Between AI and an over-educated employment base, there is a significant shift in the future of careers that is definitely in favor of mobile home park owners. What are those trends and how will it impact our customers’ ability to pay ever-higher lot rents? That’s the focus of this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast.
Episode 298: The Changing State of Employment Transcript
The US labor market is changing daily in massive ways, seismic shifts that most people are not paying attention to. This is Frank Rolfe, the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. We're gonna talk about the changing face of employment in the US and what the impact will be on many different stratas of society. But most importantly for me, mobile home park owners. Let's first talk about the rise of Artificial Intelligence, also known as AI. Now, if you haven't read, you need to just experience it. Go to ChatGPT, post your question in there, and look what AI can do. It can write you a three page synopsis on anything you like. It can do such amazing things. And the advent of AI, even though you're just starting to see articles, is going to come about very, very rapidly. If you look up the jobs that are most in danger from artificial intelligence, they include, customer service agents, accountants, graphic designers, stock traders, financial advisors, teachers, market research analysts, paralegals, journalists, technical writers, computer coders, computer programmers, and software engineers.
And what do all of those jobs have in common? That's right, none of those jobs are typically lines of employment for people who live in Mobile Home Park. So what you've got is, you've got a whole host of careers just not too long ago were considered hot and desirable and many people went to college to get degrees to do them, and now suddenly overnight they're starting at fall out of favor because computers can do a better job. AI can do a better job than most of those, and at an incredibly low price. In fact, for right now, free, and certainly in the future, far less than it costs to pay someone and deal with all the issues of HR, vacations, sick days, and all of that stuff.
So, people who've catered to people who earn money and those careers are gonna be in trouble, because those people are going to soon experience layoffs in those industries in giant ways. But then you have another list, and that's the people who live in mobile home parks and the kind of careers they hold. Let's start off with the fact that probably the number one career in all mobile home parks nationwide is simply being retired. We have a very large percentage of residents in mobile home parks who are retired. They live on social security or maybe they live on disability, but they have absolutely no risk from the employment sector. And there's known changes going into society right now regarding employment that will in any way impact their ability to pay rent. And then what about those who do work in mobile home parks? 'Cause a good percentage of people do hold jobs.
They're not just retired. What kind of jobs do they hold? Well, they hold jobs like fast food, automotive repair, assembly line work, grocery store stocking, grocery store cashiers, truck drivers, delivery people, waiters and waitresses. What do these all have in common? Well, one thing they all have in common is they are well beyond the ability for AI to hurt them, 'cause these are all jobs you have to do physically. You can't just replace them with a computer brain. But also, these jobs have other components that make them very favorable now. First item is that fast food for one, is the fastest growing industry in the US. So these are all boom industries for the most part, which is great.
Also, people who are in the AI in endangered sectors, journalists, paralegals, these people are not going to drop back to those industries. They're not going to have gone to college, gotten their advanced degree and then be willing to drop down to working at Taco Bell. It's not going to happen. So as a result, you're always gonna have a very favorable supply and demand relationship on the type of jobs that mobile home park residents work in. And because of that, you're gonna have ever higher wages. Even though we may be stacking up journalists 25 deep soon, you're not gonna be able to find nearly enough workers right now to handle all of the new restaurant openings in the fast food sector. That's why you see it almost everywhere you go. The kinds of employment that mobile home park residents have. There's always signs looking for work. "Help wanted," signs everywhere you go. My small town, McDonald's has a, "Help wanted," sign up in the window, as does almost every other basic staple industry. And because of this, because they can't get enough workers, you're gonna see ever higher wages. You already see that. Just starting at a McDonald's today typically is a $30,000 a year job. Not that long ago, it was half that. So we're definitely seeing higher wages. And also, don't forget, that those kinds of jobs, mobile home park residents hold, those are back stopped by minimum wage.
So you can't really, in many states now make less than 10 or $15 an hour. Not allowed to happen. But if you take a paralegal who is making 30 bucks an hour, they're not back stopped at all. There's nothing holding any employer from offering them less, or for them accepting less. Also, there's not a lot of training required in most of those mobile home park resident type of careers, and that means they can freely shift between industries because they're willing to tolerate conditions in which they have to put out hard physical effort. Often in environments which are not very well heated or air conditioned, but they can freely transfer if they don't like working in the fast food business. It's not that big a jump from that, perhaps going over and stocking shelves at the grocery store or delivering packages. The bottom line to it is mobile home park owners are right now in a very favorable position if you look forward to where America is heading.
We've got an abundance, an oversupply of highly educated people. All those college experiences, which are now trying to figure out what to do with in the form of all this educational debt that we try and keep trying to pander to people, trying to pretend to erase. It all originated in people who basically got too much education, and there really weren't enough jobs for them then, but now with the advent of AI, it will be far fewer. It's gonna resolve in a real mess, I can tell you that. Who will be injured in all of this? Well, in the housing sector, I would have to imagine it's going to be high-end apartments. Those classy apartments in America that now run an average of $2,000 a month, they'll be hard pressed to find customers when a lot of their base is losing jobs and losing the total amount that they earn.
But on the mobile home park side, I see nothing but a rosy future. I don't see any risk right now in any of the job segments the mobile home park residents typically work in. And that'll mean not only do we have a strong collections in mobile home parks, but you'll be able to continually raise rents to market levels and people will still be able to pay because they're going to see ever increasing wages. If you look at the typical household in a mobile home park where they are right now from where they were at the avenue of COVID, they're miles and miles ahead. We saw such a boom in those industries, which were classified as essential, we saw such a rise in wages in those essential industries. These people are now sometimes making 50% more only a few years after 2020 than they ever made before.
That leads to mobile home park residents being literally one of the best position of all groups when it comes to employment at a time when American employment has never been more uncertain. The bottom line to it is, it's better to be lucky than smart. I know that most mobile home park owners never dreamed of the advent of AI. We never dreamed that one day the careers that our residents cater to would become, once again, hot and desirable. But that's exactly what has happened. This is Frank Rolfe, the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.