4 ms·
Blue collar jobs are only going to be the go-to for as long as the labor supply is lower than the commercial demand, which I doubt will be long (if this is even
by shit_game 1y ago
Blue collar jobs are only going to be the go-to for as long as the labor supply is lower than the commercial demand, which I doubt will be long (if this is even the case now). It takes a non-neglible amount of time to train (or certify) for these jobs in much of the western world, which means that any bump in demand is met with a significant lag in supply. Once that supply catches up, the momentum of people saying "bro just go to trade school instead of college, plumbers/electricians/welders/dirt farmers make $100k" is going to dump thousands and thousands of juniors into a market that will very quickly oversaturate. We are witnessing this at an accelerated rate with software development and other tech jobs, largely due to extreme external factors (high interest rates limiting VC cash flow, Trump's hostile domestic economic policies[0], demonstrable downward pressure on employment mobility and wage suppression from big tech[1]).
The american "middle class" is still shrinking, but now it's shrinking faster than ever before, largely because the capital class wants more money, and there is one more stone to bleed. Creating a market of blue collar professionals who will be blackballed from white collar markets due to their educational and work histories (in tandem with the desired outcome of using AI workloads for these jobs in lieu of people) will raise the commercial value of these white collar services, while gatekeeping their entry and stagnating/lowering their compensation. The ladder is being set on fire.
0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44180533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44180533
1. https://equitablegrowth.org/aftermath-wage-collusion-silicon-valley/ https://equitablegrowth.org/aftermath-wage-collusion-silicon...
- nizbit 1y agoQueuing Gattaca dystopian future…
- mmcromp 1y ago"AI will kill white collar, those people should just go into trades, they can become plumbers". Great idea, except that's not how supply/demand works. AI didn't create the need for more toilets.
- panarchy 1y ago"AI didn't create the need for more toilets." It does generate a lot of shit...