Time bomb for working class men

Diemos · 08-08-2018 08:49PM #1

I've been giving this a lot of thought recently, I come from a working class background so this is something that is a concern to me.

I think we are about to see a range of job opportunities for working class men disappear in our life time.
The DAD (dangerous and dirty) jobs are all being automated.
So jobs which were traditionally done by unskilled or semi skilled workers are going to disappear.

All driving and delivery jobs (Taxi, HGV, bus, etc) will disappear.
We've already seen a drop off in the number of farm labourers in the past few decades.

I think this lack of opportunities for the young generations will have a damaging impact on society. A large portion of our society will find it more and more difficult to get ahead.

I don't see this issue affecting the ladies as much because the female orientated roles (I'm generalising) tend to be much more difficult to automate. Montessori, salon workers, carers.

Personally I found myself out of work for a short period of time before and I was shocked by how much I validated myself through my work and my ability to be financially independent. I can see how people could get stuck and feel very helpless and depressed.

Academia is not for everyone, and I think boys struggle more with chalk and talk, sit still for hours on end environments, and there are so many useless courses with no prospects out there.

I think the gaps between the haves and the have nots will grow.

Anyone have any thoughts?
Will new jobs spring up to fill the voids?

silverharp · 08-08-2018 09:53PM

on the plus side you cant automate plumbing electrical and other repair and maintenance type jobs. i guess a problem is that not everyone is born ambitious or has a plan and too many end up p1ssing away their twenties with no tradeable skills beyond minimum wage.

08-08-2018 09:56PM

I wouldn't worry about it. There's always opportunities if you go looking. Unskilled folk always were vulnerable in recessionary times but when times are good will find something to turn their hand to.

Automation & autonomy might well not take as many jobs as folk think too

dhaughton99 · 08-08-2018 10:24PM

I think the bigger problem will be with the exploitation of the worker using zero hour + temp no prospect jobs. Thanks Labour Party.

Arthur Daley · 08-08-2018 10:32PM

It's gone quiet in the media and business press on the AI and automation front these past few months. It seemed to appear out of nowhere and was everywhere in 2016/2017.

I can only assume the powerful have got some feedback and are spooked at the prospects. They would be very right to be spooked. Very spooked at what society would be like with millions of disaffected truck drivers, brickies etc wandering the streets, broke and without a lot of hope. It's easy to sit around in meetings talking about 'disruption' but you need to understand the consequences and have a detailed plan to address the fallout.

MayoSalmon · 08-08-2018 10:37PM

dhaughton99 wrote:

I think the bigger problem will be with the exploitation of the worker using zero hour + temp no prospect jobs. Thanks Labour Party.

The "Worker" is free to take up employment with any employer they so choose. How you consider them to be exploited is beyond me..victim culture has its roots everywhere it seems.

Pawwed Rig · 08-08-2018 10:39PM

Progression tends to turn up more jobs but yeah people will need to be more serious about their career paths and less have less pissing about.

08-08-2018 10:53PM

I heard statistics on Pat Kenny a few months ago. Something like 70 percent of today's jobs in Ireland didn't exist 20 years ago. I know that sounds like a high percentage but I'm pretty certain it was that high. But even if its lower the point is that as jobs dissappear new types of jobs are being invented.

How many men were printers 50 years ago and how many have we now. I can now print on my pc almost anything that a qualified printer could print. It used to be a 7 year apprenticeship. Can you imagine that they used to pay a man to push the buttons in the elevator.

Different types of jobs have been disappearing for over 100 years but they are always replaced with a new type of job.

milli milli · 08-08-2018 10:55PM

I was shocked by how much I validated myself through my work and my ability to be financially independent.

Men tend to validate themselves through their jobs whereas it’s relationships (family/friend/partners) for women.

Arthur Daley · 08-08-2018 10:57PM

And these new jobs are?

Just a few examples. We have also had economists say recently, quite bluntly that maybe 50% of the workforce will be unemployed in 10 years time, and universal basic income has to come in to maintain some sort of living standards within western society. Until we have a detailed map of where this is going, I'm inclined to believe that this is more honest.

Pawwed Rig · 08-08-2018 11:08PM

They have been saying that since the 50s and probably longer.

jimmycrackcorm · 08-08-2018 11:14PM

Diemos wrote:

The DAD (dangerous and dirty) jobs are all being automated. So jobs which were traditionally done by unskilled or semi skilled workers are going to disappear.

I'd argue that the DAD jobs are actually the ones that are more secure because they are precisely the ones that h he most difficult to automate.

Automation will apply for jobs that scale easily first. But any jobs that require degrees of human ingenuity, that require very adaptive approaches will be difficult for AI to learn as AI requires huge sets of existing data to learn and there are many DAD jobs that rely on ingenuity over machine type learning.

Put it like this.. It's easy to get a machine to beat humans in chess or DOTA, but so easy to get a machine to walk upstairs, open the bathroom door and figure out where the leak is.

Stone Deaf 4evr · 08-08-2018 11:18PM

This is nonsense, I work in the construction industry and you can't get general unskilled operators for love nor money. Ditto the trades, we're looking down the barrell of a serious skilled labour shortage. Disciplines like blocklaying and plastering are having a real problem with getting new workers trained up. There's oceans of work and plenty money to be made if fellas are willing to give it a shot.

Diemos · 08-08-2018 11:30PM

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

Progression tends to turn up more jobs but yeah people will need to be more serious about their career paths and less have less pissing about.

Yes, but those job tend to be highly specialised requiring years of schooling.

I agree that an awful lot of lads piss about through school but I think most of them have no direction, little to no support at home. They don't stand a chance.

Diemos · 08-08-2018 11:34PM

Stone Deaf 4evr wrote: »

This is nonsense, I work in the construction industry and you can't get general unskilled operators for love nor money. Ditto the trades, we're looking down the barrell of a serious skilled labour shortage. Disciplines like blocklaying and plastering are having a real problem with getting new workers trained up. There's oceans of work and plenty money to be made if fellas are willing to give it a shot.

I'm not going to disagree with you but there is a real problem with people being snotty about trades in this country. Which I think is foolish and a damn shame. Too many mammies would like to see their son in some technical college studying business then doing a trade.
The other thing is it takes time to learn a trade and with the crash we lost a massive group of people how would otherwise have gone into the industry.

riemann · 08-08-2018 11:38PM

Construction inflation is running 7%

If you're a young lad or lady, a trade is the way to go.

Wages are just ridiculous for what is a job most people could do if they wanted. Early rise and long hours isnt for everyone though.

jcon1913 · 08-08-2018 11:39PM

Diemos wrote: »

I'm not going to disagree with you but there is a real problem with people being snotty about trades in this country. Which I think is foolish and a damn shame. Too many mammies would like to see their son in some technical college studying business then doing a trade.
The other thing is it takes time to learn a trade and with the crash we lost a massive group of people how would otherwise have gone into the industry.

If you spend your twenties in a boom and bust industry like construction theres a strong chance youll be periodically unemployed for the rest of your working life. Its just not a secure occupation.

DEFTLEFTHAND · 08-08-2018 11:40PM

You'd wonder about the timeline for a lot of this automation.

For instance the haulage industry. There was a conference at the MATS truck show in the States this year featuring the heads of all the recognised American super carriers.

They were lamenting the shortage of truck drivers in the country and stating that full automation is a long way off.

blindside88 · 09-08-2018 12:07AM

People seem to have the wrong idea of what “working class” is. I work in a fairly well paid job in finance but I would class myself as “working class” because I have to work for a living. To my mind if you could not afford to give up work in the morning and live on your assets you are “working class”, most people that call themselves “middle class” are just deluded.

On the point of jobs being replaced by machines this has always been the case, think of previous occupations like coopers that no longer really exist

riemann · 09-08-2018 12:10AM

blindside88 wrote: »

People seem to have the wrong idea of what “working class” is. I work in a fairly well paid job in finance but I would class myself as “working class”

It would appear it is you who doesn't understand what working class means.

4068ac1elhodqr · 09-08-2018 12:27AM

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

You'd wonder about the timeline for a lot of this automation.

For instance the haulage industry. There was a conference at the MATS truck show in the States this year featuring the heads of all the recognised American super carriers.

They were lamenting the shortage of truck drivers in the country and stating that full automation is a long way off.

The important fact is that the timeline will accelerate (we're only in early Wave1 of the 4thIR), the next two waves/phases will be of a higher acceleration of replacement, into 2030.

Existing trucks can already be modified to self-drive without huge expense or equipment. Once the technology and importantly 'cost to profit ratio' become viable, that's it.

Once the replacement starts there is no going back for the 3.5m drivers there, not to mention over 8m in industry supportive roles.

kaymin · 09-08-2018 12:38AM

I wouldn't encourage anyone to become a car mechanic given electric cars is the future. If there's less work to go around then the service / tourist sector will take up the slack since there'll be an increase in leisure time generally.

Charles Babbage · 09-08-2018 12:58AM

Stone Deaf 4evr wrote: »

This is nonsense, I work in the construction industry and you can't get general unskilled operators for love nor money. Ditto the trades, we're looking down the barrell of a serious skilled labour shortage. Disciplines like blocklaying and plastering are having a real problem with getting new workers trained up. There's oceans of work and plenty money to be made if fellas are willing to give it a shot.

I imagine you can get a robot to do much routine blocklaying, skim plastering less so.

4068ac1elhodqr · 09-08-2018 01:32AM

In terms of OP's title (men and lower classes, maybe lower education also) Wave 2 (early 2020's onwards) won't be kind to them.
Transport, manufacturing, construction and admin the worst sectors to be in. Retail and financial services will suffer also.

Wibbs · 09-08-2018 08:36AM

Sleeper12 wrote: »

I heard statistics on Pat Kenny a few months ago. Something like 70 percent of today's jobs in Ireland didn't exist 20 years ago. I know that sounds like a high percentage but I'm pretty certain it was that high. But even if its lower the point is that as jobs dissappear new types of jobs are being invented.

There is something to that alright S, but Ireland in particular was an economic midget with little by way of international private investment until quite recently.

Different types of jobs have been disappearing for over 100 years but they are always replaced with a new type of job.

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

They have been saying that since the 50s and probably longer.

Yep on both counts, but there are good reasons to believe this time around it's different. Why? In the past when technology came along it replaced muscles. Unskilled and relatively unskilled labour was more fluid. So if you were working on the canals and the railways got invented switching was not such a up skill. When farm labour was phased out by tractors and the like the mass exodus to cities and the jobs of the industrial revolution took up much of that slack, as a goodly chunk of it required scant training and it created a massive new market and the birth of consumerism, which led to more roles in society.

The technology of today and what's coming as well as replacing muscle is also replacing brains. And less in a by rote fashion of previous brain replacing tech. This is likely to hit us in ways we've only scratched the surface of. EG take a hospital. Doctors would naturally appear to be the safest job there, but today research has shown computer systems are actually better at diagnoses, suggesting treatments and gauging outcomes than doctors. Now these are experimental at the moment, but fast forward twenty years and they most certainly will be better. Nurses on the other hand are much harder to automate and replace.

Other issues are more and more specialisation and the pace of change itself. The more specialised a job, the harder it is and the longer it takes to train up in it, and the harder it is to switch if that job becomes less required. The pace of change today is faster than it's ever been, so few enough jobs will be secure "for life" the way our grandparents, even parents assumed.

Cyclepath · 09-08-2018 08:45AM

Charles Babbage wrote: »

I imagine you can get a robot to do much routine blocklaying, skim plastering less so.

This right here spells out the difference in terms of what automation actually means. As humans, we have a generalised anthropomorphic view of the robots that will 'replace' us. It's really much more complex. Much automation will continue the way it has with specialised machinery, sometimes controlled by humans, to do very specific tasks.

The real question is where and in how many instances we will require a robot that resembles a human. Humans are very generalised biological machines, in that we are adapted to do many different tasks reasonably well, including reproducing ourselves.

In terms of creating a robot that can get itself on site every morning without an escort, negotiate a building site littered with obstructions, find plaster, carry water, mix plaster to the correct consistency, find the wall to be plastered and skim to perfection, slip on wert plaster, fall over, damage and self-heal... well we're an awful long way away from that level of humanoid robot.

The AI alone is far reaching before you even consider the level of electromechanical reliability needed.

A more realistic route might be to adapt existing biological machines (i.e. us!) with enhanced functionality...

silverharp · 09-08-2018 08:53AM

Cyclepath wrote: »

In terms of creating a robot that can get itself on site every morning without an escort, negotiate a building site littered with obstructions, find plaster, carry water, mix plaster to the correct consistency, find the wall to be plastered and skim to perfection, slip on wert plaster, fall over, damage and self-heal... well we're an awful long way away from that level of humanoid robot.

there would probably be a push to build more parts of a building off site and assemble like lego. Kind of surprised it hasn't taken off for housing already given that there ought to be large savings and quality advantages

Cyclepath · 09-08-2018 09:19AM

silverharp wrote: »

there would probably be a push to build more parts of a building off site and assemble like lego. Kind of surprised it hasn't taken off for housing already given that there ought to be large savings and quality advantages

Exactly, and the parts would be assembled in factories containing purpose-built robotic machines. Once onsite, it'd still take humans to crane in and align the parts!

Wanderer78 · 09-08-2018 09:22AM

Very interesting thread, it's interesting to see debates such as ubi increasing, many people are becoming concerned about the future of labour, it's a difficult one to prepare for in many ways, as the future is notoriously difficult to predict for such matters

CrankyHaus · 09-08-2018 09:34AM

A lot of the panic around automation comes from a mix of big tech spoofing and classic media scaremongering. It will, and already has, disrupted employment but the timeframe within which multiple professions will disappear is grossly exaggerated. Meanwhile other sectors expand. I can't see building trades being replaced for a long time, the complexity and rough conditions of a building site would be difficult for cost effective AI devices to safely navigate and work within.

OleRodrigo · 09-08-2018 09:36AM

One other issue that doesn't get mentioned much - jobs that are created as a result of Digital Transformation may be too difficult for many/ most people to do. These jobs may also end up paying the average industrial wage because of globalised labour markets and the wider availability of qualified workers, but may require an academic standard that is too high to be realsitic for the average worker.

Can you retrain a bus driver to be a Data Scientist?

Time bomb for working class men

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