Labour is trying to force ever more people into work when AI, recession, and the demise of the jobs best suited to those with disabilities means there are ever fewer jobs available. When will they wake up to reality?
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This is the transcript:
Where are the jobs going to come from inside the UK economy?
I ask the question for two reasons.
The first is that the government is insisting that a great many people who are now on some form of disability benefit should, in the future, be forced to go to work because the government is planning to remove their benefits, which will give them no choice but do so, but that presupposes that there are jobs for those people.
And then there are a whole host of other people in the UK economy, not in disability situations, but who are maybe in marginal employment situations who are finding it increasingly difficult to find work, whatever their age, because their jobs are being threatened by AI, or the simple obsession amongst employers to increase productivity at all costs, which obsession is reflected in government employment practices, which therefore reduces the number of jobs available for people to do.
This simultaneous move by the government to force people into employment whilst at the same time they're demanding increased productivity in the public services, which is reflected by a demand for increased productivity in the private sector, coupled with the introduction of AI, which is undoubtedly going to cost a great many jobs in the UK - particularly in admin sectors, where many of the people who might be forced back into employment who have previously been on disability benefits, might have looked for work - creates an absolutely explosive situation with regard to the future job prospects of a great many people in this country.
Quite simply, it does not look as though there will be enough jobs in the long term for the people who are fit and well and looking for them, let alone those who are in more marginal positions through no fault of their own, because they have some form of disability, which has previously been assessed by the government as sufficient to require benefits to be paid to them, but which will now not be paid, which therefore means they will have to look for employment instead.
Now, I don't know how this is all going to end up because I'm not clairvoyant and nor is anybody else, but the situation I've described is undoubtedly real.
There are going to be fewer jobs because of AI. This is indisputable. I spoke at an accounting conference within the last week on this point, and there was nobody who said otherwise. Every single software vendor I spoke to was talking about how they could produce software using AI to reduce the amount of admin time that is going to be required to process, for example, basic accounting data - precisely the sort of job that in the past people in more marginal employment situations like those who might have disabilities would have done because there was some degree of flexibility around such tasks to allow them the scope to tailor the work to suit their particular needs, but that won't be available.
And that's my whole point. If we are in a situation where the types of work that were particularly suited to people where there wasn't a great deal of time pressure, so they could therefore have days off if it was necessary or work flexibly or have moments in the day where they could not work because they needed a downtime to deal with some situation that had arisen with regard to their wellbeing, totally reasonably, but were overall able to contribute – if those jobs aren't there, then they're not going to be able to work.
And for the other people who are struggling to find work, let's be totally honest, the skills that are necessary for them to be able to find work are not being taught.
It is an absolutely ridiculous situation that in the UK present, people come out of school with no idea how to do any form of accounting.
They do not know how to do any form of budgeting.
They do not have the basic skills to actually undertake many of the routine tasks that are undertaken in an office, including writing an email in so many cases. They might be able to analyse the poems of the 19th century. They might be able to prepare some form of mathematical formula for a simultaneous equation, but could they actually prepare a spreadsheet to present their ideas in a way that an employer would want? Very often, I would question that, and this is what worries me.
Nor, and let's also be clear, are young people and indeed older people, prepared for the absolute challenges that living on the minimum wage imposes on so many people. And it is minimum wage jobs that we're talking about by and large here, that requires the most extraordinary financial skill to juggle the finances of a household so that it might just survive.
I read a recent review of the finances of poorer people in the UK economy and it was estimated that in some cases, households which were living on minimum wage - quite possibly two people on minimum wage - were doing up to 150 transactions a month between members of the household simply to make sure that the right money was in the right place at the right time to pay the bill that was due with the highest priority, having already juggled the system to make sure that others could be delayed until there was more money available later on.
This is actually quite extraordinary financial ability, which is not being reflected, but which is possessed of these people, but which cannot be translated into a workplace experience because there is no certificate in it, and that's what an employer wants.
So, we are in the most difficult of situations right now. The government is deliberately forcing people into the workplace. It's callous in its approach. You don't exist unless you are a worker according to the Labour party. They say they are only interested in the interests of working people. So, if you're not a working person, you don't count.
Whether that be because you're young, because you're old, because you have a disability, because you have caring responsibilities, whatever it might be, the only people who matter to them are workers. You must be an economic unit of production or you have no value as far as they're concerned. Hence their approach towards disability payments, which I absolutely condemn.
But the problem, as I say, is wider. We are facing a job crisis in this country, which is going to get very much worse very soon.
It's already hitting young graduates who cannot find jobs in their chosen sector. For example, try to find a job in an accountancy now, and you'll find there are many fewer than there were because employers are not now seeking graduates to undertake accounting tasks because they say, quite simply, that those tasks have been de-skilled because of AI, and therefore they don't need those people - people that we have been training people for jobs that do not now exist.
That is going to become so common and therefore the generic skills that I've just talked about - how to manage the person's own affairs so that they might be available for work - become ever more important.
So, what's going to happen unless the government gets its head around the fact that we have to look at the world of work in a very different way and very soon because it is being transformed by new IT and AI processes? They are going to be floundering with a benefit system that cannot match reality and an increasing level of unemployment where people are being penalised through no fault of their own because they cannot find a job.
We could be back with the Victorian attitude towards those who are poor. There will be the deserving poor and the undeserving poor, and the vast majority of people will apparently be undeserving.
We will end up with the workhouse scenario again, where those who are undeserving will be forced into some form of labour, perhaps in exchange for their benefits, but which will be wholly unsuited to their needs and those of society.
We have to rethink this.
We have to rethink it very quickly and we have to get it right or the social consequences of the failure to do so will be staggering.
Labour appears to have no comprehension of the job tsunami heading its way in the sense that there are going to be many fewer jobs available. It either has to wake up or it's going to fail us all very badly.
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Personally, I can’t wait to get out of work, so badly am I managed but it seems that the exploitation economy will make me stay in it. Nor will me going create an opportunity for someone younger therefore, who want jobs. They’r decanting (apparently) 10,000 NHS England workers into the unemployed. They want to cut benefits – that benefit the economy they say they are worried about , that will surely result in less transactions which is what a healthy economy is made up of!!
The whole thing as you say is a complete mess, as if 2+2 = Fish.
What are they doing? What did they think they were going to do after winning the election?
All we’ve got is a bunch of soft Tories and not very bright ones.
In the book, ‘British Bunglers and Butchers of World War One’ by Martin Laffin (1992), the failure of the war (and remember, Germany was not defeated even with huge losses on the English/French sides) was attributed to there being too many traditional cavalry offices at GHQ. Cavalry officers, although brave, were not noted for their intelligence. General Haig was writing as late as 1926 still extolling the virtues of horses over tanks and aeroplanes.
Comparison with numpty Neo-liberal politicians practising TINA cannot be avoided.
As the Chair of a branch of the Western front Association I need to qualify this.
Laffin rightly pointed out the poor tactics and resultant heavy losses. But scholarship in the last 25-30 years has shown that the Army did respond to the new elements; aircraft, wireless, tanks, gas, wire and difficulties of supplying and co-ordinating all these. The British Imperial forces did this better than any ally.
Haig said there was still a place on the battlefield for a horse. Germany in WW2 was still using horses for much of their logistics.
Germany signed the armistice as continuing would mean the collapse of the German army. Their generals had no doubt and the armistice was offered as the British War cabinet felt that if Germany collapsed, the Bolsheviks might well take over.
Ian
In terms of ‘qualifying’ my input, do mean ‘to limit the strength or meaning of a statement’?
The fact that you represent such an ‘institution’ as an ‘Western Front Association’ already makes me rather nervous. What is the function of such associations please?
My use of Laffin’s book was to highlight how an adherence or one’s partiality to something by a position of power can have disastrous effects on people’s lives. It did on the Western Front from 1914 and the same indifference and adherence to partiality that our political leaders show which has killed people (Covid) and is increasing the amount of hardship and misery of ordinary people.
Haig’s viewpoint – as a cavalry officer – was instrumental in the waste of life on the Western Front.
He issued too few modern machine guns to his infantry regiments to the point that the Ministry of War issued more (and even then it was not quite enough for modern counter warfare).
He had his armies constantly advancing up hill. He could have sat back and invited the Germans onto his lines, and let them crawl through the topography but chose to be brave instead as a cavalry officer with other people’s lives and chose attack, and to keep on attacking even though it didn’t really work.
Yes – the Germans did use a lot of horses in World War II in logistics but can you tell me where they were used in any Blitzkrieg attacking manoeuvre? Haig still felt that horses could be used in offensives in 1926 – not logistics (moving stuff around).
Yes – the Brits soon learnt to use their tanks properly, supported by infantry, but the first use of them by Haig was a disaster and they were wasted. And then the British completely lost interest in tanks and did not build a decent one until the Centurion which came too late to WWII but served from the Korea theatre. But that’s another story.
Why did the Germans quit? Well, Laffin and others point to the entry of USA into the war and its power; others say it was successful Royal Navy blockades that made life at home in Germany impossible as well as feed an army – allied convoy systems had learnt to deal with U-boats.
I’m not quite sure what elicited your response. Maybe you feel that you are defending the dead? My aim was not offend them or you, but do what we should do – remember them and ask why, and try not to let it happen again. To reflect on what happened and try to learn.
In this way, we allow the dead to live again and to have not died in vain. The same goes for those who died of Covid, suffer from long Covid or have been hurt by the way Covid was dealt with, or have committed suicide because their benefits have been cut, or the cuts that are coming from Labour when after 14 years of austerity which we are told is for a good purpose, has not actually made anything better? But its going to happen again anyway, like the waves of attacks on German lines in Flanders.
World War1, Covid, Austerity, BREXIT, Haig, French, Townsend, Cameron, Osbourne, Johnson, May and now Starmer, Reeves and Streeting, all these powerful people and circumstances share one common thing: that those in charge think/thought they know or knew better.
I don’t know about you Ian, but I’ve had enough of people who ‘know better’. Haven’t you?
Again the govt is living in a mythical world – a long gone past and one fixed in an old free market mentality. They lack the imagination to think of reforms which would help people and improve society in general. My experience of JSA in the past was pretty bad. If you actually tried to do some work of a part-time or casual nature they were then likely to cut your benefits and the rules as to what you could do meant you were stopped from doing anything useful. I wanted to do a computer course and it them ages to agree. Things have not really moved. Perhaps it would help if MPs and ministers had to experience the system themselves for a significant period!
By contrast of course we DONT have enough builders/technicians because they are ‘to expensive’ to train.
I wonder if we need to bring back the good old ‘business studies’ courses for all?
There was an interesting comment I heard on the rise on the minimum wage that it meant that the ‘pay differentials’ in the speakers company were being reduced.
I might add that while I ma sure the speaker didnt earn a bad wage I dont think he was anywhere close to silly money
So we need some action I suggest by Government to look at – amongst other things, pay rates across the economy, the distribution of employment ie working hours, household costs in particular energy and housing and perhaps recruitment.
But do they have the vision to do it?
No
And they cannot have missed the issue on their way through Labour ranks
I still can’t get my head around Government thinking that apparently considers paying for one nurse and one person on the dole as more ‘efficient’ than paying for two nurses; even more so when they then pay for agency staff to fill gaps in provision.
There is not even an attempt at joined-up thinking, it seems.
The financial juggling you describe reminds me of your recent post about externalities, all that time and effort to somehow make things work is unpaid, unacknowledged, necessitated by someone else’s fantasy of efficiency – the macro view highlights the cruel waste.
I think as well that the UK worldview seems stuck in the 70s (growth looked possible then, but we see ecological limits being well-surpassed now). There’s also inductive reasoning about technology in this, a kind of faith that reducing jobs via technology in one area always leads to “job replacenent” elsewhere, because thats what has always seemed to happen. However, it’s neither true nor a law of nature. In fact (sorry I don’t have the reference), “job replacement” hasn’t quite been happening since the late 70s and, as you say, there’s no cosmic guarantee that new jobs will meet the specific needs of anyone in particular, let alone the needs of anyone understood to be disabled. “Job replacement” is, in my view, a political-rhetorical device, to justify disruptive change that benefits those who want it, against those negatively affected. (I’d say the same is true of ideas of “progress”, which are also often teleological, and of particular relevance whenever “technological progress” is invoked, as with Bezos’ impossible fantasies of earth-orbting space stations with mountains and lakes, or Musk’s of colonies on Mars.) There’s no guarantee that what’s gone before will simply continue – there can come a point when at a significant scale, job replacement no longer occurs. Even a simple thought experiment shows this: within the current political-economic system if, for instance, efficiency across the economy doubled, to replace the jobs lost (which would be contingently necessary) everyone would have to consume twice what they do now (for job replacement to occur), unless the material/service benefits of that efficiency were redistributed (free or much lower cost provision, flatter pay scales), and that hasn’t been happening since Neoliberalism took hold. What is likely to happen instead is mass unemployment, misery, unrest and death. AI seems to be gathering pace, and alongside it there seems to be, generally, a delusional view that somehow the benefits of AI will be evenly distributed (glossing over entirely the minor issue of neoliberal capitalism headed by narcissistic psychopaths). I doubt that the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and so on are developing AI in order to usher in some kind of redistributive tech-socialist utopia. Once again, the micro view occludes the macro, or assumes that the macro view is just the sum total of the micro (if I can do more work in less time, that’s good for me, but if everyone is doing that…)
I’d not be so sure about the long term job losses due to AI.
There are limited cases where AI may actually help and many where it ultimately causes more harm than good.
For example your gtp summaries work because you know what the answer is and can verify it. If you were asking about something you didn’t know about you would be at risk of being misinformed.
I’ve seen this happen first hand, the confusion when it turns out that gtp made something up is palpable.
A lot of software developers have given up with AI code assistance as it tends to cost more time fixing bugs than it saves.
AI, and to be specific generative AI other types are actually useful, is in a huge hype cycle. Everyone thinks that AI can solve their issues and will make their products more attractive. There are signs that the bubble is starting to burst.
This will of course also cause job losses but if a different kind
I can see it happening all over the place
Coding can be high risk
Accounting coding of data is not
Do you use google for search? If so, you may have noticed that the top result now comes with a little star and an ‘AI overview’ legend. (Depends on what you are looking for). This is exactly the same as the phenomenon described above – if you know something about the topic you will be able to make a critical judgement, otherwise you could be told anything. Most search engine seem to be the same now, but I have been using Brave for several months. It also uses AI, but you can switch it off.
the problem goes very deep – there are those who are capable of work and who exaggerate their disabilities – I know of one who openly fiddled the system and is now no longer a friend – and partly because of such people, very very many more genuine people must suffer and are blamed by the few who lack understanding, for being out of work – too many people are unsympathetic to those of working age who are unemployed, blaming the unemployed instead of the system, including AI. All benefits are paid out of current taxation, the more people not in work, the less income tax is collected. It could of course be argued that ‘companies’ are making more profit because of AI and other such advancements, so could be paying more CT – I do not know as I have not looked into this, but there must be equivalent state income to pay all kinds of benefits, plus of course other state (and local) expenditure . Come what may, one day younger people will become pensioners, whether they have spent a lifetime in work or not. Who will be paying into the system that pays these various benefits? Currently the working population pay into the pot that pays current ‘benefits’ including current state pensions – there is no sinking fund for ‘benefits’ including future state pension payments . With so many currently not in employment and thus not paying tax on earnings, there will be little in the pot for future state pensioners – will these people, as you say, be ‘undeserving’? I wholly agree with what you have stated.
Thanks
As Berkeley, Tye and Wilson showed in “An Accounting Model of the UK Exchequer 2021”
https://gimms.org.uk/2021/02/21/an-accounting-model-of-the-uk-exchequer/
money spent on pensions and benefits comes, technically, from the National Insurance Fund, not from taxes. It has separate legislation.
However, if the NIF has a shortfall, the government’s account at the Bank of England (the Consolidated Fund) provides a *grant* of new money so the distinction is merely bureaucratic. The NI money behaves in normal spending and taxing processes: government spending comes from new money creation on the credit granted by the BoE, and taxation redeems that loan.
#SusanMensforth said on the blog “there will be little in the pot for future state pensioners”.
There is no “pot”.
The American Alan Greenspan had something to add, talking about the system in the USA, where FDR insisted that a “trust fund” (a pot) for Social Security be set up, rather than an open fund – but the message applies here in the UK too:
QUOTE
“I wouldn’t say the pay-as-you-go benefits are insecure in the sense that there is nothing to prevent the Federal Government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody. The question is, how do you set up a system which assures that the real assets are created which those benefits are employed to purchase? So it is not a question of security. It is a question of the structure of a financial system which assures that the real resources are created for retirement as distinct from the cash. The cash itself is nice to have, but it has got to be in the context of the real resources being created at the time those benefits are paid and so that you can purchase real resources with the benefits, which of course are cash.”
END QUOTE
The whole conundrum of this blog post seems to me to devolve into the philosophical question of defining work (in social terms, not physics terms).
* What constitutes a working week?
* What constitutes a thriving wage?
* What constitutes a productive input into the economy?
MMT shows us that the costs can be borne, the timescale for the redemption of the BoE loan (and the shoulders to carry that load) are the next questions for rewriting a new social contract whivh we need for a new world.
I agree – there is no pot – and there does not ened to be
Anyone “playing the system” must have done so a long time ago as the system has been tightened to the point whereby blind people and cancer sufferers are denied benefits
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/09/blind-woman-denied-benefits-because-she-attended-dwp-interview-with-help-of-mother
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/02/young-people-cancer-england-face-seven-month-wait-disability-benefits
There’s also the small matter of the total number of people unemployed, sick or disabled vs the number of job vacancies: 5.5 million vs 812,000
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/jobsandvacanciesintheuk/january2025
Anyone “playing the system” must have done so a long time ago as the system has been tightened to the point whereby blind people and cancer sufferers are denied benefits
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/09/blind-woman-denied-benefits-because-she-attended-dwp-interview-with-help-of-mother
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/02/young-people-cancer-england-face-seven-month-wait-disability-benefits
There’s also the small matter of the total number of people unemployed, sick or disabled vs the number of job vacancies: 5.5 million vs 812,000
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/jobsandvacanciesintheuk/january2025
(This comment was posted by mistake below a different person to who I intended)
Your description of the household and the multiple transactions to pay the bills…this is exactly why the government thinks that the poorest have the broadest shoulders. That and the ‘belief’ that the poorest have the smallest distance to fall in comparison to their better off and wealthy compatriots.
And aren’t their plans Trumpian?! In so many policy areas it seems to be the direction of travel, presented to us in such a bland way by them and much of the media. Nobody making the connection.
Thanks
This article makes perfect sense regarding AI rapidly eliminating jobs. I have been in the software industry for over 20 years as a senior cloud engineer, and it is clear that software engineering and development jobs will inevitably disappear. A company can now generate the same software that a developer would create simply by asking the right questions saving them an average salary of 80K per engineer.
Agreed
Where does the apparently essential ability to “ask AI the right questions” come from, once the workforce has been deskilled by a decade or so of AI?
YouTube
Apparently TV producers are having to get shelf staking jobs
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/mar/07/senior-tv-producers-shelf-stacking-jobs-uk-industry-crisis
Even ex-Tory MPs can’t find work
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/16/ex-tory-mp-unemployed-political-views/
It seems that, the way things are going, ordinary people are destined for serfdom or the scrapheap – human beings deemed surplus to requirements. If ‘little people’ are no longer required to make and maintain the fortunes of the 1% – they think AI can do that for them – then what will happen to the rest of us? It makes it all the clearer that the economy is not being run for the benefit of society as a whole. Otherwise all the talk would be about the potential of AI and the like to liberate ever greater numbers of people from drudgery and bullshit jobs. As it is, all we hear about is the doom loop of cutbacks, unemployment, job scarcity, anxiety, and penury inviting mass existential crises. The British population is surely becoming ever more insecure about their prospects. The hope-free zone that is the Labour Government extols the virtue of work whilst seemingly taking its cue/chainsaw from the rogues in the White House.
Yet even while decent paying jobs disappear there is still so much valuable and rewarding work that could be done, if only it would be valued enough to be funded! But a lot of it won’t be valued by neolibs and others who don’t care (teaching/healthcare/public service/environmental etc). To give a specific personal example – the hospital in which I work has potentially 100s of unadvertised vacancies – we are so understaffed it’s not true. My team alone could double in size and we’d all be usefully employed. Sometimes we can’t even get patients from the wards due to shortage of porters! All ultimately due to the government pretending there is a more fundamental shortage – of money (where’s it all gone – down the plug hole?), like the ungodly opposite of ‘fiat lux’ – let there be no money/let there be potholes galore! Far from being no alternative, things are largely as they are by choice. It does not have to be like this. Thanks for your constant reminders of this, Richard.
It has been suggested that governments may need to tax AI and automation to fund a basic income for unemployed workers. Some argue that this could prevent poverty, while others fear it may discourage work.
Additionally, governments might need to limit AI deployment in certain industries to protect jobs. AI taxation policies could also help redistribute wealth more fairly.
Without such measures, mass unemployment could fuel extremist political movements, and people may lose trust in governments that fail to manage AI-driven disruptions.
However, as we have seen in recent weeks with attacks on the welfare system, the government appears clueless about AI’s negative consequences for society, let alone capable of implementing such measures.
Nothing will improve until govt starts investing in the country. Schools won’t teach what pupils need to understand until govt funds education properly. Health won’t improve till NHS gets major investment by govt (not by foreign corporations seeking profits). And so on.
Many “unemployed” people are doing socially useful things without being paid for it (especially by caring). Others need to be helped to find suitable work, but our politicians don’t seem to be very good at doing that. Rather, they seem to believe that anyone not earning money should be penalised.
https://www.voronoiapp.com/technology/China-is-Winning-the-AI-Patent-Race–1116
If you look at this AI Patent Chart you would be forgiven for thinking the AI R&D or Patent war has been fought and won.
UK govt and private sector as usual all talk little investment. US and Chinese Tech firms will be the dominant players.
Regarding graduate students, you don’t have to look very far on the internet to see how they’ve already managed to stoke poisonous resentment towards older people. And that many people are incapable of realising that it’s their own grandparents they’re being played off against and that the state pension they are told is unfair on the young is the state pension they won’t have themselves in the future if they continue to believe the lies being churned out by the Adam Smith Institute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RRM-XXRL20&t=596s