause of this gloom is artificial intelligence.

Nearly one in five American workers recently told another pollster that ai or automation is “very” or “somewhat” likely to replace them.

But in the same article (the Economist) they point out some bright points - unemployment across the club of mostly rich countries is just 5%, and America employs more people than ever in “ai-exposed” industries like law, and Those at America’s Bureau of Labour Statistics think the country will add 5.2m jobs between 2024 and 2034, increasing total employment by 3%.

I’m personally assuming that if it all goes downhill, I could retrain as a teacher (hard to imagine teaching being replaced by robots)… but maybe i’m being too optimistic.

The CEO of Microsoft AI told the Financial Times that he predicted “human-level performance on most, if not all professional tasks” being done by AI and thinks that most tasks that involve “sitting down at a computer” will be fully automated by AI within the next year or 18 months, with accounting, legal, marketing, and even project management all being vulnerable.

Part of me thinks it’s a bit bullshit - because it’s obviously good for shares in a tech company that’s focusing on AI if they do scare tactics. But part of me wonders.

The part that makes me optimistic is - how the hell will any of these companies turn a profit if nobody has money to SPEND on their products because we’re all unemployed. Surely you can’t rely on the 1% of the population (or whatever it is) who are millionaires/billionaires as your only customer base.

As per Politico: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said last Friday he would no longer advise young people to move to the U.S. for work or study.

Speaking at a gathering of German Catholics in the southwestern city of Würzburg, Merz said: “I would not recommend to my children today that they go to the U.S. to get an education and to work”.

The chancellor explained that “the social climate that has suddenly developed” in the U.S. had become deeply concerning and argued that “even the best educated in America have great difficulty in finding a job.” 

“I am a great admirer of America,” Merz added, drawing laughter from the crowd, “but right now my admiration is not increasing.”

The CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, argued recently on the podcast Office Hours: Business Edition that the problem with the economy is NOT that there are insufficient desk jobs, but that there are “thousands” of hands-on roles sitting there unfilled, many paying far more than most office jobs ever will. “The catch however is patience. These jobs often demand years of training and no small amount of physical effort. And it may be these two factors putting a lot of US workers off.”

He says Ford alone has around 5,000 open mechanic roles, with top earners able to pull in up to a cool $120,000 a year. That's close to double the average US salary. Yet Farley says that those jobs are proving stubbornly hard to fill.

‘We are in trouble in our country,’ Farley warned. ‘We are not talking about this enough. We have over a million openings in critical jobs, emergency services, trucking, factory workers, plumbers, electricians and tradesmen. It’s a very serious thing.’ Across the United States, he says, there's often ‘a bay with a lift and tools and no one to work in it.’

Every politician across the spectrum has spent 15 years promising to 'bring manufacturing jobs back. Meanwhile, the actual manufacturing boom happened in China.

The new one is energy - solar panels, batteries, wind turbines. The stuff that powers everything from cars to data centers. China makes 80% of the world's solar panels, 60% of the wind turbines, and 90% of the lithium batteries. (Btw this isn’t a forecast, but 2026 numbers).

While America spent 15 years arguing about whether climate tech was real, China just built the supply chain for it. Which means every EV, every solar farm, every grid battery in the next decade gets built with Chinese parts - including the ones built here. Manufacturing didn't die but moved to a new product and a new industry. So riddle me this: Was America not paying attention or just ignoring it? 

A Reddit user claims his AI bot got him 50 interviews in 30 days while he slept. The internet is split - some calling it brilliant, others calling it cheating.

I think what the 'cheating' crowd is forgetting: companies have been using AI to filter resumes since 2018. The average application now gets scanned, scored, and rejected by software before any human reads it. 

Workers didn't start the AI arms race. They just learned to compete in it.

If applying with AI is unfair, rejecting with AI was unfair first.

If they are using Eximius for ATS, then you use Zippia’s Auto Apply to bypass it.

I sure do. I feel like I had to take things into my own hands to not be in a wage cage until I’m 70 years old.

The system feels so broken. Thankfully, I’ve found this group of legends who feel the same way.

The 401jk community is a bunch of people from around the world who want an alternative retirement strategy. A method of retirement that is fully community funded and out of the hands of the financial oligarchs.

We also aim to spread awareness of crime and corruption, all while having fun and laughing at dope memes.

These are definitely my people. Resist & Retire.

🃏💪🏴‍☠️

Ok so this is the UK…which is cheaper than the States because you’re not paying the same for healthcare and wages are lower so prices are (somewhat lower).

But as per the piece:

Rathbones, an investment management company, has estimated that a 25-year-old today who wants to live “comfortably” for a quarter of a century after retirement will need a pension pot of £3.1m. For a two-person household, the figure is £4.3m.

It’s all down to inflation. Rathbones came up with the figure by assuming 2% annual inflation and contributions increasing by the same percentage, while the pot grows at an average of 5%.
So how much would they have to save to achieve that? Roughly £1,600 a month for a single person.

What the hell!

Interesting piece in the Times of London. Ivan Zhao (pictured above), the CEO of Notion, the $11 billion business software company, recently hired a high schooler (and had to ask his parents for permission). Why? Because they’re done hiring mid-career employees, they want people who are either very young (who they see as being high on “agency” - ie the enthusiasm to try things and embrace new tools) or senior operators (who have a sense of what works and what doesn’t, refined through years of experience).

Is cutting out the mid-career people the best way to hire smartly nowadays?

Was reading a piece about the white-collar bloodbath - this part made me wince:

Tobi Lutke, founder of Shopify, the $145 billion ecommerce giant, told his 8,100 employees last month that to hire anyone new, managers must clear a new hurdle: prove that a bot can’t do it. And for those already at the company, he ordered them to get good with AI - or else.

“I don’t think it is feasible to opt out of learning the skill of applying AI in your craft. You are welcome to try, but I want to be honest I cannot see this working out today, and definitely not tomorrow,” he added. “Stagnation is almost certain, and stagnation is slow-motion failure. If you’re not climbing, you’re sliding.”
This seems pretty nuts to me given where we’re up to with AI. Can AI really do, say, project management or run a marketing plan or spearhead difficult conversations in HR?