#opentowork

Published in Berlin’s Stadtsprachen Magazine November 2025

(Extract)

Berlin’s current unemployment rate is 10.2%, the highest it’s been for years, and you feel it all around you; the stress, the identity crisis. Some people must be sinking into depressions, forgetting to eat, brush their teeth. Others are putting on a great front. Bragging about all the Netflix series they produced, wearing designer clothes from Vinted and buying bouquets of followers to look like a born winner, a success inside LinkedIn and out. But at some point, maybe after months of knowing this person, the confession comes over a glass of Lidl wine. They are not just “in between contracts right now,” or “focusing on learning German”, they are as desperate as you are.

Unlike other economic downturns, where there is a sense that things are really shit now, but the economy will recover and I’ll get a job again, in this current moment, the sense of hopelessness feels more epic, because the jobs we have been trained to do will probably never materialise again. So are we, the skilled workers in the funemployment club, going to put our heads together and launch a 21st-century out-of-workers revolt? An edgy-designed website and accompanying newsletter to distribute our manifesto and Musk-hating memes? But really, what the hell are we going to do about this situation? Germany won’t let us rot on its unemployment forever. Re-train, as what? What jobs are safe? “Think laterally, think about asking your cousin for a job in her marketing team at Spotify.” When has asking a cousin for a job in a corporate marketing team ever been thinking laterally, Dad? “Only a small percentage of people actually do a job to do with something they care about.” Fine, Mum. I can do a job about something I don’t care about, because the things I used to care about, I lost the energy to believe in anymore. Then, when I told her I didn’t get the hotel construction work job, she hit me with the most annoying question, “Well, how do you explain the gap in your CV in those interviews you’ve had?” I was writing a book, paid to do it. Why is doing something I love a big chunk of nothing to you?

The original AI boffins, the background Gods, apparently envisioned that AI would release us from boring tasks, giving us time for higher-order thinking and pursuing our noncomputational dreams. But when you are in a capitalist system, the big dream is not some floaty notion of creating something brilliant with your own fine mind, that you can grab onto to carry you out of LinkedIn’s blue and white lined cage. In a capitalist system, you are not promised a release from the cage if you dream hard enough, but if you work hard enough. The dreamers are those who can afford to dream because they exploit people, or they inherited money from great Aunt Mildred, who exploited people.

Eventually, they’ll replace most of the workers with machines to reduce their labour costs. So where are all of the out-of-worker bees going to go? Sting some prick on a summer’s day in a panicked frenzy and die? Store that frustration in a cool dark place, so over time it will ferment into fascism? Go back to unskilled work? Get on your back? Rather than progress, will we find ourselves going back to the good old days, forcing us into traditional roles, traditional dreams? Marry a rich guy, pop a couple of kids, find value in the small things, like growing tomatoes that taste of something, picking up warm dogshit in a special plastic bag for dogshits, and spotting squirrels in your immaculate garden that’s been groomed by someone else with a dusty degree. Stop entertaining fantasies of being something brilliant, something beyond what the bots can do, doing something you enjoy that other people will both enjoy and want to pay you for.

Read the full essay here.