The Week in Jobs: AI Insider Puts 10% Odds on Human Extinction & Women Took 97% of New Jobs

Welcome back to the weekend jobs. Peter, what a week. We have robots protesting robots, women taking all the jobs, apparently. And we also found out there's a really good chance we're all going to die within the next 10 years.

So maybe none of it matters anyway. But this is this has been an interesting news week. Yeah, yeah. We've uh some of some of these stories that that we're we're gonna be going over are uh well some of them are a little bit uh depressing to read, and some of them are just a little bit uh crazy, like you mentioned.

Well, let's let's put off the the robots protesting robots for a minute. And really the biggest news or what jumped out at me the most this week was a story from last Friday that we talked about when 162,000 jobs were added in August. That's what the BLS reported. But when we got into the fine print a little bit, it looks like 158,000 of those jobs went to women.

How big of a surprise is that? It's it was it was very surprising initially until we kind of get into it and we looked at, you know, what did we talk about last week? Where were all of the job gains? And healthcare is a hugely, I mean, that's a women-dominated area.

We talked about you know a couple weeks back about the number one growing job being nursing. Uh, that's it's a dom women-dominated field. So it was surprising, but as we get into this, you know, it it starts to make a little bit more sense. It it definitely does when you when you look at the industry.

So you you mentioned healthcare, education, and and restaurants. That one's a little bit more, like I feel like it could go either way, but uh, I mean, it may that too makes sense, you know. Um, that's hostess and wait, waitress, and and serving and hospitality, that's typically it is dominated by women. So those grew.

Meanwhile, transportation, technology jobs, those those declined, and those are heavily male dominated. So it is no surprise, like you said, when you look into the where the jobs come from, but overall, that number is pretty alarming. I mean, it's it's great, great sign for women. What the heck does that mean for men, though?

Yeah, that um just seeing the the the sheer number, because you know, we you would expect it to be 50-50. Um, but uh it is it is extremely alarming. Um, I believe what what's the total the total number of on the workforce right now is over fifty, I mean over 50% of the workforce is is women. So that's yeah, slightly more than 50% of all jobs are held by women, and which is the third time it's happened.

So that was a surprise to me. We always hear, or at least everyone assumes, that uh males dominate the workforce, that men dominate the workforce, but that has not always been the case historically. It's the third time there are more women uh on payrolls than there are men's. I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that.

But this is sheer numbers, right? This isn't just uh because you know you always hear people talking about the the wage gap, and but is that this is just talking about sheer numbers in the workforce, correct? Yep, on payroll. So it's we're not talking about wages here.

That's a different story um altogether. But yeah, it was an alarming number, right? It wasn't a slight advantage, it was most of the jobs went to women, almost all of them. Yeah, and the men labor force participation dropped um from 69.

or 67.9 to 67.2, which doesn't sound a lot. I mean, that's that's a that is a large number.

The unemployment is higher among men, uh, which kind of goes along with all of this. But all this is to say, like, do you think this has to do with just people aren't finding jobs? Are people like just quitting the workforce? Is this baby boomer men retiring and no longer being part of the workforce?

Is that what we're seeing? Yeah, that's that's definitely because generationally there were a lot more men in the baby boomer generation working than there were women. That number was much more skewed than it is today. So yeah, that that's that's definitely a factor.

Men are leaving the workforce and not coming back too. So um it'll be interesting to see how that trend continues to evolve. Yeah, um, I'm we're we're we're gonna watch it's not it's not anything that's I mean, it's interesting, but it's not hugely you know significant, I guess, in the in the overall job market right now, but it is something we want to we want to watch. Um, particularly, you know, this goes to the next story that we've got here, which is talking about more than more Americans are holding two jobs, they're working multiple jobs, and the year while wages increased a certain amount, um pay inflation went up even more.

So, you know, cost of living is not keeping up with wages, more people are working, and and that almost even might fit into you know women having to find multiple jobs. We're counting um total numbers here, after all. Yeah, they're they're they're from two separate data sources, but they align very closely. And yeah, they you put them together, and it makes a lot of sense why people are having um carrying two jobs more so than they have in the last 26 years, right?

So that that is there's no way to put a positive spin on that one. But the report, so that came out from the Richmond Fed earlier this week that reported on the frequency with which people are holding two jobs, and then just this morning the inflation numbers came out, and we see that inflation was up higher than was expected. Um, it's it's increasing. And so, to your point, it you need to have two jobs, unfortunately.

And it's hitting the middle class the hardest. That is probably what um I think is most concerning is you just can't be a middle class worker right now and get by easily. And that's that's that is no surprise to anyone, of course, who's living in the US right now. We see it, but um, yeah, this is a bad sign for the job market, to say the least.

Yeah, I mean, what was it? Three point one percent was was the average wage increase where prices went up 3.4. That that math doesn't work.

This is definitely gonna be playing heavy in the election cycle. But it's okay because everyone's gonna get 5,000. I'm waiting for my my 5,000. Yeah, we're gonna get 5,000.

Every adult male, you know, so so households will get 10,000 if you're you're married, you get two uh two checks. So what a win. I mean, this is this is not a political show, of course, but it does beg the question how big of an influence is that going to be, especially with what's happening right now, where it's people need the money. I think uh people are still waiting for their doge checks, right?

Aren't they? Uh isn't this like the fifth check that's been promised? I I yeah, I it's hard to keep up with with all of that, but um it's not good right now for the middle class uh in the workplace. Um we need that, we need that to turn around, but I don't know how it will.

That's uh you know when I look forward as to where we are right now, until inflation settles down, companies aren't gonna be able to keep up with this. Um wages aren't going to increase the way they need to. There's there's no path, obvious path for that. So it's a tough time.

Well, you know what's uh uh something that's interesting. I also saw when we were looking at this multiple job story that about half of multiple job holders, they have college degrees. This isn't even like you think, oh, it's a kid working, you know, a job or somebody who can't do anything else. Like, no, this is this is half, you know, roughly half of the people who are holding, having to find extra work, there they went to college.

They did what was, you know, told you growing up, at least for my my generation in the 90s, like you go to college, you get a good job. Like these people did that, and they're having to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. Um, it it is it's uh it's depressing stat, frankly. Yeah, that that was has been the promise of the American dream.

You work hard in school and you go to college, and and good things will follow. And we've seen that collapsing for a while now, where we know that entry-level workers, recent grads, they're having an incredibly difficult time in the job market. The value of those degrees is not what it used to be. All of this very much ties together right now.

The problem is, well, where do we go from here? I mean, we we know that there is there are some bright spots, trade jobs in particular, are we're in desperate need of trades workers. So great opportunities there. That's it definitely shifts the narrative for parents, for educators, who've largely, you know, like you said, encourage their children and their students to not go that route.

That's suddenly becoming a very attractive choice. What do you think? We've talked about, you know, we've uh it's been a little bit, but we've talked about gig work and you know, the gig economy and all that um on previous shows. So, what do you think about the notion that people aren't there aren't gonna get raises in their current jobs?

So the only way for them to do it is to go find a side hustle or a gig on the weekend so that they can make more money. And that's the way that you that we're going to see you know people making money in the future. They're gonna, you know, they're in a stagnant job, they don't want to quit because they have there's the perception that the job market is bad right now, it's hard to, you know, it's stagnant. So, oh, I'll just I'll just pick up some side gig work, and that's that's the way to make extra money.

How do you how do you feel about that? I guess it depends on the gig, right? And and how many hours you want to work, what your skills are. Do you have marketable skills that you can sell?

That's very different than can you go drive Uber? And we should probably talk about that too, because we last week Uber laid off 10% of their workforce. And this week I noticed this weekend, we we live in Orlando, that you can now get a cyber cab here um in Orlando. So what's gonna happen to all those workers?

So I I that that's where the the growth of AI starts to come in. And we really didn't talk about that last week with Uber and their layoffs because they didn't attribute it to AI. But when you look forward for that organization, it doesn't look promising to me. So depending on the gig, and you extrapolate that and think how many things can AI do?

Common you know, side gigs were uh that you see on Upwork, for example, right, which is a one of the big sites where you can find gig work, things like copywriting, marketing, these are all spaces that are really being um taken over by AI in many respects. So I think there's a possibility. We start to see those the options for those gigs going away. So whether someone should do that or can do that, might it it's crazy because yeah, you you you mentioned upwork and it's you know art uh graphic design.

Uh there's a lot of designers who and that's you know being infringed upon, we know obviously by AI, but even things like voiceovers for commercials, um, that's there's obviously there's AI voiceovers. I just saw um an article that there is a news station in San Antonio that is replacing their they're they're planning on replacing all of their anchors with AI news anchors who are gonna read the news. There's gonna be a a program where it's just AI, it's just an AI person, AI voice reading the news.

So they're that's being out. So where yeah, we are we're gonna get to a place where this is gonna, this is it, this can be done by AI. This why would a person or why would a lot of these companies hire a somebody freelance when they could just pay for an AI service to do it? This is this is almost depressing right now because we were on a what would seem to be a positive run for a while.

And and this has just been a week of of bad news, right? And then we had, of course, the the tweet that received a lot of attention from someone who quit anthropic and said that you know he he had to leave because he he just feels like it's dooming our society. And good conscience would be doing it. Yeah, humanity's at risk, and then someone came on top of that.

Another anthrop, I think a current anthropic employee said that you know there's a greater than 10% chance we're all we're all gonna die in the next decade uh as a result of AI. So that has gotten a lot of attention this week. And of course, you have to consider the source. And there's a lot of skepticism over whether all this was set up, whether it was some sort of op.

But this kind of goes back to what we've talked about so much over the past couple of years is who do you believe? Right? This this is kind of stuff I don't want to say it's creating panic, but genuine, significant concern when and people don't know how to separate the marketing from from the truth. Well, that's that's the part what a lot of people say.

They're like, well, these social media, everything is an is an op these days because the point is to keep people scared talking about all these different things so that nobody can actually like get the truth and nobody can actually move forward or you know, figure out what we want to do as a collective group. Um, so it is it is it is frustrating, um, definitely to read the the news stories that we come out. And yeah, like you said, that this this tweet, there's been lots of people on the other side that said, okay, well, why'd you do it?

Well, why you did it for many years, and it's it's one thing to say it after you did this for years and you leave with stock options, and then oh, it was so bad. Look how great all I made the AI work too good. Uh you know, I think I think the guy who sent the original tweet was only there like six weeks. Okay, okay.

Well, at least there's that. The second one is I think I think about the thing. The second one is still there, has been doing it for years. And yeah, there there's I think that skepticism is warranted uh as far as the intentionality of of the message, but it doesn't mean it's not true either, right?

It's still something that people know people seem to know about it, and it's the interesting thing is we get all of these these people talking about this, and it's bad, and you know, it's it's scary and can do all these. None of this is a secret, though. There's been articles about this for a long time, so it's it's funny to see that it's becoming more, I guess it's becoming more mainstream, but it seems like over the last year, you know, two years, there been this this kind of message has been relatively you know out there.

Um maybe it's out there, and there's as we always talk about there's there's opposing sides here. One says much ado about nothing, another says the sky is falling, but we know change is happening. It's just a matter of a matter of whether we can keep up with the change. Like back to Uber for a second.

Would you take an Uber for more money than it would cost to take a cyber cab where you didn't have a driver? I I to me that's a no-brainer. And the and the cost of the case. I guess it depends on how much you trust uh you trust the cyber cab.

Do you trust it to be a good driver? I mean, as a Tesla owner who loves self-driving, absolutely I trust it. I think that is what of gonna going to be one of the best things to happen is when you don't have to drive your own car. Think of the efficiency gains and productive time, lifetime we get back, right?

Where you can work or read a book or watch a movie while you're in your car instead of driving to me, that's a no-brainer. And if I can get in a cab without a human driving it, where I don't have to interact with them, man, sign me up for that all day long. I'm all in on cyber cap. It it doesn't expand to my part of town yet.

Or I was going to uh to try it out last weekend just just to experience it. But it's in the greater central Florida area. They're starting small, expanding. I'm all in on it, man.

I I mean I I probably would be as well because yeah, if I'm taking a cab, I just want to like get from point A to point B. Like, I don't I'm not I'm of the the mindset I don't like having a long conversation in the cab. Like there's been a few times I've met interesting people, you know, I've talked to them, but for the most part, I just want to get in, take me there, like get out. I don't want to have a whole conversation, I don't want to have it be a whole thing.

So uh yeah, I think it's it's probably good. And self-driving cars, you know, but that we're gonna get there eventually. But there's there are these are real people. There's there's yeah, this contributes a supplemental income to some sole source of income for others.

Yeah, so it's not while we're we can laugh about it, there's also real impact happening, and that's just one example. So that that's the difficult part of all this is to foresee what happens on the other side of it. You can't you're I think you'd have to be foolish just to think that AI is not going to take a significant number of jobs. The question is what's it going to create in exchange for that in terms of jobs?

Or as Elon Musk says, well, nobody will need to work. Okay, that's that sounds good. It's great to say, but yeah, the what how what is the actual plan to get to that world where nobody has to work? So it the same story, different day.

Now it is just we're we're gonna we're living this in real time, we're gonna see how it goes. But in Poland earlier this week, the robots themselves apparently came out to protest. So 30 robots were in a protest. They were humanoid robots, they were they were the ones that kind of look like dogs that are out there protesting.

And I what I thought was particularly amusing about it was that the protest was organized by a guy who owns both a robotics company and an employment agency. So a little bit of a contradiction there. But he was listening to the robots interesting juxtaposition. Yeah, I don't know who they were protesting to, but they were saying that hey, we we shouldn't the the robots weren't saying anything.

I guess holding signs, whatever, marching around. But that's crazy. I mean, that they're the the it this is real, this is happening. I mean, I saw the video, it was a bunch of robots walking around, you know, warning of the threat of them taking over.

Yeah, they're they're saying defend workplace, time for rules, don't don't wait, regulate. It's it's funny to seeing the yeah, the protest of the robots, them chanting on their loudspeakers. And that didn't really get much press over here. Uh, but I think in the not too distant future we'll see similar pro similar protests here.

Um I don't know. I mean, it does beg the question. Then Bernie Sanders has been very aggressive on an increasing basis, uh, coming out to not not specifically about jobs, so this is a little outside of our lane, but just about the AI threat as a whole. But I don't know that you can separate one from from the other.

AI development, while yes, it may do damage um to us as a society, but it's gonna we're gonna first gonna feel it with jobs, right? Whether it all it tries to kill us, that's that's different. That's beyond our scope. But yeah, his call for for the AI sovereignty fund, or um, and I'm not exactly sure of all the details on it, but it basically is on the basis that all these AI were trained on us, the public's labor.

And so while a company may have made it and they can maintain you know some control of it, there should be some fee paid out to the people that it was trained on. It was trained on the public data, it was trained on Reddit comments, and so all these people effectively worked for free to make this AI that is now going to be able to replicate their actions and take over for them. So it's an interesting uh concept to look at. Yeah, we will continue to talk about it um probably every week going forward and and track it as it as it as it evolves.

Now, there is one bright spot this week, I think that it we talk about this almost every month, too, when the report comes out. It's small businesses continue to struggle to hire. Um, so if you are on the job market or know someone who is that you care about, don't just go for these the biggest companies, the biggest employers out there. It's the number one complaint of small businesses that they can't find employees.

And they're saying that it's not just because of compensation. It's it's not that they aren't paying enough, they can't find the talent. So it is just it is as I describe it often as a tale of two job markets right now, where you have a large group of employers saying they can't hire the talent they need, but most individuals in the job market would say it's a it's tough for them out there. So we got to figure out how to how to match the need um with those those who are looking.

I think that's yeah, that's one of the areas that you know we're we obviously talk about it. We can try and help those like bridge that gap. Like there is a lot, there are lots of companies, and frankly, a lot of these smaller companies, they don't have maybe have the resources to wholesale outsource entire departments and stuff to to AI. So this is an area where they're gonna be looking, they're you know, looking for people.

These companies, small businesses that are not well-known, you know, brand names, these are the ones that have these open jobs. These are companies that people they're they're harder to find, and they because maybe they don't know how to advertise or market themselves as well. But yeah, it that's an area that people can find work. Yeah, they they the smaller the business, the less likely it is that they have the resources and expertise to recruit effectively.

We know recruiting is is hard. It takes a lot of time to uh and effort to do it right. Um, but yeah, it's if if I'm giving advice to someone on the job market right now, it's definitely uh if they're having a tough time, look, look for smaller businesses because. the the need is significant right now.

Absolutely. And you could talk directly to hiring managers or even owners up upper level in the company so you don't have to you know worry about as much uh red tape. Yeah they so kind of a weird week because one other thing we've seen a lot of news on on H1 visas right that where the Trump administration has put higher requirements in place so they've made them more expensive the sponsorship of H1 work visas uh to be more expensive but now the the news that came out this week they're also trying to limit the time that an H1 worker can stay in the US without a job so that's been 60 days they're they're trying to get rid of that so basically if you're an H1 B Vice holder if this goes through you're at risk of being deported you you would be at risk of being deported immediately the what do you what's your thought on that i i mean it's it's not just the worker it's the families there are a lot of people who are say absolutely let's let's let's get rid of as many immigrants as we can but this is a huge change I think there needs to be huge overhauls to the way the H1B program is done.

I think it's obviously abused by companies um and that's been an issue uh six it is ineffectively right now I mean people are stuck in jobs and it's I mean I'm not like throwing this around but it's it's for lack it's almost an indentured servitude for these companies these people who are stuck at these companies if you don't like it it's like you can go back to your country or if you were you don't have any other choice and I think that we should you know it starts with how we bring you know bringing less people over in the first place for it but the once the people are in these H1 Vs like in these H1 visas they're really kind of stuck.

They can't they don't have many options if the company is sponsoring them like you can't quit your job because they are the ones sponsoring you. So it's um removing that that um that grace period I think is not really the way to to go about it. I think we just need to have there needs to be regulations on getting them in the first place and who you know how long these H1B visas can go for. But just kind of pulling the rug out immediately from people and saying all right well you got no no time get out that's I don't think that's the right way to do it.

If well look I I haven't thought much about this yet. I'm doing that as as we speak but if you were brought over the the the reason why a workers should come over on an H1 visa is because that particular job can't be filled by an American worker. We know being in staffing we how many emails a day do we get from sponsors of H1 visas? I probably get and this is going to sound exaggerated but it's not over a hundred emails a day of people trying to push their H1 workers to us uh because they know they're on the clock with that 60 days I don't I I I think that process goes against the intention of what it what it should be.

You're brought over or you have your visa because there's a specific need that you're filling when that need goes away too I mean it that's the other side of that coin. Again I haven't thought through it in great depth yet but um it I the system is a mess right now to your to your point and so they're making a big effort to clean it up not to hurt those individuals although it will uh you know disrupt their lives to say the least but to help and protect American workers and I'm always going to be um a fan of that because there's so much fraud there's so much abuse in that program right now it needs a complete overhaul I I agree with that and I don't like the the chaining of H1 you know if you if you are here for an H1 it's this it you know you are filling this role so the chaining of them together for different companies and staying you know you know indefinitely because you're you're going around shopping for for different jobs that's it's it's messy it's it's rife with abuse you know of all these other companies so I think that the whole process needs to be overhauled.

Well I I think you look no further than that there are companies that exist that their whole business is built around H1 sponsorship. So the the the abuse has been going on for a long time now. Kudos to the Trump administration for taking more action than talk.