Searches for “nothing to do at work” skyrocketing

Citizen Watch Report ^

[HartleyMBaldwin]

“If you got time to lean, you got time to clean.”

Every restaurant worker has heard that one.

[Mogger]

— a lot of jobs out there are BS jobs.

About 30 years ago upper management at the Fortune 500 company I worked for figured this out.

An entire floor, over 100 middle managers were laid off.

We became more efficient and productive.

[9YearLurker]

I’m sure it’s long gone, and it was pretty hard core at the time.

But there used to be an ethos whereby manual workers who didn’t have something to do were told to dig a hole, just to show that they weren’t shirking (and needed something to do).

[Lazamataz]

I see 50% unemployment as being a likely outcome.

I see 100% unemployment, then 0% unemployment.

An extinct race (humans) does not need jobs.

[ClearCase_guy]

That’s another interesting aspect of where I think we are right now.

Once upon a time, someone could start at the bottom. Entry-level stuff. Work hard, show dedication and loyalty and you move up. Soon you can be a low-level middle manager and maybe lead a team of 5. If you have what it takes, you move up again and mange a team of 25 — then 100. Over a period of years, with a lot of hardwork, you might make District Manager or VP or something sweet. That corner office is waiting for you if you have the right stuff.

But that’s largely gone.

They got rid of middle management. They became a lot more efficient and productive.

Now, you start at the bottom and you stay at the bottom. There is no where to move up to. Middle Management is gone. So, you don’t have a “career” — you have a “job”. And your pay sucks and you have no future.

Some folks start at the top, with a fancy Ivy League degree and some connections. They come in with a salary of $150,000 and they move up from there. They switch from running a Beer company, to an Airline, to an Insurance firm. They don’t understand any of these industries, but they all rotate from top job to top job. But the people at the bottom stay at the bottom.

I don’t think many older workers understand how fundamentally the workplace has been transformed for a lot of people. Many jobs are BS jobs and even the “real” jobs have no future. No where to move up to.

There are exceptions, of course. But at a deep level we now have an economy of hopelessness.

[Starboard]

“I wonder if these were.gov. IP addresses”

*************

Prolly so since an army of contractors does a lot of their work for them. Take away the contractors and the government would come to a standstill.

[riri]

Most jobs are related to 2 things on some level.

1. Ensuring company or entity is staying in compliance with government regulations and dictates.

2. Ensuring company or entity is staying in compliance with self imposed policies and dictates.

[Starboard]

“If you have what it takes, you move up again and mange a team of 25”

*************

If you have the right political views and can claim membership in the right grievance group.

[Starboard]

In other words mostly compliance “work”, basically there just to carry out government’s never ending avalanche of mandates.

[No Party Affiliation]

Most likely. Whatever happened to the notions of self-starting, taking the initiative or breaking new ground at work?

[Drew68]

Over the past few decades entire swaths of "ghost jobs" have been created, primarily to place more women into the work force. These jobs are mostly HR, DEI, or redundant administrative jobs. They don't produce anything and often squelch productivity.

Think of those many "A day in the life of a tech worker" TikTok videos that young women love posting showing a work day of little more than answering a couple of emails and loafing in the corporate yoga room or cafeteria. Work from home has made it even worse. These young women are literally posting themselves answering a couple of emails while poolside in their bikinis at a Mexican resort.

This is Universal Basic Income (UBI) in practice except instead of receiving free money for not having a job, they're receiving free money for only pretending to have a job.

We could easily cleave about 40% of these jobs and lose nothing in productivity. In some industries (government, tech, and academia) we could probably cut about 75% of them.

Elon Musk showed us how this is done when he fired 70% of Twitter and the site still functions the same.

[Vaduz]

Now that the data has been released now they have something to look for a new job.

Pink slips on Friday

[cgbg]

Good point—it will take millions of people to make sure that AI obeys political dictats—and to quickly censor it if it disobeys.

AI: “Young black men commit twenty times as much crime as young white men.”

AI human manager: “Assemble the team. We need to reprogram this racist AI. Meanwhile shut it down immediately.”