What Happens When No One Has A Job Anymore?

Hello everyone and welcome to our last for now video essay here on TFD. To give

you a quick insight into what we're doing on the channel, although we have

loved doing these monthly video essays between all of the production value and

our guest experts and 15 plus pages of research and everything, they are quite

a high lift to produce and they can't always necessarily be as responsive as

we'd like them to because we have to produce them so far in advance. So, we

will be continuing to do all kinds of videos on the channel, but at a slightly

more as needed basis and not always these sort of full length video essays.

We will still be doing really in-depth video essays sometimes, just not every

single month. Kind of more on a when we want to basis. So, stay tuned for that.

But we wanted to leave at least this season of our video essays on a note of

what is to come economically. Because for anyone that's been paying attention

to the news lately, what's to come seems kind of scary for a lot of reasons. You

might have even seen our recent video on the channel about whether or not we are

in a secret recession. The answer, hard to say. But before we get into today's

video essay, I just wanted to quickly give a thank you to our sponsor this

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first year. So, click below, get started. But, one thing you might have

also seen recently in the news are these layoffs at Oracle, a massive tech

company based here in the US, where our friend Holly behind the camera's husband

had his first job. So, you may have seen these headlines lately about Oracle, the

tech giant and pioneer in replacing human beings with shaky at best

technology, eliminating 30,000 jobs in the most inhumane way possible via mass

6:00 a.m. email, which kind of makes the layoff zooms in up in the air feel a

little quaint by comparison. Quote, "Employees in the US, India,

Canada, Mexico, and other countries began receiving job termination emails

from Oracle leadership at about 6:00 a.m. local time Tuesday, sparking what

could be the largest layoff in the company's history." Business Insider

first reported. Oracle's termination emails to its laid-off staff cited

broader organizational change in what is widely seen as a reference to the tech

giant's recent push to build more AI data centers. "After careful

consideration of Oracle's current business needs, we have made the

decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a

result, today is your last working day." The email reportedly said. As fate would

have it, I actually happen to have a good friend who was part of that 30,000

employee layoff at Oracle, and she was gracious enough to send a little voice

memo about the experience. For reasons that I'm sure are probably obvious,

we're going to keep her anonymous for now. >> So, the first thing worth noting is that being an employee for them does feel

like being the member of a medium-sized nation. Um it is a huge, huge company. It is a global company. And honestly, it is sort

of impossible to have that many employees and manage them in like a one-to-one way, even culturally. This company has

never, ever had a personal touch with any sort of HR communications. You get

email reminders for everything. There are Slack channels for everything.

Everything is automated through the website. Even IT support go through a

phone number with a wait time. And really, the difference that is made is

if you have a really good manager who has sort of encyclopedic knowledge of

how the company works and how things work. And without that connective

tissue, you do really get lost. So, even for example, when I was hired, I was not

hired by an HR person. I was interviewed by the team that I then was on for many

years and loved being on by the way. And someone on that team had like a you

know, was working with HR. But I never I never interacted with HR

even when I was hired. And you know, I have to say I actually really really

like that because I hate being micromanaged and I hate feeling like I'm

being forced to participate in a culture that is absolutely fake and absolutely a

facade for something you know, much more sinister. There was no rah-rah ever and I I really did appreciate that. Where things get

messy is just what happens when like a few key really great personalities are

gone and this machine has to keep going itself. So in my experience, I you know,

knew that my team was going to be you know, dissolved. We found that out and

had time to plan. But the stage was set that way. So I had many months to

potentially go out and find a new job and that's exactly what

happened. So many people left to a point where I was then, you know, one of a

very very small skeleton team. Then it happened. Then I got the email heard

around the world which like I have to laugh because

it was so silly ultimately. It was so silly. I

got tons of automated emails like automated reports, automated just

notifications. And so, you know, I log on at 9:00 in the morning, regular girl,

and I'm working backwards from the top of my inbox which like now there's

there's a lot of stuff and I also get distracted. I'm working on a PowerPoint

because I had this really big presentation I was you know, preparing for and I actually, you know, jumped on the phone with a

friend cuz I was dealing with something like really stressful personally. And

you know, during throughout all this, I noticed that my Slack won't connect. I call IT, it's like disconnected. I'm like, what

the heck? Finally, around noon, maybe a little bit later, I get an email, check

your email, check your inbox for something sent at 6:00 a.m. And like

almost at the exact same time, I started getting texts from former coworkers who

were like, I'm so sorry to hear. And I was like, what?

It's certainly not how I would conduct business. I just quickly deleted

everything. I closed my app my laptop. And then I was like, okay, I guess

that's it. And then all of the other information was sent through an

automated system via email, you know, so same way in, same way out. Um, I guess

that's points for consistency. I am able to look at this with like a sense of

humor because I had enough lead up that I could could very quickly kind of put

myself together. There are people who were laid off globally who were not

treated 1/16 of the way I was treated. And I was not

treated great. And really, what bothers me is knowing that those people globally

are sort of the underpinning of everything technological, everything that keeps the machine running and makes the bill the business also, probably,

I'm assuming, profitable because they are cheaper workforce, was treated that

way. It actually drives me insane. And so, I can laugh from my place of

privilege, but really, I think this is a form of evil that really makes you stop

in your track. I believe globally, they only received like 2 weeks of severance

pay. I think for a while, it has been made

clear to us that the tech industry is putting process and machine learning

over humans. And I think everyone who works in this field has to really decide

what they do. Do you want to be an AI prompter? Do you want to be an

orchestrator of AI? Or do you want to do the thing that you probably originally studied? Or do you need to

find something new? Now, we should be clear here and say that Oracle as a

company and CEO Larry Ellison in particular have never been one of the

good guys, even grading on the already extremely heavy curve of massive tech

companies. And we won't derail this video too much by doing a whole

breakdown of Oracle/Larry's many sins, but his vision for the future,

especially as it pertains to AI, as you can see here, is yikes. To get an

insider's opinion on the state of the job market when it comes to the

influence of AI, we once again spoke with Joe Pietramonico, founder and

career coach at Shape Your Fate, who works with young professionals entering

the workforce. >> The Oracle layoffs were two-folded. We had Oracle itself and their business

operations being impacted by the usage of AI and its competitors and the

consumers themselves. So, we were seeing Oracle's market share being impacted,

which we saw with like their stock price going down. So, that was hurting Oracle.

But then the double whammy was that Oracle itself was investing heavily into

the usage of AI for its own operations. So, now you had Oracle losing money, but

also spending money, which meant they had to cut from somewhere. And

unfortunately, one of the highest uh expenses for an organization is head

count, which resulted in these layoffs. So, yes, I think it's an indicator, but I think AI is impacting in a lot of

different ways beyond just what people think of like, "Oh, AI is going to take

my job." And that's how how impacting uh the market. It it's it's impacting in a

lot of different ways. Again, we have organizations investing very heavily

into AI, which means they have to cut from somewhere else in their budget.

We're having organizations like their actual operations, their revenue being

impacted by the usage of AI, which means they have to cut somewhere from their

budget to balance it. Um and yes, we are heading towards a

place where AI can replace jobs. So, I think no matter how all of this shakes out, unfortunately,

it's the worker that gets impacted the most um and the the most negatively impacted. >> But as evil as the Oracle layoffs were,

and they were among other things, you had a cancer patient who had been a

loyal employee of the company for over two decades who received that 6:00 a.m.

email. It's just one example of a much broader cultural shift. A feeling that

the job market, as we have historically understood it, is sort of disappearing

beneath our feet, and that we may not be equipped for what comes after, in part

because it won't just be the people who are laid off who are impacted. While a

few sectors and selected indicators may be propping up the picture, there is

clearly a very different vibe on the ground. And as we discussed in our

recent video with Cara Perez, when it comes to defining a recession, it can

often be very difficult to separate the signal from the noise. One thing that is

very clear though is that people are increasingly terrified of the job

market. And it's not just the extreme lack of jobs, although that's definitely

part of that and we'll get to that. It is also the feeling that we have broken

a kind of invisible contract, and Oracle's layoffs really represent that.

And this isn't in people's heads, by the way. If you are one of the many people

who have had to look for work in the past like 2 years, you probably noticed

that things have gotten substantially worse very quickly. Here are a few bleak

stats from the aforementioned September essay. According to industry data

compiled by Lifeshock, job seekers apply to 100 plus positions on average in

order to secure an offer, and your resume is much less about showcasing

talent and more about keyword optimization and figuring out ways to

game the system. Whether or not you actually get an interview, for example,

depends on automated filtering. Almost all large companies use applicant

tracking systems, which are responsible for rejecting or accepting resumes

before a human being ever sees them, which means that if your application is

not tailored to the screening algorithm, it won't even be seen. Guides online

even recommend rewriting resumes for every single job, and a significant

portion of candidates never even hear back from their prospective employer.

Quote, roughly 48% of job seekers said that they were ghosted by an employer in

the past year, compared to 38% who'd been ghosted the year before.

>> Told them my availability, and then nothing. No response for over a week.

>> She said she emailed them twice. No response. >> Really disappointing. I do feel Honestly, I feel really defeated right

now. >> But even if the market was already in

this place, i.e., not very good, the Oracle layoffs do represent a kind of

shift toward an even different vision of what work is, what workers are, what we

owe them or don't, especially in how they explicitly center AI as a

replacement to human work, and in many cases, formerly quite lucrative and

dependable human work, things like software developing. But we'll get into

that. What's undeniable though is that things like just learn to code are no

longer the refrain that we can toss around easily as a way to protect

yourself in the job market or pick the right major in school.

>> Some AI giants were even bold enough to claim that AI would render all software

engineers obsolete in 6 months. This was back in January. Quote, at the Davos

forum, two AI giants made a rare joint appearance, initiating a significant

dialogue about the future of AGI. Dario Amodei made an astonishing prediction.

AI could completely replace software engineers in as little as 6 months.

Also, half of junior white-collar jobs will disappear within the next 1 to 5

years. Now, that of course needs to be taken with a big grain of salt in part

because A, people go to Davos to sell their companies and ideas. And of

course, the people most invested directly in AI are going to be most

bullish on its future, obviously. And also, we're like already 3 months out

and we're not quite there yet. So, I think 6 months is aggressive. But what

is not untrue to say is that AI is drastically changing the job market,

including for jobs that used to be considered totally safe. I also want to

say before we get into this video that I personally am probably one of the more

AI agnostic people that you will see on platforms like YouTube. On the one hand,

I think a lot of generative AI is just existentially somewhere between

depressing and terrifying. Not only am I an author, but I also my my father is an

illustrator, my cousin's an illustrator. I have a lot of artists in my family,

and I'm very aware of how quickly all of those jobs are disappearing, being

replaced by AI. Also, things like music, which was already notoriously very

difficult to make a living in, film, TV, all of this, like basically everything

that is centered around human expression, which was already an

extremely difficult industry to begin with, is now like being truly gutted out

by AI and generative AI generally. Like it There's a lot that I very much

dislike and don't respect about it, especially toward companies who could

clearly afford to pay human beings to do this work, but would rather, you know,

continue to boost shareholder value. But that being said, I think that the

opposite view that is totally anti-AI to the point that you don't even learn

about it, you don't even have sort of very basic literacy in it, uh something

I see a lot among my fellow millennials, especially more progressive ones like

myself, who I do think, both for environmental and sort of human capital

reasons, have a lot of opposition to AI, are taking, which is like, I'm not even

going to know what this is, I'm not even going to look it up. I do think that

that is ill-advised because I think whether or not we like it, the advent of

AI is as significant as the development of things like computer technology or

before that, you know, the Industrial Revolution. Like I think that this is a

truly massive leap forward in computational power and just how humans

are going to be processing information. And I think that to willingly be

completely illiterate in it, even if you don't use it personally, I think is a

mistake just in terms of your own future competitiveness and ability to navigate

society in an effective way. I think that there's definitely a sweet spot to

be found where like you haven't outsourced your entire brain to chat GPT

as I fear is increasingly the case for young people, but you're at least

literate enough to know how to use it. I have found several uses for it that have

like drastically freed up a lot of my time and mental bandwidth and have made

tasks that previously felt extremely tedious and difficult and would often

turn into like these clouds of procrastination and now they don't feel

overwhelming at all. And I also just enjoy being literate in the technology

as as far as I think is is reasonable for

me to be. So, all that is to say, I am not completely opposed to it in the

sense that like I don't think it means anything to really be opposed to it.

People are asking me to help with specific ways that I use it. Especially

when it comes to things like scheduling, that really helps. Making lists of

things. I also, when I write my books, I write them via Excel sheet first where I

do like all of the chapters and I have like a whole bunch of different columns

with different information. So, I use Gemini Pro. That's like the like paid

version of Gemini. That's the what I really use cuz I'm so like locked into

Google Docs and Google Calendar, all of that. Like the G Suite has got me, baby.

Like I'm >> >> That's my That's my place. Point being, I like my agents or my editors can work

in that Excel sheet and leave like notes in the rows and then I can be like, "Can

you transpose this onto the doc so that each place that's being referred to like

has its note?" Or a perfect example is I do a lot of my writing by voice-to-text.

Like the leaps and bounds that voice-to-text in particular has

experienced over the last 18 months is actually insane. Like voice-to-text

interpretation used to be such a stumbling block because I would like

write 2500 words like while I'm on my walk into my phone and then it would be

like wind and it wrote the the wrong word and like it was complete chaos and

I would spend like an hour plus just like going through the text and fixing

it. Now I can just say to Gemini, please like polish this and make it correct and

it like knows what I was saying it uses context clues to like fix words. It puts

punctuation and quotation marks around things like it just makes anything that

like was previously a very time-consuming tedious task a lot

easier. That's just some of mine. Anyway, as far as it pertains to the job

market, this sort of encroachment of AI on let's just say more white-collar

jobs, jobs behind a computer can be seen as kind of a renaissance for manual or

skilled labor and it is in some ways. But that being said, I also think we

need to take a step back and think about the macroeconomic impact of so many

people being out of work in such a short span of time because they've essentially

been rendered obsolete. Meaning that the down funnel impacts of that crisis will

likely spare nobody even if AI can't replace their job because AI proofing

can work on an individual basis, but even if you work in like skilled manual

labor for example, building homes and AI can't touch your job for the time being,

what happens when no one can afford to build or buy new homes? Which takes us

to chapter one. Who is propping up the economy and who is at risk? So one of

the things that makes the AI existential threat so scary for the overall economy

is not just the impact on jobs themselves which to be clear are already

very bad. It's also the fact that the jobs most at risk of early automation,

i.e. disproportionately white-collar jobs, are also disproportionately the ones propping up the consumer economy. Quote, "A new report from Moody's

Analytics shows the top 10% of earners now account for nearly half of all US

consumer spending, a historic high that shows how dependent economic growth has

become on wealthy households. Those top earners, defined as Americans making at

least $251,000 in 2024 according to census data, drove 49.2% of consumer spending in the second quarter of 2025. That share has steadily

grown for years. It was about 46% in 2023 and 43% in 2020. And even as the

number filters down, the upper middle and middle classes, whatever the latter

even means anymore, are still disproportionately responsible for propping up what we usually refer to when we want to indicate the economy

doing well. Essentially, much of economic reporting, especially as done

by politicians, is a game of slight of hand, cherry-picking certain stats to

paper over a much bigger problem. And increasingly, that cherry-picking has

been focused on a slim part of the country. And that is people for whom

things are going really, really well, almost more so than the rest of the

country is not doing well. Now, if you wanted to find the percentage of the

American workforce that is white-collar workers, you will get a lot of different

numbers depending on who you ask. Especially when you consider how

hyperinflated qualifications, training, and especially degrees are becoming in jobs that previously did not require them. According to an oft-cited 2017

report from Harvard Business School, quote, "Degree inflation, the rising

demand for a four-year college degree for jobs that previously didn't require

one, is a substantive and widespread phenomenon that is making the US labor

market more inefficient. Postings for many jobs traditionally viewed as

middle-skill jobs, those that require employees with more than a high school

diploma, but less than a college degree, in the United States now stipulate a

college degree as a minimum educational requirement, while only a third of the

adult population possesses this credential." However, even if we can't

totally define who is or isn't a white-collar worker, when you look at

some of the jobs that are most vulnerable to be on, let's say, the

early chopping block for the AI takeover, you will see a lot of

recurring themes, and one of them is that they've historically been

degree-requiring, relatively stable, and white-collar work. Things like tech, law, and finance, essentially anywhere that requires a lot of behind the

computer time and research / computational oriented work. You'll also

see themes in operations, project management, and administration for which

existing AI software can already handily do much of the day-to-day work. As I

mentioned, most of the ways in which I use AI are pretty operational. And

lastly, you'll see things that used to be painstaking and require very

specialized skills, such as translation, voice acting, or graphic design, which

is often where I get a lot more of a complicated feeling about these things.

But, for better or worse, the software has gotten extremely close to imitating

human expertise or even exceeding it. I also want to say that at least again

from a sort of like human advancement perspective, I tend to feel more sort of

existentially dreadful about again the the sort of AI imitating or producing

art, uh especially because it just entails stealing art from humans and

putting them out of jobs than I do necessarily about things like

translation. I have several friends I speak three languages. I live quite a

bit in another country, so I know personally a lot of people who have

historically worked in translation. And these jobs have been going away for some

time, and AI has basically eliminated them. I want to both hold space for the

fact that it is very tragic that those jobs are going away for the people who

hold them, while also thinking that it is probably a net positive for human

beings as a whole to be able to communicate with each other in real time

across language barriers. Like, I do think the technology, like when you

travel and you can just hold up one of these apps to, let's say, a sign and

translate it in real time, or you can put the phone between you. It is

literally only as of like 18 months ago that you could go to, let's say, I don't

know, Indonesia and put your phone on a table between yourself and someone you

met in a restaurant or a market stall or on a beach, uh and have a fully fledged

conversation with them essentially in real time without, you know, either

party having to speak the other's language. Like, I do think that that

will be a net benefit to humanity. And in fact, I think it's one of the things

about AI that makes me feel like, "Okay, well, maybe it won't all be bad."

Because ultimately, like I think that there are certain things that have

historically been gatekept, like our ability to communicate with one another,

that it's good we're eliminating to an extent, I think. I personally think. I

do think a language barrier has been, for the most part, like a cause of a lot

of human misunderstanding and conflict over essentially all of human existence.

So, again, I'm trying to be like relatively bullish about the possible

good uses of AI, while also being like, if you're out here, like not paying an

artist so that you can AI generate some, you know, horrendous song to put on your

reality show, I think you should be, you know, sent to prison. I don't know. I will say, like my friends who are translators

have said, like now their work is basically an editing translation, which

I think there's still like a level of refinement there, but I I I actually

feel pretty confident that the specifically AI translation tools will

be pretty good at that stuff even within like the next year or two. We'll see.

We'll see. Also, like think about all the applications. Like you work in an

emergency room, and now, for the first time ever, you can just literally hold

up a phone and communicate with any, basically any person. I mean, they don't

have They don't have all languages yet, but they have a lot of them. And like we

can communicate with each other. Like that's that's great. Now, not all of

these professions were in the top earners, but many, like tech and

finance, absolutely were. And while there will always likely remain some

jobs in these sectors, there will simply be drastically fewer of them, meaning

that this once robust workforce that buoyed a huge portion of the economy and

provided some near-guaranteed opportunities for new grads is essentially dissolving. And as with the Oracle layoffs, it also means that the

aforementioned new grads are now disproportionately competing with more senior workers for the few remaining positions available, especially in a

context where there's basically no entry level left. >> We have these organizations that, again, their business operations are being

impacted. They're spending money on these investments into AI. All of this

is just boiling down to unfortunately the um entry-level jobs being most affected.

And even the jobs that are still there and still being posted, we're starting

to see the impact of where AI is changing those

roles and responsibilities. We're starting to see more organizations looking for young professionals that have familiarity with with using AI.

Right? They have familiarity utilizing it because it's going to be part of

their role now. We're starting to see organizations push internally for their

team members to use AI in their daily operations to hopefully operate more

efficiently as well. And we're starting to see roles being introduced, but a big

portion of those roles and responsibilities are to train that

company's AI. So, I've seen organizations actually use young professionals and entry-level talent to train their AI. What the future of that

looks like for those roles is to be determined, but we're starting to see a

lot of these entry-level roles being impacted in one way or another by the

uses of AI. Which for me lends the question of

what does the future look like for these organizations that are incredibly

top-heavy with not as much bottom-level talent to mold and grow into their

future leaders or these future positions? Um I definitely think it's

going to be a a unfortunate negative impact for those organizations as well

to not be looking at it from the long-term perspective.

>> Long story short, what we've been referring to as the economy has

increasingly become rich people. And when you look at what AI is

disproportionately coming for, it's not always the wealthiest of the wealthy,

but it is taking a very large chunk out of jobs that used to be pretty well paid

and pretty reliable, which like it or not made up a lot of the economy. But in

addition to thinking about who AI is going to impact, we also need to think

about how AI was sold to us versus what it actually does in practice, which

brings us to our next chapter. AI expectation versus reality. Now, AI has

long been touted as a new frontier of efficiency and the expectations sound

great to anyone. Automating processes or repetitive tasks, making work more

efficient, opening up more space for work-life balance. And it's true that a

lot of those things are now possible and that some people are finding menial

tasks aided by AI, not their entire workload being replaced, like me. And in

an ideal world, this kind of automation would simply eliminate certain tasks and

free up time for more creativity and energy for deep work for everyone. And

it certainly has for many people. For instance, according to the World

Economic Forum, one of the top jobs we're seeing decline or disappear by

2030 is cashiers and clerks. Anyone who has recently been to a McDonald's, Taco

Bell, Panera, etc. and put their order into a touchscreen could have easily

told you that. And on some level, it's a tragedy to see someone's livelihood

disappear, but that's been happening since time immemorial. We no longer have

ice cutters or lamp lighters, for instance, and retail clerk work is

simply just a job. For the most part, no one is doing that for anything more than

a paycheck, even if they mostly enjoy the people they interact with. The

broader reality though, is that we've seen AI replacing very specific roles

rather than simply streamlining workloads. Broadly speaking, the most at

risk of replacement so far are roles that are narrow and task specific and

jobs that were once seen as stepping stones are no more. In addition to roles

like retail clerks, we're seeing fewer and fewer roles for things like junior

developers, copywriters, graphic designers, customer support and paralegals, the law, tech and other white-collar darlings we mentioned.

>> I feel like every generation a new hoop is added that young

professionals have to jump through. Before, it used to be as simple as get a

degree and you almost were guaranteed a job. But then once so many young professionals started going to college,

the field became more competitive. So then you had to do more. You had to do

internships. You had to do clubs and organizations. You had to work part-time

or full-time on top of your school. So it became more and more competitive.

So just more hoops to jump through. But now all of that still remains, but

we've added additional hoops where because there's less entry-level jobs,

the market is even more competitive, which means you have to jump through

even more hoops to stay competitive in that market for those roles that do

exist. Being familiar with the usage of AI, again, we are seeing employers

looking for young professionals that know how to use AI and know how to use

it effectively with within their skill sets. That's a really important skill. Unfortunately, I think young

professionals nowadays have to be even more in tune with what's going on in the

job market than ever before. Now you have to really understand, okay, what

are employers looking for? And it's constantly changing because of how AI is

changing and how AI is impacting how we use AI last year to how we're using it

this year is very different and that's impacting what we're looking for. If you

can start to see the skill sets that these employers are looking for, they're

posting in their job description, this is what we need, this is what we're

looking for, these are preferred qualifications, you can start to tally your experience while you're in college to those skill

sets that are needed. You can start to angle yourself

to really make that impact and and be that candidate that stands out in that

competitive fields. I also recommend that to take advantage of what you have right now. I know everyone always groans when the advice

is networking, but networking really does help you stand out in a competitive

space because that's where again you're reminded of those human pieces and you stand out in a crowd because now you're not just a

resume on someone's desk, now you're a person that they connected with, that

they had a conversation with. So, taking advantage of the internship

opportunities that you can do while you're in college, taking advantage of

the connections you can build while you're doing the internship, right?

Connect with the people that you work with in the internship, connect with

your colleagues, take a walk and and go talk to somebody that works in a

different department and hear a little bit more about them. Participate in any,

you know, company events that you're allowed to participate in while you're

doing your internship. Um take advantage of building connections with your

professors. They may have connections that they can introduce you to as well.

I also recommend participating in clubs and organizations. If organizations are

still taking the time to come to your college or university, take advantage to

go to that event, talk to them in person, build that connection. I've seen

people get jobs because of the fact that they went up to somebody at a career

fair and introduced themselves and that started this conversation that led the

way to them getting that job. They met the right person, they talked to them,

they built that connection, they followed up with them, and they took

advantage of the time that they had to be with somebody to to cut through, you

know, the applicant tracking system and cut through their resume and and build

that personal connection. Um I also recommend taking advantage of your

career services center. Usually career services centers have these built relationships and connections with employers. They have

more of an insight into what these employers are looking for based on their

conversations and based on how they're connecting and engaging with them. So,

it's really taking advantage of all this opportunity that you have to start

building connections and building engagements and let's start looking at

where we can leverage some of these relationships to help us get a leg up in

the market nowadays. >> And as someone in a creative field with

plenty of creatives as friends, including myself, the numbers can feel

really discouraging. As of March of this year, stock prices for Upwork and Fiverr

were down 90 and 70% respectively since their 2021 highs. Companies who used to

heavily rely on work from freelancer platforms are now turning to AI. And of

course, there were tons of issues with those platforms before AI began

replacing users and many freelancers removed their profiles years ago thanks

to oversaturation in the low-price freelance work market, but AI means

freelancers who once relied on those gig marketplaces need to shift their skill

set. Freelancers must pivot from routine assignments to high-value problem-solving, tasks that require critical thinking, creativity, and

nuanced decision-making since these are areas where human expertise complements

rather than competes with AI capabilities. And unfortunately, that erosion of specifically entry-level work makes a kind of sense if not on a human

level, then at least on a pragmatic/logistical level because why would a senior developer, for example, delegate to a

junior developer and go through the trouble of teaching them how to code

something correctly when they can just outsource that coding to the AI tool and

check its work. This is like a side note, but as someone whose husband is by

trade an engineer and started his career coding and then now is in a more senior

role, like it's so interesting to see the difference between how he codes now

versus how he coded when we first started dating 15 years ago. Like he

would be like it was very much like hacking into the mainframe meme where

you're just like hunched over a computer for 10 hours at a time, like sweating

bullets and just like chugging coffee or he drinks tea, but you know, that kind

of image and then now he sounds like he's talking to himself. Like I'll be

walking around and he'll like he'll be like blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

blah to like Claude. I think he uses Claude. And yeah, it's just a very

strange thing to see. Times they are a-changing. Okay. Now, of course, AI is

imperfect because AI is first and foremost built by humans, so whoever

trains it brings their own biases to the table, and wherever it gets its

information has to be correct in order for it to be correct. So, we still, for

now, need humans to essentially fact-check that AI does what we want it

to do properly. But, that means that senior roles, at least for now, continue

to be necessary while AI can phase out the more junior ones. And in many ways,

AI can likely highlight the chasm between the novice and the expert.

According to the World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report, quote, "In

percentage terms, demand for roles driven by technological advancement, such as AI, is quickly increasing. These jobs include big data specialists,

fintech engineers, and AI and machine learning specialists." AI growth means

that at least for now, we need more experts in AI, and there will be demand

for skilled labor. But, since junior roles are the first on the chopping

block, we are increasingly left with the question, "Who is going to train the

next level of senior workers?" Or, will there even be senior workers? Which

brings us to chapter three, wage stagnation and the myth of reskilling.

Now, as I discussed in last month's video essay about the myth of Europe as

some kind of progressive utopia, it's honestly easier to earn a high salary in

the US than in many other developed nations. But, that doesn't mean it's the

lived experience of most Americans. Plenty of people have seen their income

stagnate. And even before widespread AI implementation, federal minimum wage has

not risen since 2009, and real wages are very stagnant when compared to cost of

living, even when considering how high American salaries are on average. Here's

a graph illustrating how not raising the minimum wage effectively means people

are earning less than they have for decades, with real wages being at their

lowest point since the 1950s. And you don't need me to tell you that our

general costs of living, like housing, health care, and child care have surged,

but I'll give you some numbers anyway. Quote, "Nationally, median single-family

home prices rose by nearly 1/2 between 2019 and 2024, at more than twice the

rate of median income, which rose by only 22% Similarly, in large markets

across the country, home prices grew by anywhere from 24% to 79% since 2019,

while incomes only increased by 8% to 36% and with home prices so high

relative to household income, would-be buyers need to save more and for longer

to afford a down payment. Down payments are already a significant barrier to

homeownership, especially for first-time buyers, younger people, and households of color. And childcare costs are literally making people poorer.

According to the Center for American Progress, quote, among impoverished

families who have children under age six and who pay for childcare, 35% were

pushed into poverty by these expenses, totaling about 134,000 families per

year. Now, AI isn't responsible for the level of economic precarity we're

currently facing, but it is making it worse. For instance, people are already

having to work multiple jobs to get by, as we highlighted in a recent video here

on TFD, and AI is arguably accelerating that problem. Because AI does make it

easier for gig workers to get hired, but it makes it harder for them to do their

jobs, or at least do their jobs in a way that's financially worth it. According

to a report from Trends Research and Advisory, quote, the integration of

AI-powered productivity tools in gig work environments has fundamentally reshaped daily work routines and performance outcomes for gig workers.

Automated staffing functions enabled by sophisticated algorithms now dominate the hiring process and pay determination, reducing the need for

human oversight and streamlining gig allocation at scale. And while this

automation can enhance operational efficiency, it also introduces profound information asymmetries. Gig workers are often presented with minimal details,

such as the payment amount and pickup location, but are left in the dark about

the destination and the rationale behind fluctuating fares. This lack of

transparency, compounded by the opacity of algorithmic decision-making and the

absence of human managerial interaction, weakens workers' abilities to make fully

informed decisions about which gigs to accept or reject. And we also have to

stop buying into the myth of reskilling because as we mentioned before, things

like just learn to code has the underlying assumption that there are

coding jobs available, which is increasingly not the case. And in the

time it would take for someone to effectively teach themselves how to

code, that job could already be replaced. >> Learn to code used to be popular career advice because we all knew that

technology was the way of the future. We knew that the society that we were

heading to be was so reliant on that technology. So, if we if you knew how to

code, if you knew how to write the code and speak the language of this

technology, you were almost guaranteed a job. It was a really great way to either It was a very viable career path, but it was also

a great way to set yourself apart from your competitors with this very coveted

skill set. But, as we've continued to evolve from a

technology perspective, we're seeing that this skill is less desirable in the market, especially with AI being able to

write code and write it very efficiently and again, very cost-effectively.

It's the skill itself is becoming less desirable. Not to say that it's not a

great skill to have and it still sets you apart from other people that maybe

don't have that skill set. Um for example, I know

um individuals that are working in like graphic design. If they have a coding

background on top of their graphic design skills, they're becoming more

competitive in the job market because they still have that. Again, is it going

to be this, you know, game changer and is it going to completely be this, you

know, guaranteed career path like it once was? No. But, it still is a great skill to have and again, it's the unfortunate part is

that it's just not as coveted as it once was. It is possible to upskill and

reskill in the world of AI. Specifically, I think investing in more

of the soft skills, those more human skills that AI can't replicate, those

are the skills that are going to continue to showcase to a company your

value and the value that you offer. So, investing in more of the skills in your

selling skills or your team-building skills, your teamwork skills, your

critical thinking skills, the strategic mindset that you offer, um public speaking skills, all of these different types of skills, these are the

softer skills that AI cannot replicate at this point, and those are going to be

the pieces that when an organization is looking at their

team, when they're looking at their staff, when they're doing an interview

with you, those are the skills where you can really shine, and that's what's

going to shine through, and you're going to showcase your value in those specific

skills, and that's what's going to remind these organizations of that

humanistic piece that is to kind of going away a bit, but still super, super needed.

>> And AI is also targeting new skills before people even have the chance to

learn them. Just look at Silicon Valley's obsession with the

self-improving machine. Quote, "Now as AI models have become significantly

better at coding, Silicon Valley has become hooked on the idea of

self-improving machines." AI research involves a lot of grunt work, curating

large data sets, running repeated experiments that can be made more

efficient with the help of coding bots. And if we can't upskill our way into new

jobs, does the career ladder even exist anymore? Because trying to climb the

career ladder amidst all of this feels akin to the riskiness of getting in on

the ground floor when investing. We never advise you to put all of your

chips into one basket, aka don't make individual stock picking your investment

game plan, but the same has to be true for your career. Diversifying your skill

set is still key, but it has to be focused on skills that aren't being

replaced by AI. Soft skills like creative problem-solving and emotional

intelligence, as well as more manual skills. And of course, as we mentioned,

this can't be solved on an individual level because again, even if everyone

moves toward, let's say, physical labor-based jobs, which again, for now,

are not as replaceable by AI, although that could change as machines become

more efficient, there is also the existential threat of having such a

large percentage of the workforce no longer employable. So, at the end of the

day, the solutions for the completely changing face of how we work and who is

working needs to happen from a policy level. It could be things like universal

basic income, it could also be redirecting people toward other sectors

of the workforce in a green new deal type of way. That was nice while it

lasted. But, it's not going to come from individuals just going to grad school,

which brings us to our final chapter as we think about the existential dread.

Will the age of AI make the gilded age feel quaint? Simply put, without

regulation, AI can make the few corporations controlling it and those at

the top even wealthier, while leaving a class of people even less able to access

wealth and potentially even without jobs. And let's be clear that although

new technology has always historically been a force for human advancement, it

has also equally been a force of inequality. Because with all of these

pushes forward, there are winners and there are losers. And the more radical

the technology changes, often the more radical that disparity is. During the

Industrial Revolution, for example, factory workers started being replaced by machines. And the rise of computers meant a higher need for highly skilled

or specialized labor and less of a need for low-skilled labor. A new report from

Goldman Sachs draws on data from the outcome of past technological

advancements. Quote, "Released Monday, the report draws on four decades of

federal data and tracks the lives of more than 20,000 Americans born between

the 1950s and 1980s. Compared with workers who lost jobs in more stable

occupations, Goldman's researchers said that displaced workers in jobs hit by

technological shifts, such as telephone operators and typists, suffered both

short- and long-term economic impacts. AI-driven displacement could impose lasting cost on affected workers, worsening labor market outcomes for

several years. In particular, their data show workers who lose jobs in fields hit

by automation take a month longer to find new jobs compared with workers

displaced from other fields. These automation-vulnerable workers also suffer real earning losses of 3% after landing a new job. While their peers saw

negligible impacts. But historically, this has evened out in the form of

living standards. Electricity and indoor plumbing, for instance, are much more

widely accessible than they once were. And the internet has democratized

information to the extent that learning almost anything is more possible for

basically anyone. The fear with AI is that this isn't what's going to happen,

that the chasm will simply keep widening, especially if the technology

learns to control and write itself. That's because while labor was the most valuable commodity in the past, with AI,

the most valuable commodity is the material things that drive it. This

means that workers are losing their jobs in order for companies to have more

capital for chips and data centers. Quote, another recent Goldman report

suggest a sharper impact. It estimated that AI is causing a net cut of about

16,000 jobs a month in the US with an unquantified number of offsetting hires

to build data centers or due to new demand for workers caused by AI

productivity or income gains. Over the next decade, Goldman's global economics

team has estimated that AI could lead to job losses for 6 to 7% of US workers,

while increasing the employment rate by as much as half a percentage point. And

this is not regular turnover. This is a fundamental shifting of what jobs are

and who does them. As we mentioned in the beginning, part of the existential

dread around our current job market, especially looking at things like the

Oracle layoffs, is that the social contract, as weak as it already was, has

fundamentally changed. And essentially, every company seems happy to pass the

buck in terms of consequences of laying off huge portions of the workforce and

essentially rendering countless jobs and by extension countless people obsolete

overnight. Additionally, despite the growing AI bubble with thousands of AI

startups popping up seemingly every day, the AI industry is dominated by an

exceedingly small number of companies. It's already under intense scrutiny for

everything from Sam Altman's personal behavior to breaking antitrust laws. And

fewer people at the top is the entire reason that billionaires, let alone our

trillionaires to be, should not exist. A few people hoarding massive amounts of

wealth means more and more people working for next to nothing wages and

struggling to get by. There are growth roles even alongside the rise of AI, but

they're concentrated to high-level, high-skilled roles, meaning a potentially even greater disparity between the owning and working classes

than we already see. And again, the more AI replaces entry-level and

task-specific roles, the more people there will potentially be without work,

which could mean a shrinking consumer pool that isn't enough to prop up the

economy, which begs the question, what happens to an economy when there's no

one left to consume in it? Because if everyone's jobs disappear, eventually

that means there is no demand left, which is famously the second half of

that old trustworthy supply and demand. Now, part of me wants to believe that

this outcome won't happen at least in its most radical form because I just

assume that global capital will be wise enough to understand that like 30 plus

percent unemployment globally is is probably not good for commerce and

solutions will be found. I mean, kind of similar, like obviously the solutions

to, you know, the early days of the pandemic were far from sufficient, but I

was at least semi-surprised at like how government stepped forward, relatively

speaking, to ensure that like the the cogs of commerce would continue to turn.

I think we can call that one not very well handled overall, but what it did

teach us I think above all, especially in America, that like we will definitely

prop up capitalism before we prop up human life, and that's very bleak, but

also it tells me that like if what is at existential risk in this is the fact

that no one will be shopping anymore, I think politicians will probably be more

eager to solve for that problem than they would about like I don't know, a

million people dying, which is obviously what happened the last time.

>> We saw a shift in the scale, so remains to be seen. And of course, everyone's

jobs can't be replaced. It's just much more likely that there will continue to

be vast gaps in wealth and access. According to a research paper from

Eastern Michigan University, while up to 85 million jobs could be displaced by AI

worldwide, 97 million new jobs are expected to emerge, especially for

workers able to transition. So, the question is ultimately not will AI

replace every person's job, because at least for the foreseeable, I don't know,

century, that's probably not realistically possible. But what is clear is that the solution at scale to the problem of a drastically shifting

job market is not letting a million Oracle situations unfold completely

unfettered and just hope for the best with both of the job and the consumer

market. It is to lean into what is beneficial about these technological

improvements, to use them to improve the quality of all human life, while making

sure that we are not leaving countless people stranded by the technology that

has passed their job market viability by. And I do again want to be somewhat

agnostic about the possible potential benefits of this, while acknowledging

the fact that especially in our current government setup, it is likely not to be

super well handled from either a labor or tech ethics perspective. I also

recommend for you personally navigating this that you check out the future of

jobs report to start thinking about how you can prepare with your own skills and

in your own industry. >> Every single job is going to be impacted

by AI in one way or another for the most part. Um, so we're going to start to see

even if roles aren't outright eliminated, we're going to start to see

that they're shifting in terms of what they do and how they operate.

But in my opinion, I think the roles that are the most insulated from a

complete obsolescence from AI is those roles that focus more on the human

touch. So sales positions, positions in the education space, um, healthcare

roles, consulting roles, therapy, social work. Again, those roles that are very,

very heavily reliant on that human touch and human connection, roles that rely on

critical thinking skills and strategic thinking, roles that rely on a

human element are going to be the ones that are most the most insulated from an

AI takeover. Um, and this is the types of roles and why I recommend again honing in on some of these skills. Even

if you aren't a sales professional, honing in on your selling skills is

really helpful because you're going to be selling yourself in an interview.

You're going to be selling yourself, you're going to be selling your ideas in

an organization to somebody. You're going to be trying to pitch your idea to

your boss to convince them to go in one way or another. So honing in on these

humanistic skills are also going to help you whether you're in these industries

or not. >> And I will always highlight something that we are frequently talking about here at TFD, which is focusing as much

as possible on your in-person communities because at a certain point

that's going to be a lot of what we have. AI is not a boogeyman, but it is

also not some utopian solution. You can debate that in the comments, but what is

clear is that it is changing the world and how we work in it extremely quickly,

and we can be a lot of things, but we at least must be aware of what's going on.

I'll see you guys around the channel. Bye.