In October, Mr Musk appeared in a headline story titled: "Elon Musk Issues Birth Rate Warning: ‘Mass Extinction’". Mr Orban, back in February of last year, offered giant tax breaks to increase birth rates, and Hungary is above average in statistics. In September of 2024, Greece started to offer something similar. It is clear that many countries are trying to increase birth rates; however, I see a flaw in this cause: skilled jobs in the next 5, 10, 15 years.
High birth rates are generally caused by two things: poverty and/or religious populations. Take the Philippines, for instance, with a birth rate of 1.92 and a high percentage of young/unmarried births. Poverty, education and the power of the Catholic church could be partly to blame for this. Divorce and abortion are not permitted in 2026.
Low birth rates could be related to better education around female empowerment, contraceptives, permitted abortions, and physical infertility. Or is it down to the items listed below?
Childcare
From nine months old, you get up to 30 hours of coverage if both parents are working and earning over £195.36 per week. This is likely not enough, with an additional 10 hours often needed for £15/hr at a decent Montessori, not even in a fancy part of town.
House prices
Affordable house prices are rare, especially in and around London. For a longer explanation, read a past article of mine titled: Buying a property in 2025 is setting yourself up for failure and seems like a suicide mission to me!
Food prices
Pre-2020, I remember spending about £50 a week on shopping as a single man, while it is now closer to £75—a 50% increase. From what I have read, baby items like wet wipes, nappies & baby milk have increased by 30-60% as well.
Utility bills
Before 2020, I remember paying £35-40 for gas/electricity per month, with little to no fluxuation. Now it is 3.5x the original amount and goes up depending on usage. Water bills have gone up by about 50% in five years, and I am sure phone bills, internet bills and insurance have increased as well without a real wage increase.
Taxes
Central government taxes are up on everything, along with council tax increases. Then there is commercial/council/government greed, i.e:
- Airport drop-off charges
- High airport parking - £15.5 for 59m I paid lately at LHR
- General parking charges and at times post 5.30 pm even
- Fines for one-way streets
- Fines for speeding & crossing a red light
- Fines for using bus lanes
- Fines for sitting in a yellow box for a few seconds only
- Congestion/ULEZ charges
Above are just some of the items discouraging people from having more children. I have a daughter under 2 years old, and I often worry about what life will be like for her in the future and how difficult it will be for her to find a job. Even I worry about my own employment from time to time in 2026 after being made redundant last year and then being re-hired at the end of 2025.
Here are some of the reasons I worry for the kids of now and the future:
Outsourcing
If you look at cybersecurity roles at vendors, you will notice most are from the US and Israel, which hire in their respective countries. For the vendors that are hiring, many have openings in Bulgaria and Romania and then further afield, like in the Philippines. The rest is the cost, of course, but cost reductions do not always equal amazing service. It is likely easier now to find a job in the three countries listed than in the UK in 2026!
Layoffs
Last year, there were an estimated 250,000 layoffs, leaving the question, does this cover all Western countries? What about less-known firms? The trend has not stopped in 2026, with Amazon, Ericsson, Meta, Pinterest, T-Mobile, TCS, and Expedia being named in the news in Feb this year. With the obsession of outsourcing, AI and cost saving, this will not stop until we enter a boom time, and even then, I am sceptical.
The AI “fashion craze”
Cloud (still used for corporates), blockchain (used in crypto but not much else) and AI from 2022 are past and present buzzwords. Cloud is real, and people thought blockchain could solve the world's issues, but it died out apart from cryptocurrencies. ChatGPT came out in late 2022, along with Copilot and others. Everyone thinks it can replace all of our jobs, but it is still in its infancy. Of course, in the next few years, it will become more advanced, but if it does, where will everyone work?
Violence
The events in Gaza, Yemen, Ukraine, Iran and more do not directly spill over to us, but they generate worry, which somewhat stifles growth. After the “Special Military Operation” kicked off in Feb 2022, many Western states, including the UK, stopped buying Russian resources and added sanctions. Russia will argue that we, especially Germany, shot ourselves in the foot since the general population and manufacturing rely on cheap gas, which it no longer has.
Pseudo recession
The first half of 2022 seemed like a post-Corona boom to me, and I found two jobs with not too much effort. Shortly after, the job market and economy started their decline to what we have now. Many Western countries seem to be in an unofficial recession, and Q3 2025 showed only 0.1% growth. What will flip the UK and elsewhere out of this feeling? US tariffs do not help with market uncertainty. Many say finding a job in 2025/2026 is like finding a job during the credit crunch of 2007/2008, perhaps even harder.
The arguments above emphasize the difficulty of finding a job in 2025/2026 and raise questions as to what the market will look like in 5-10 years. If it is hard enough for people like me with 5-20 years of experience, spare a thought for graduates who are now coming out of university with a giant debt and struggling to land a first job. Similar arguments can be seen in the article, Computer science graduates struggle to secure their first jobs, and the same sentiments seem to be shared by the parents and grandparents I have spoken to.
Companies, it’s great that you can save money by outsourcing and using AI, but where will everyone work in the future including your offspring?