Qawwama and the Coming Job Crisis

There's an issue which is maybe seems off topic for this channel, but is nonetheless critical to discuss for any man who is Qawam or who may be Qawam in the near future, and that is the cataclysmic restructuring of the global economy that has been rapidly accelerating over the past few years. Automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence are about to cause the most massive joblessness crisis the world has ever seen. Over the next decade or so, somewhere between 800,000,000 to 2,000,000,000 jobs are going to be lost as entire industries and sectors are wiped out by advanced technology. Obviously, low level manual labor type jobs will disappear from truckers to drivers to cashiers, delivery people, customer service, telemarketers, and so on, and of course, categories of manufacturing. But it's not only gonna be blue collar jobs.

We're talking about bankers, accountants, financial advisers, all sorts of administrative staff, city planners, journalists, paralegals, radiologists, and even surgeons. People with degrees in the STEM fields aren't even going to be insulated from the carnage of mass redundancies. If you thought you could learn coding and be guaranteed a good job, guess again. Artificial intelligence can write flawless code. In the early two thousands, we used to think that jobs in the creative fields would be safe, But that was before smartphones came and single handedly wiped out countless media production companies.

It's estimated that 50% of all current jobs will be automated within the next fifteen years. So how are you preparing for that? How are you preparing your sons and daughters? Because I see brothers online telling young women not to pursue higher education. How is that a responsible plan?

What? Because she's supposed to just focus on getting married to a man who can provide for her? Well, who told you that men like that are gonna be available? One of the main reasons women even started entering the workforce in the first place was due to financial necessity because in the West, most households can't survive on a single income. So what about when 40 to 50% of current jobs vanish?

I know brothers like to blame feminism for why women joined the workforce, but the truth is the cost of living drove more women out of the home than any desire for so called female empowerment. By 2030, a huge portion of the population is going to subsist on some form of universal basic income, I. E. Welfare, or doing gig work, or doing online affiliate marketing for massive multinational behemoths with no fixed salary, no insurance, no benefits, and the competition for what stable jobs still do exist will be savage. Fathers should be advising their daughters and brothers, their sisters, as well as their sons and their brothers.

Not to not pursue a degree, but to pursue a degree in a field where the jobs are less likely to disappear. For instance, the two most popular degrees pursued by women today are nursing and business administration. Okay. That doesn't make any sense. Business admin is also the most popular degree for men, but those jobs are going to disappear.

One of the least popular degrees for women is political science and government. But women who have a degree in political science and government make more money than women with degrees in nursing. And jobs that you could get with a political science and government degree are less likely to be automatable. So advise your daughters and sons to attain qualifications in fields that will likely continue to rely upon human intelligence and creativity. Because if they want financial stability in the future, they're going to be in a job market that is more cutthroat and more competitive than it has ever been.

Degrees in fields that used to seem commercially useless may end up being the best chance for job security. For example, Islamic studies, sharia. We're never gonna have robot imams or counselors or teachers or degrees in the soft sciences like sociology or ethnic studies. Things that no one ever thought were practical in any way, might actually secure jobs as trainers, faculty members, or advisers in the private or the public sector. These are not jobs that AI can do.

As a Qawam, you have to anticipate what the world is gonna look like in the future for yourself and for those under your responsibility and care, and you have to prepare for it and prepare them for it. Of course, any father hopes that his daughter will be able to stay home after marriage and raise her family, but it would be negligent to plan for the future based on this hope alone, particularly when the trajectory of the economy makes that type of scenario look highly unlikely.