I sometimes sit in meetings where the last thing anyone wants to hear is the truth. It's all about good stuff, good news, positive energy and great team effort. However, the person who brings up facts is shunned and admonished publicly and is suddenly ostracized. Why? A lot of the intentional blindness has to do with a collective, political group-think stupidity. At a certain point, when bad news goes on long enough, people don't want to hear it. They would rather be lied to than still work with real facts. That seems to be the case with the media right now in the first weeks of 2024. Suddenly, we've turned a corner and the economy is booming again, picking up steam and everything is going to be alright again. Uh, why?
Let's Look at the Real Facts (Even if You Don't Want to)
Starting with the basics, food and fuel are still outrageously priced. The inflation that kicked in thanks to the COVID period has not gone away, despite the fact that the supply chains are working fine and there is more than enough resource supply available for much of demand. Yet, the reality is, companies are keeping prices as high as long as they can to, "make up for their COVID losses." Really? Why is that the consumer's burden to bear? Unfortunately, without real alternatives, even voting with our dollars is hard since every gas station you go to is through the roof.
On the job market side, places are not hiring, they are firing. Every major company is downsizing and letting people go, especially right at Christmas and the weeks after (as a sick corporate joke, it seems). Hi, happy holidays, here's your pink slip. Yet, we're expected by the media to believe the economy is returning and prospering again? Maybe for 5 percent who own the companies, but for the average worker, it's getting worse.
Various necessities such as utilities aren't getting cheaper. Water, electricity, power, heating and similar have all gone up double-digits since 2020 and are setting in place additional price hikes. Why? People continue to pay the rates. It's actually worse when people do find alternatives, like solar. Then the affected utilities tells the remaining membership that the cost will go up further because the pool to charge has gotten smaller! What?
2024 Seems to be Continuing the Lie of the Jobless Economic Recovery
I've been telling my kids not to expect anything like the job market they've been told in school or assume will be available for them like their parents. I don't want them to assume the same mistake I did in the early 1990s, coming out of school and expecting a career and instead scrambling to work as a temp worker in 2 or 3 jobs. In fact, I've even told them to think digital and go global, even consider moving out of the country to find opportunity. While they are not hitting the job market just yet this year, 2024 will clearly reinforce what I think is already happening: the age of the employer-employee is coming to an end. Everything now will be mainly per diem, and every worker will be a service. How well we market ourselves will dictate whether we succeed or not against other "vendors" available.
There won't be much longer the typical "job," to show up at in the morning and clock out at 5pm. Instead, your work will be around the clock, whatever you can arrange, pull down, find, out-bid or sell. The Internet makes a lot of that easier with a much larger market, but my kids have to start early and be willing to be flexible across multiple skills.
In the meantime, the rest in 2024 are going to suffer as paradigm changes kick in, especially in reducing redundant human labor functions with automation. Companies aren't very concerned with where obsolete human workers go as long as someone is still buying their product. And that means a very scary future for anyone still depending on a traditional paycheck for regular income.
So, instead of buying into the "let's wish on a star" bullshit coming out of the media right now, folks would be better positioned to be chasing new ways to make a living. It's going to get rougher in 2024.
