Job Cuts- Are Enough New jobs created in world? The solution to job cuts! Part-I

#economics #world #jobs #employment #newjobs #retraining #training

Job loss is heard quite frequently these days. Yesterday, 3000 employees were fired in London from a steel firm (owned by Tata Steel, India) citing they want to discontinue their plants in London. Today, Sundar Pichai, Google, said more job cuts are expected. This is following job cuts in recent weeks by Sundar Pichai.

Let’s look at the latest two job cuts, Tata in London and Google by Sundar. Tata closed its steel furnace yesterday. The action was Tata Steel’s decision to make recycled steel now. Probably based on climate change issues and emissions produced, and maybe some other hidden issues. The other one is job cuts by Pichai in Google, citing AI to be the reason behind this.

Yes, AI is automating things. But still, AI has not reached general human like intelligence as of now, and it is far away. The problems are many, some of them are listed here:

The question arises, “whether to retrain employed employees or to cut jobs and then hire those with online certifications in the latest tech at lesser salaries”. Tech/AI is moving fast, and so are changes in coding languages, supporting frameworks, and even ways to implement things. So why not retrain the staff you think have gone obsolete?
Individuals with lesser salaries are hired in place of high-salaried employees in the name of cost-cutting but do big firms with enough money need to do this?
Yes, the newer generation with fresh degrees are well equipped with the latest state of art, but those you hired ten years back too had good skills of that era!
Retraining can be looked at as an investment too.
Retraining would give you the trust of employees.
Everyone likes peace of mind when it comes to job cuts.
Many jobs are made obsolete, such as code to write some earlier neural networks.
Are enough jobs created in the market?

Yes, AI is making automation and new ways to implement old things, as now not much coding is needed to run models, once long codes were written to make models, now the codes are 2-line codes, and hence the companies are thinking of hiring new graduates, rather than experienced high-level coders.

Earlier intensive education and coding experience were required even in AI jobs, now models are made, code is written by eminent engineers, and now not many write so much of lines in a programming language, except for a small segment. Hence, there is no need, it’s not just that AI has automated things, it’s that the lines of code have been reduced, and many programming languages used have been changed. Otherwise, AI is far from general human-like intelligence.

There are some areas where AI has automated things for example digital marketing, extensive editing teams, and generating advertising artwork, to mention a few. These job losses need replacements, so are we creating more jobs than the ones lost?

But you need people to code even one-liners, and two-liners, to understand the details, as was done by those who coded the tools to make it all two-liner code. Now you are removing them from the list of employees? Why not retrain them? Why not send them to different departments where jobs are available or as per the will of employed employee who is about to lose job? Or are you closed for hiring in all departments?

— For big Tech/AI companies — Are you close to hiring in all departments? Is the cost of retraining more?

— For non-tech/AI companies where jobs are lost? Are new jobs available in the market with or without retraining? Another point is there may be chances that people are not ready for retraining. Then were they compensated well?

— For smaller companies —Salaries may not be as high, and profits are not as high as well too as in big companies. On job cuts, people have to relocate to new jobs! So, are new jobs created that is what it boils down to!