Strategies for Enduring and Subsisting in the Face of Job Extinction

By Hemant Batra

The most shocking statement or if I may say prediction of recent times, which could turn out to be a real revelation came from Reid Hoffman. He has predicted that 9-to-5 jobs would be extinct by 2034. Hoffman is the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for professional networking. He has forecasted an extinction-level occurrence for the job market. An alarming rather scary claim. Hoffman’s forecasts in the past have come true. He is the same man who predicted the rise of social media in 1997. According to him the rapid development of AI will overwhelmingly reform how we work. Hence, he advises that rather than working for one company for many years, workers should prepare to work many jobs across multiple industries.

The above has stimulated my thoughts on the issue at hand. Here are my thoughts, which are based on my analysis of the current facts and projections, experience, logic, and basic instinct (including bits and pieces of sixth sense).

Changing Job Landscape

The landscape of employment has always evolved with the changing economic, social, and technological milieu. However, the unprecedented speed and scale of change currently underway, particularly with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, is raising questions of job extinction. Questions abound regarding who will be helped, who will be hurt, and how these changes will impact the dynamics of daily life, the economy, and even democracy itself. While discussions on the changing job landscape have generally been pending or have remained vague and idealistic (e.g., "upskilling"), recent technological developments have hastened the need for concrete responses and information.

At the public policy level, there is widespread formulation of vague plans and detailed rollout strategies, but virtually no discussion on the most basic and high-level questions. The economy is changing, but what is the economy becoming? Where will jobs appear, where will jobs disappear, and when? What will be the nature and scope of the changing job landscape, even for relatively affluent educated individuals? With such basic and important questions barely being discussed, much less acknowledged, it is difficult to see how there can be widespread political buy-in and support of policy initiatives.

At the corporate level, companies that a year ago were discussing whether or not to implement a drastic shift in operating strategy are now scrambling to hire AI translators or call-screening bots for their respective businesses. Details of these shifts are largely internally focused and rarely spoken about publicly. Little is known about what companies might be contemplating with respect to employee severance and/or reallocation, whereabouts in the global workforce this is taking place, in what forms, and to what effect. It is difficult to see how positive effects for national economies could be realized and dramatic fallout avoided without action and awareness on the parts of both leaders and employees across the global economy.

Adapting Skills and Reskilling for Future Careers

Employment in the 21st century is undergoing rapid and consequential transformation. Oftentimes, this transformation comes at a cost to individuals for whom existing jobs cease to exist. Such situations may arise due to the advancement of technology, as represented by the rise of artificial intelligence. As such, dealing with and adapting to the loss of future work opportunities is paramount for establishing a dignified and decent life. This entails not only getting familiar with or adapting to upcoming economic conditions but also actively pushing back against the currents of the transforming economic landscape. Economically catering to the needs of humans comes in many forms and may involve advocating for the right to work by implementing policies such as a shorter work week without cuts in salary or the introduction of a basic income for all. However, being prepared is nevertheless highly beneficial for navigating in a world where jobs come and go swiftly.

Several avenues exist for reskilling and adapting to future work opportunities. Free online tools offer a means to get oneself acquainted with potential in-demand skills. Virtual online communities and learning platforms such as Future Learn or Coursera provide insight into necessary skills for different new jobs and courses catered to establishing proficiency with the skills needed. The free and open-source software community embodies a highly collaborative virtual space full of projects to contribute to while using and expanding coding skills in a process of learning by doing. Economically catering to the needs of humans does not always need to take place in the 'normal' economic market with too many suppliers treating every human as an interchangeable value quantity – and only granting access to work to the most effective individuals. Instead, trying to think outside of the capitalistic economic box may present other avenues involving collaboration and mutual aid.

Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment Opportunities

With the prospect of job extinction looming, individuals are challenged to consider alternative paths in the realms of entrepreneurship and self-employment. In essence, this involves either starting a business or generating income through independent means, as opposed to relying on conventional employment. While such alternatives are not universally viable or suitable for everyone, for some, they may represent the only feasible options in the face of job extinction.

Entrepreneurship opportunities abound in a myriad of forms. The imagination is the only limit. Specific examples are likely to be dictated by need, desire, opportunity, and available resources. Let me share a few possible areas of opportunity to assist the imagination:

- Starting a small business to provide services or products to fill a real gap in the market that exists in the local community, such as cleaning services, gardening, handyman services, carpentry, shopping services, and so on. The beauty of this is that it generally requires little capital to set up, which may be overcome through some basic research and networking to locate likely local openings.

- Taking a hobby or passion and either turning it into a means of self-employment or a part-time pursuit on the side of that main employment. There are many avenues here: photography, writing (think self-publishing, writing for submissions for magazines), arts and crafts, running small public events (fetes, music evenings), and so on.

- Becoming a consultant in an area of expertise. Many knowledge workers may develop the skills to do teleworking employment for companies or groups that require knowledge the worker has experience in, which may also be undertaken on a part-time basis.

- Online businesses, either as part of a traditional or self-employed enterprise, such as online shopping, auctions, e-business brokering, etc.

- Getting involved in a not-for-profit organization, such as running a charity that does not have similar constraints in terms of required formal education to run, as well as opening opportunities to gain employment experience that may lead to some more regular paid employment.

Self-employment, usually in the form of business entrepreneurship, frequently also has disadvantages. A few of these include the following:

- Uncertainty, especially in the beginning. Businesses are a terrible mix of the beholders of fortunes. Many entrepreneurs who initially bumbled with their fledgling business through some early ill-advised decisions anecdotally turned it into success stories by identifying future potential, refining focus, and/or taking heady risks to dig themselves out.

- Acceptance of full tax liabilities, and accounting/filing responsibilities.

- Inadvertent total loss of all past skills and experiences in moving into self-employment.

- No guaranteed wage or income.

- A regular working week can easily extend up to forty or sixty hours per week and/or involve working weekends and public holidays.

Embracing Remote Work and the Gig Economy

It is hard to imagine a workplace now that does not have a computer or an internet connection - workplaces without remote, online employees who either only do simple tasks or manage entire teams. The pandemic lockdowns have transformed what were office jobs into work from home. In fact, it seems it transformed everything into something from home, be it food delivery, grocery delivery, remote therapy, doughnut delivery, something educational, something corrective, or any of a million other things. Yet the world of work-from-home jobs is something that many had to get used to in a short time. If focused on correctly, figuring out how to excel and fit into this new reality, it could turn out to be one of the best choices a person ever makes.

The advent of mass computing and networking led to the gradual disappearance of many repetitive jobs and low-level decision-making ones. No more secretaries typing notes verbatim with a typewriter, no more paper flyers printed and hand-distributed, and now much less telephone call management. Those are all jobs that have become redundant, to various degrees, thanks to evolving technologies. And the same has applied over the years to countless jobs everywhere. The remaining ones are almost always jobs that require the functionality of a person and the unique ability to carry it out. But that is not good either. Robots, AI, and other technologies now do this as well, and about everything else. Almost everything is now done better, faster, and cheaper by things that are not people. The percentage of people who have a job and a reasonable/comfortable income is thus really dwindling.

Especially now when a world full of fully distributed computing infrastructure, machines, networking, sensors, and real-time consciousness is filling the air. Smart devices all over are controlled and control everything - the infrastructure, the industries, the economy, the finance, the investments. There should be immediate, actionable resource allocation decisions hundreds of times a second, data-processing in real-time using complex data-driven functionality encompassing things the human mind cannot perceive, impossible to explain or predict with the concept of "reasoning" one is gifted with. Any job that is in any way about working with something of the above aspects, i.e., technical, computational, analytical, or anything remotely close to this is bound to be completely transformed by the new reality.

On the one hand, anyone engaged in an occupation like that should now be really worried as the industrious and smart alternatives should be better and provide an improved outcome than people’s engagement. On the other hand, the ones who do not do anything close to this should just disregard it at all, as it should change nothing. There will be lots more, smarter, and less expensive machines everywhere doing all kinds of machine-like work. There should be tons of minimal basic income everywhere - money to satisfy the basic needs of life without working.

Building Resilience and Coping Strategies

Job extinction due to technological advancements, mechanization, and artificial intelligence presents a significant challenge for the workforce. Individuals must shift their mindsets and actions in response to this change in reality. Accepting that the nature of work has forever changed is a vital first step. Next comes the question of what to do under the new circumstances and how to proceed forward. Building resilience and coping strategies, adapting to shifting circumstances, and developing security and sustainability are fundamental skills in this regard.

Resilience is the ability to quickly recover from hardship and to become strong or successful again. Thus, a resilient individual may bounce back from catastrophe and continue to thrive. Bouncing back and finding ways to facilitate recovery are only a portion of resilience; this minimally includes finding ways to accept and adapt to loss or necessary change as the first steps in curtailing ongoing damage.

Coping strategies are the behaviour of recognizing the circumstances that deny or violate basic needs and attempting to alter those circumstances to restore balance among those basic needs. Coping strategies can also entail attempting to prevent the recurrence of the events that denied or violated those needs. There are three categories of coping strategies, namely, short-term coping strategies, long-term coping strategies, and other coping strategies. Short-term coping strategies include denial of the event, acceptance of the event, focusing on social life, and focusing on work. Long-term coping strategies include seeking a new job, focusing on further education, and seeking help. Other coping strategies include looking for a government plan, moving to another region or country, relying on a spouse/partner, and continuing spiritual and religious practices. In the context of job extinction, coping strategies include acceptance of the situation instead of denial, seeking a new job, further education and training, and relocation to a new region or country.