Forget Glam - Circling Back to Get a Job, Any Job

Those who had they had a job wake up today to feel yet another arctic blast sweeping through media. Axios documents more rounds of layoffs in that sector. They extend from Adweek to NBC News to Vox. The latter is the parent of New York Magazine. Remember when that publication was hot and proclaimed the Me Generation.

These reductions-in-force are even before AI chatbots start impacting how work is done and how little of it will be by humans. Maybe you can land something in programming. Forget content-creation per se. Public relations as an industry could go poof too. 

So much for glam. With the economy uncertain and advertisers continuing to hold off, layoffs could continue throughout 2023 and beyond. Many of those jobs might not be coming back.

Meanwhile there are fewer refuges for those forced out. Ever since journalism shifted from print to digital communications workers have had to reskill for other lines of work. Many related niches such as ghostwriting and copywriting already had become glutted. Of course, as AI ChatGPT keeps putting out there smarter versions, big chunks of the communications continuum could be wiped out in terms of the demand for human labor. Chatbots could provide the lion’s share of the supply.

You don’t have to be an expert in human resources to get it: Career changes might be necessary. But, as I hammer in this article published in O’Dwyer’s Public Relations, that kind of a whopper of a transition is 1) not easy, and 2) not always successful.

At this time in the history of labor in the US, glam might not be on the table. We could be returning to the mid-20^th century when making a living was all about getting a job, any job, holding onto that job, and hoping to be blessed in moving on up in that bit of financial security. In urban areas the ethos for most was economic survival.

Sure, there was the dream of the next generation having it better. That’s part of why college enrollment took off. Pore over professional anonymous networks such as Blind, Reddit, and Fishbowl and now what’s obvious is that degrees, even advanced ones, don’t necessarily open doors in the labor market or keep anyone navigating through them smoothly to have access to a steady paycheck.

Often what I introduce as an option to those I coach who are jobless is old-line street talk: Grab a job and go on from there. Nothing gets you a job like a job. And if the job ends, you probably will receive unemployment. Yes, it could be coming down to this: simply making it.

UPDATE:

The New York Post reports that the layoff of journalists are supposed to start at The Washington Post.

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