Thursday, October 01, 2015

On the future of work, and life

The current employment market in the US is not the best it's ever been. That would be stating the situation mildly. Although, thankfully, unemployment rates have come down from the over 10% rates just after the 2007 great recession, there is still a lot of underemployment (14.5% currently), and young people are still finding it hard to land a job. The worrying news is that things are likely to get worse. There are increasing reports that the economic situation is about to take a turn for the worse - mainly as a result of the fiscal floods of Quantitative Easings. Also, a lot more of current work is about to get automated by increasingly useful AI (Artificial Intelligence) computer systems. This raises the prospect of increasingly large percentages of the working age population finding it harder to find work in the near future. Are there new ways of life these days that does not require a 'steady job' ?