> - Good employees are hard to find. You don’t let good people go just because you can. Retraining a good employee from a redundant role into a needed role is often cheaper than trying to hire a new person.
Your best employees at a given price though.
Part of firm behavior is to let go of their most expensive workers when they decide to tighten belts.
Unless your employee is unable to negotiate, lacking the information and leverage to be paid the market rate for their ability. Your best employees will be your more expensive, senior employees.
Everything is at a certain price. Firing your best employee when you can get the job done with cheaper, or you can make do with cheaper, is also a common and rational move.
While I agree it’s unlikely that there won’t be a labour doomsday scenario, I think ann under employment scenario is highly likely. Offshoring ended up decimating many cities and local economies, as factory foremen found new roles as burger flipper.
Nor do people retrain into new domains and roles easily. The more senior you are, the harder it is to recover into a commensurately well paying role.
AI promises to reduce the demand for the people in the prime age to earn money, in the few high paying roles that remain.
Not the apocalypse as people fear, but not that great either.