What will the UK look like with the new change in economics?

growstuff Quote [Not only that, but robots now do much of the work in Amazon distribution centres.The only job humans do is the packaging.
] End Quote.

Actually growstuff, it is the humans that do the assembling of the orders (known as pickers) with an increasing amount of the packaging for delivery being carried out by mechanical handling.

Many thousands are now employed as pickers in distribution centres in Britain making up the estimated over half a million directly employed in the road transport and distribution industry in the UK today, and that number is still increasing.

Many of those jobs cannot be robotised in the foreseeable future because of the variation in movement, racking access and variation in size, weight and fragility of product.

Online warehouses aren't providing work for all the people (mainly women) whose retail jobs are being lost.

140,000 retail jobs were lost in 2019 alone (slightly less than had been estimated at the beginning of the year). Amazon, which is by far the biggest online retailer, employs 29,500 people in total in the UK.

According to submissions by nearly 60,000 warehouse workers, the average pay is £8.82 per hour.

www.indeed.co.uk/salaries/warehouse-worker-Salaries

growstuff in regard to your post @19:51 today, if Lisa the Nandy becomes leader of the Labour Party and the Labour Party then gain government those large distribution centres will relocate to the towns from the cities, that being her policy.

Seriously though, there is no reason why persons employed at present in small town centre retail establishments cannot commute to the large online shopping distribution centres normally located on the outer edge of many cities.

Far higher salaries and wages would, and does, make that commute very beneficial to many even with the transport costs involved.

Not environmentally friendly, but that's the way things are at present.

Children used to be sent down mines and up chimneys, jobs and workforce constantly evolve.

Not only that, but robots now do much of the work in Amazon distribution centres. The only job humans do is the packaging.

The really well paid people are those who design the software and systems for the robotised warehouses.

But Grandad having well-paid jobs in warehouses many miles away from the small towns where retail jobs are being lost doesn't help. People working in retail need local jobs to replace those which are being lost.

So even less reason to do a strenuous 12 hour shift in care then

Good post Grandad1943
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Thank you MaizieD for your post. It has given me food for thought.

However, your comment I realise that the latter point doesn't particularly bother Leavers who are perfectly content that people's lives and livelihoods could be adversely affected by the Leave vote was a little harsh if you don’t mind me saying. My original post called for governmental assistance for our farmers who will be affected by us leaving the EU.

Nezumi65 Quote[ People won’t leave retail for care. Retail jobs are often around £10 an hour - care is still minimum wage. ]End Quote.

Many jobs that were carried out by persons working in retail stores have now transferred to large distribution centres that operate in support the enormous online shopping market that has sprung up over the last decade.

A substantial percentage of the work our company now engages in is also based on those distribution centres. Wages and salaries in such centres are much higher than those of persons working in high street retail stores. However, the work of the "pickers" is physically hard and strenuous, with evening and full shift working often being a paramount requirement of that employment role.

That Stated, hourly rates of above £16-£20 per hour are available to those who are prepared to work those unsocial hours and weekends. It cannot also be easily visualized how those jobs could be robotised in the foreseeable future.

Nezumi It depends how many retail jobs are lost. People might not have any choice.

I've seen that lawyers are on the "at risk" list. In fact, many jobs in law are already done by "paralegals" and there online companies who will do straightforward stuff like drawing up simple wills and doing uncomplicated conveyancing. Nevertheless, there will always be jobs for top end lawyers, who interpret the law rather than just acting within it.

I think we're going to see a much more distinct line between "knowledge" jobs and people whose role is to follow procedures. Many "caring" jobs can't be done by robots (yet), but I wonder how much they will be valued in the brave new world.

I think we're all going to have to take on more responsibility for our own lives, which will mean that we're all going to have to be "experts" on the law and medicine. It's incumbent on us all to know what politicians are doing in our name.

Lawyers are on the risk list apparently for being taken over by AI (presumably the sort of processing type law) - they’re mentioned a lot in that most likely to succeed film

People won’t leave retail for care. Retail jobs are often around £10 an hour - care is still minimum wage. The support workers I know joke about moving to Lidl all the time (the ones that don’t stay because they love the job - you have to for the hours you have to do).

Nezumi I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect many of the vacancies will be filled from two main sources:
a) immigration from non-EU countries, in which case the potential for exploitation of workers vie gang-masters is huge;
b) employment of people from other fields such as high street retail, most of whom will be female.
I fear we're regressing to a situation where females do the drudge, whether in care work or in warehouses.
I don't have a crystal ball, but I really do think that the future of work for the majority will be in jobs in call centres, warehouses, hospitality, overseeing robots, etc. with a minority requiring actual humans, such as doctors, lawyers, researchers, etc.
While the UK remains a relatively high wage economy from a global perspective, industry will have a tough time competing with other countries, especially if tariffs are raised to our main export markets.

The issues with social care are profound - profiteering is now rife in certain sections which has led to large corporates moving in. There is something wrong with the system when hedge funds backed corporates can make large profits for their owners but small social enterprise type providers can barely break even.

It would help if the green paper on social care was published but that has been repeatedly delayed (so presumably contains something this government doesn’t want us to see). It would also help if the government realised that social care is about more than elderly people.

Support workers need to be paid more. Most of that money needs to come from commissioners- but they need to ring fence that money so the corporates don’t just add it to their profits.

Brexit is going to be a problem for social care, with borders closing to the low paid I’m not quite sure how vacancies will be filled.

There’s an interesting documentary of the future of education currently available on amazon prime (for free apparently). Trailer here: youtu.be/JE5XRrfetu4

It also looks at how many middle income/professional jobs are at risk from IT.

Unfortunately the UK education system with its Govian philosophy of what constitutes a ‘good’ education has ensured that the few State schools who have tried to take a more progressive approach (via the Free School programme) have generally been shut down or forced to convert to an academy (kerching) So we have some way to go.

Well they will be no British car industry or any industry really that’s a given. London will remain a multi national European city which props up the rest of the country, British agriculture and fishing will have been long sold off. Productivity will remain the lowest in Europe. Hedge funds, money laundering operations, and food banks will all be thriving.

Right, Ug. This was the statement you made that I was responding to in my post about the farm payments.

farmers need financial support while they grow stuff instead of receiving EU funds to let fields lie fallow.

You said absolutely nothing else about EU farm subsidies. I told you, absolutely correctly, that this policy had been discontinued in 2007. It is a myth that refuses to die.

To which you responded:

Oh come on MaizieD it is still happening! This from the GUARDIAN in January 2019:

I repeat, it is not happening.

On the other hand, you have changed the subject completely to the familiar Leaver's moan about the amount of subsidy big landowners receive.

^‘Dozens of MPs and peers, including some with vast inherited wealth, own or manage farms that collectively have received millions of pounds in European Union subsidies.

Subsidy is received for land in cultivation only. It is set at x euros per hectare. It stands to reason that the owner of a large amount of land receives a large sum^.

What you don't know, and I don't know, is how much of that sum the landowner uses in their agricultural operations, either directly or by passing it to their tenant farmers. Complaining about it from a position of ignorance looks a lot like a meaningless dog whistle response.

What I do know, and you can confirm that with a bit of research, is that most of the farmers who are in receipt of the subsidy utterly depend on it to keep their businesses running. They were actually promised at some point or other since 2016 that the government would have a mind to continuing the subsidy in some form. Otherwise we lose most of our agricultural industry and farmers lose their livelihoods. Of course, I realise that the latter point doesn't particularly bother Leavers who are perfectly content that people's lives and livelihoods could be adversely affected by the Leave vote.

This thread is about how the economy is going to work in the future. Destroying the amount of food security that we do have and messing up people's lives in the process doesn't look like a responsible or positive way forward to me.

No one can in anyway confidently predict in what state the British economy will be in two or three years "down the line" from Brexit. I feel that large manufacturing along with its supply chains will relocate from the UK into the European Union.

The above may be offset to an unknown degree if service industry employment can be expanded and that may come by way of the environment industry and in that the continued growth of recycling etc.

Recycling has produced many thousands of jobs in the last decade and as the emphasis shifts evermore to bringing about a sustainable world, employment in recycling and other endurable industries will, without doubt, further increase.

Of course, much of the employment in recycling and other environmental sector industries are low skilled and therfore low paid. The Johnson government will not at this point in time guarantee existing workers rights beyond Brexit, and therefore wages and conditions in the above sector may well further decline.

That stated I feel, that there are so many " imponderables" in regard to Brexit and beyond that, I do not believe that anyone can with any degree of confidence predict in what shape the British economy will be found to be in two to three years "down the line.

GGMK3 After my previous post I gave some thought to meeting the costs of life time education. Some would be re-training for a different type of job - maybe those people should get tax relief for the costs. There is a big difference between the ongoing training that is offered in large organisations compared with that in small businesses where there may not be any.

My grandmother lived to be 92 and was cared for at home by the youngest of her 10 children because that was what she was for. The other 9 had jobs and families but her job was looking after Mum. Nowadays we don't have spare children around to do these things. My mother in law had to go into a home because we had nowhere for her in our house. It was physically impossible to get her wheelchair in through our front door and it took two people and a hoist to get her in and out of bed and in and out of her wheelchair. Not being bothered didn't come into it.

'can't be bothered' was deliberately provocative.

Of course older people can't be expected to look after ancient ones - it wouldn't be fair to either generation. Also, when a woman's place was in the home, there was an unpaid army of people to do the caring.

Now there is not, but the flip side of that is that there must be considerably more money paid in National Insurance, as the majority of women now contribute to the economy financially, if not by carrying out the role of carer. They can't do both, so it is reasonable to expect the state to help to care for those who need it.

quizqueen says:

' The social care system is in trouble because many families can't be bothered to help their own relatives as previous generations did so leave it to the state.'

I disagree with the 'can't be bothered'. People are living much longer now - and more years in poor health. Previous generations were that much younger when their parents needed care. Is it fair or practical to expect 70 yr olds to look after 90 yr olds?

The social care system is underfunded, that's all!

Heaven forbid MS, you're not suggesting that post-Brexit is going to be positive for the UK are you? Wash your mouth out

The IMFs assessment of the uk prospects over the next 2 years is relatively upbeat It predicts that growth will stabalise at 1.4% in 2020 and 1% in 2021, weak by uk historical standards but growth none-the- less
And stronger growth than the IMF is predicting for Germany, France and Japan
how can that be ( sarcastic emoji)