April 5, 2025

Examining my fears as our child enters this unique job market

You never stop being a parent. My dad still worries about me, tells me to be careful on long trips, and generally tells me to do my best not to be an idiot. I’ve made it 63 years in spite of, or perhaps because of, his worrying.

I still worry about my sons. Ryan is 34, highly successful, and happy. He is a hard-working attorney and enjoys his job. Dawson is 22, and next month, he graduates with high honors from Colorado School of Mines with a major in computer science. Dawson has thrived in the major – it’s everything he hoped it would be. He’s taken daunting high level math and physics classes, received a certificate from the US Department of Defense in Cyber Security, and has earned high grades at a school that is known for not giving high grades. He will be in school for one more year to earn his master’s degree, and then he’s off.

But off to what?

When Dawson entered college way back in 2021, companies were throwing money at computer science majors. Colleges saw students flocking to computer science as a result. ChatGPT tells me that 5.9% of the class of 2025 are majoring in computer science, so there are a lot of people coming out of school ready to program, network, prompt, protect, or whatever else it is that computer science majors will be asked to do.

But a funny thing happened on the way to graduation – AI was thrown into warp speed with the advent of Chat GPT, DeepSeek, HAL, and all of the other extremely powerful AI engines. These engines can do so much, including creating images for super cool blog sites, and can even assist in writing complex computer programs. On top of that, there has been a significant reduction in employment in the tech sector. In 2024, technology companies eliminated nearly 300,000 positions, the majority of which were in the United States. Why? Economic uncertainty, AI, inflation, overhiring during the pandemic, and a lot of right-sizing after a period of massive expansion.

There’s no such thing as a sure thing – what seemed like a can’t-miss major in 2021 is no longer a certainty for gainful employment.

And it doesn’t help that Dawson is graduating at a time when the nation’s largest employer, the US federal government, is randomly throwing tens of thousands of highly skilled employees out into the job market.

Dawson believes strongly that his computer science skills will serve him well in the job market. And I have learned over time that this kid is not to be underestimated, and that he is almost always right. And he understands his skill set far better than I ever will. And yet, I worry.

And beyond my family, I worry for this entire generation of youth entering the workforce over the next few decades. The very idea of work is being thrown into question by artificial intelligence. While there are many who believe AI will bring incredible benefits to all of human society, I believe the transition will be difficult. A conservative estimate is that AI will replace almost 300,000,000 jobs by 2050. That’s a big number. This is the next big shift – Hunter/Gatherer Age – Agricultural Age  – Industrial Age  – Information Age – AI Age. I don’t think the AI age will affect my semi-retired life, though I do plan to do my best to keep my head out of the sand, keep learning, and keep up. But it will impact my sons.

In 1800, 95% of Americans lived on farms, and only 5% lived in urban areas. Today – about 2% of Americans live on farms. We have made big transitions before. Parents have worried about their children and all of these changes for a long time, so I should just relax and kick back, believing that it will all just work out. Right? Except that I can’t. You never stop being a parent, and we all want our kids to get the chances they need to find their way.

The purpose of a high quality education is to prepare students for  . . . whatever the future brings. I had no idea that my future would take me from teaching in the Bay Area, to principaling in Lodi, California, to principaling, earning a doctorate, and superintendenting in Southern California. (Sorry for the made up verbs.) I think that Ryan’s career will have twists and turns, and that’s certainly true for Dawson. And though I worry, I believe that their upbringing and their education, and their commitment to hard work, will help them manage all of that, hopefully with a minimum of hardship. 

I totally believe that. 

Absolutely. 

But what if that doesn’t happen? 

Will they be OK?

I was talking about this fear with my friend Dawnalyn. Always one with wise words, she said that this is one more example of parenting being a lesson in humility for all educators. We spend our careers telling parents that it will work out, that kids are resilient, that a change of teacher will be fine, that a B grade is not the end of the world, that they will get into a quality college and/or career, that everything will work out. We firmly believe it, and we’ve seen countless examples of just that. Then . . . we have our own kids, and we ask ourselves those same questions about our children’s future  . . . and we do our best to remember what we told the parents of the students we taught.

Parenting is hard.

We have to maintain the belief that humans matter, and even with all of the changes caused by AI over the next few decades, we will be OK, and all of our sons and daughters will be OK.

Maybe I need to rely on the words of Ted Lasso, and his firm belief in Rom-Com-Unism. “… It will all work out. It may not work out how you think it will or how you hope it does. But believe me, it will all work out . . .”

Sure, Ted. That’s what I want for my kids. Nothing more. Nothing less.

If you see me muttering around the neighborhood, here’s what I’m saying: Believe what you have been telling parents for decades, and stop worrying, Mike. Society and the economy will successfully adapt. Believe in your children. Believe in the future. It will all work out. Repeat.

Post #130 on www.drmdmatthews.com

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NOTES

I add these notes sections for a number of reasons:

• First and foremost, many of you are crazy enough to read them.
• My posts are long enough, so believe it or not, I do try to limit them. Ideas that don’t make the cut can end up in the notes section.
• I include additional resources, links, stories, for those of you who want to go a little deeper.
• I may include something from the comments made in my last post, or something I learned in the process of writing this one.
• And remember, the posts are long enough – no one is making you read the notes. (Dad – If you are going to critique me for how long my posts are, please stop reading now. This is the optional part!)

My son Ryan is one of my regular reviewers before I put out a piece. He liked it, and he thought it was quite optimistic. I told him I was going for a blend of worry with a belief that like it has for generations in the past, this will somehow work out for our children. I asked him if he was optimistic about our social and economic future, and he replied, “If I had to place a bet, I’d place it on a massive economic collapse leading into an era of autocratic techno-oligarchy and effective serfdom for the 99 percent. But hey! You never know!” That’s not very optimistic at all.

All of this worry about my kids entering their working lives during this AI revolution reminds me of how I felt when I went through difficult times at work. In most cases, my head knew things would work out. But my body, especially in my stomach, where I feel nervousness most acutely, would never listen to my head. So I had to overcome physical feelings of worry, none of which helped me to manage those difficult times. My head was usually right.

You don’t have to be a parent to be a great teacher, but it sure makes you more understanding. Watching my oldest (I won’t mention Ryan’s name) head off for each high school day late for school and with no homework in hand, armed only with a single sheet of paper and a pencil, gave me all I needed to better understand when parents were unable to coax their children into doing what was best for themselves in school. As Ryan often tells me, “Dad – It all worked out.” Yep.

Speaking of optimism, this is a thoughtful article about how AI could make the world into an amazingly better place for everyone. It’s too optimistic for me, but it’s certainly thought provoking. Thanks to my friend Karen for sharing it with me. A better world with AI article

Image created by ChatGPT. They have a new imaging program that takes longer, but so far seems better. The previous iteration could be incredibly frustrating. In case you’re wondering, the silver hard hat is indeed symbolic. At Colorado School of Mines, they still have their mining roots. When students enter as freshmen, they are given their class’s color of a hard hat, which they don several times during the course of their four years. Dawson’s class is the silver hat, and they will remember that forever. More on other Mines traditions in my post after his graduation.

Finally, yes, it does seem like yesterday when we dropped Dawson off to college. Here is that 2021 post.