Last weekend, I was having dinner with a group of friends when the conversation turned to jobs. All of us, bar one lawyer, worked in creative fields. There was a time when such a scene would be defined by an enviable prestige and abundance – a literary salon of great minds, trading tales from the frontlines of artistry over wine and marcona almonds! – but our evening was characterised by a very different feeling.
“I’m thinking about selling photos of my feet,” one recently published author confessed, taking a long swig from her wine glass. Another writer explained even this was “actually super competitive now” – she had already looked into it.
“I know a writer who has become a secret sugar baby,” one influencer friend posited shortly before confessing to having considered looking for an older “sugar daddy” to fund her lifestyle in exchange for an ambiguous set of demands.
In some cases there’s a sexual relationship, though most of the time there isn’t – “he literally just wires her money whenever they chat on the phone,” the influencer added. Another friend started making jokes about launching a Ponzi scheme to survive. And the artist in the group admitted the only reason she wasn’t too worried was that she was engaged to someone who was independently wealthy.
The lawyer stayed silent. But if you’ve read the headlines, even she has cause to worry as tasks traditionally carried out by junior lawyers and paralegals can often be completed much faster with AI. Meanwhile, some workaday clients aren’t even paying to use lawyers at all, preferring to consult with ChatGPT for petty claim issues and even work and divorce disputes.
In case you hadn’t heard: AI is here and will, at best, claim millions of jobs and at worst, render them obsolete. It’s grim, made more so by the dwindling job market – according to the latest official figures, the UK lost 4,000 jobs last month as private sector pay growth is at its lowest since 2020. On top of this, there are fewer job vacancies across the board as more small companies adopt hire freeze periods to manage costs, with the number of available roles dropping by another 7,000 to 712,000 in the last three months.
Stuck in the middle: without the safety net of home ownership and not AI-savvy enough to pivot in a struggling job market, millennials are struggling (Getty/iStockphoto)
I can see the results of this all around me: freelance friends who would’ve previously been paid thousands to work with brands are now struggling to get replies to their emails, and are subsequently considering retraining in other, sturdier fields.
Commercial conglomerates that would’ve previously offered lifelines to people in creative sectors – through branded partnerships, copywriting or special commissioned projects – are cutting budgets across the board. Elsewhere, redundancies are rife, meaning there are now more freelancers competing for the same work, and the digital economy seems to be dwindling by the second for anyone who doesn’t work for the tech companies that are holding the puppet (and purse) strings.
The generation above me, fiftysomething Gen-Xers, have been loudly complaining about this for a while, saying the recruiting algorithm is both ageist and sexist. Stacey Duguid, author, columnist and fashion writer, went viral on Instagram after sharing her financial struggles as a result.
Without wanting to be all ‘woe is me’ a part of me can’t help but think it might be even worse for us. Millennials were promised the world, and many of us are still waiting for it to appear
To my thirtysomething eyes, an accomplished 52-year-old is the last person I’d expect to see struggling. But, as Duguid explained in her post, a divorce and nervous breakdown meant she left her last job, and unable to find a new one, she has spent the last 16 months living on universal credit. Since sharing her post, Duguid has gained 30,000 followers, many of whom are women in similar positions.
Duguid’s experiences are different to those my friends and I are experiencing – none of us is a single parent, nor do we own homes that we’ve had to remortgage or sell. But without wanting to be all “woe is me”, a part of me can’t help but think it might be even worse for us. Millennials were promised the world, and many of us are still waiting for it to appear. Some of us are at the precipice of starting families, or at a level of professional seniority and personal jeopardy (needing a steady job to get a mortgage, or pay nursery fees, or both) where it feels too risky to change tack and retrain in something else.
Many of us are still renting, so we don’t have anything to sell. And those of us who are homeowners will most likely be very fresh to the gate and living in a flat that no one wants to buy. There’s no chance for the couple who wants to upgrade for a place big enough for a family. Those one-bedroom flats millennials are most likely to own are notoriously difficult to sell; according to property portal Zoopla, 72 per cent of one-bedroom flats for sale this year remain unsold nationally.
This is where our fortunes depart from our older Gen X counterparts, who are more likely to have benefited from property inflation after getting on the ladder at our age. Duguid, for example, had a “stunning Georgian property in Margate” that she was able to sell, which meant she was still able to live in London.
As for tech, well, millennials are worse off than our younger friends, given that Gen Z are digital natives much better equipped for the AI revolution that is just beginning. When AI comes for their jobs, they might actually know what to do, and if they don’t at a tech level they’ll be nimble and young enough to work out what jobs AI can’t do and focus their energies there.
Gen X is also more likely to possess the people skills that will undoubtedly be useful in a world of AI and have achieved managerial status because of that. In contrast, millennials might still sit somewhere in the middle between an executive and a senior something. All this is why I’ve started getting regular texts from friends stating, “I need to get a real job”, on an almost weekly basis. Perhaps it’s why, as one creative wrote in WIRED, Hollywood screenwriters have started training AI chatbots to make ends meet.
But perhaps we shouldn’t give up. Jo Irving, an entrepreneur and career coach who works with creatives, has noticed that for many people, the current climate has been galvanising.
“What I am seeing is people completely rethinking how they run their businesses,” she says. “AI is changing the landscape, and in some areas it makes sense that technology can do things faster or cheaper.
I’m seeing businesses collaborate in ways they never would have a few years ago … Creative businesses are combining audiences, introducing each other to new customers
Jo Irving, entrepreneur and career coach
“But creativity has something AI can’t replace: human connection. The businesses that are thriving aren’t just selling a product or service anymore. They’re creating experiences and building communities around what they do.”
Irving is seeing more group in-person creative experiences than ever before, like painting workshops, jewellery-making classes and pottery evenings – all things which millennials love. “I’m seeing businesses collaborate in ways they never would have a few years ago. Pilates studios partnering with cafés. Hair salons hosting events with local florists or fashion boutiques. Creative businesses are combining audiences, introducing each other to new customers and creating experiences that people genuinely want to be part of. That’s where I think the opportunity is. “
Still, this might all be easier than it sounds. Reframing one’s entire career trajectory takes time and money that some people simply might not have, especially not as a squeezed millennial in the middle. We are also known as a particularly anxious generation; prone to panic, I’m not sure my mindset is as resilient as the generations above and below me.
But perhaps we have no choice but to lean into optimism, however delulu we might consider that to be. The alternative is simply too depressing to bear. We also need to understand there are opportunities; they might just not be the ones we were expecting.
Siobhan Dowd, 46, is a voiceover artist whose clients are using more and more AI voices. “But I think that’s OK… because there are plenty of areas where real human voice is invaluable”, she explains. “Over the past year I have increased the amount of audiobooks I audition for. As far as I’m concerned, an author will always want a human voice who can feel the emotions of their book to narrate it.”
Despite the fact that some of my single millennial girlfriends in creative jobs are telling me they plan to snare a rich man to fund their work lives, I’m determined to remain hopeful that as we face a cultural reckoning, the world will adapt and adjust in the way it always has.
And if it doesn’t, well, I’ll just have to wait and see if a market for photos of very wide flat feet emerges.
