This is sort of what I'm afraid of. I reflect on a lot of people I worked with in the past that are a little older than I am now and things were rough. They'd basically try and find side work and make a living off of it but nearly all of them returned to the workforce. Now, jobs are scarce so I'm really thinking that a career change might be in order. With self driving cars posed to take out a chunk of low skilled jobs and with the self imposed AI that will likely cost 25% of IT job shrinkage, the future looks really grim.

Crass's song from the 1981 Systematic Death last verse seems prophetic, "They'd almost paid the mortgage when the system dropped its bomb".