[ExI] Book: THE LIGHTS IN THE TUNNEL

[Tom Nowell]

Adrian wrote "And how many jobs exist now in industries that didn't exist
10 years ago?  Looking only at one side of the coin does
not yield useful predictions."

Are there any reliable figures for how many jobs exist in new industries? From my perspective (as a current welfare claimant in the UK), almost zero. If these jobs do exist en masse, they're not hiring anywhere near where I live and therefore not contributing to relieving the large unemployment situation. I suspect these new industries are very lean and prone to recruiting via word of mouth strictly as-and-when they REALLY need new people. 

Adrian also wrote in a different message on the same topic that if people find themselves without marketable skills, they will retrain themselves until they do have marketable skills. Again, my reality shows this requires a lot of work and no short-term prospects of a new job. For all you may study subjects, there's no qualification employers like more than recent experience in a similar role, so skills without work experience will put you behind people with experience in the interview shortlisting.

Also, employers prefer formal qualifications to informal study. Formal qualifications cost money, as paying examiners and instructors costs. Furthermore, qualifications that are obviously commercially valuable tend to be priced more highly - look at how much it costs for Microsoft's MCSE, or many other software qualifications, or how expensive many business and law courses are.

Every upturn following an economic downturn since the mid 90s has had the term "jobless recovery" tagged to it by the media. How many "jobless recoveries" do we have to face before people realise we face serious structural unemployment NOW, let alone when voice recognition software renders 90% of call centre staff redundant?

Tom (find me a job, unemployment is making me irritable)