The Future of Jobs in Europe Might Look a Lot Like the Past

I’ve been wondering a lot about the future of jobs in Europe and what is going to happen as AI takes over and entire professions quietly vanish one by one. And on that mental walk I ended up slipping through a side door straight into history. If we want to understand what is coming, it helps to understand what came before the industrial revolution, which is the moment when our entire modern job market was basically invented.

Back then people weren’t “employed” in the way we understand it today. They were butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, knife sharpeners, shepherds, cobblers, weavers, herbalists and everything in between. People created their own micro-businesses because that was the normal way to survive. And yes, women too. Women did a lot, actually. They mended clothes, washed laundry from home, cooked pies, sold pastries on the streets, mixed herbal remedies, crafted goods and kept entire local economies alive.

It was an easier time in one sense. You didn’t need to navigate a wall of regulations just to bake a cookie or pour a candle. There were no bureaucratic labyrinths. You simply had to not poison your neighbours. If you did something dodgy, everyone knew, and your reputation was your business license.

And this is exactly the freedom that modern European laws have quietly stripped away. I cannot bake cookies at home and sell them. I cannot be a one-woman gluten-free cookie empire in my own kitchen. Meanwhile, in the United States, people are running entire cottage bakeries from their farm stands and front porches. Do I feel jealous? Absolutely. I would have a cookie factory running already.

Something will have to change. Either governments finally introduce universal income to cushion the job losses that AI will bring, or they will need to loosen these old industrial-era laws that were originally pushed by big companies wanting to eliminate small-scale competition. That is the part people forget. The job market we know today was heavily shaped by corporate lobbying. Companies argued that people should not bake at home, should not sell candles and should not sell anything from their gardens because it was too dangerous. Policymakers listened. Many of these rules were created during the industrial era to protect large producers, and later the European Union expanded them under the logic of safety and standardization. The motives changed over time, but the effect stayed exactly the same. Small-scale producers were pushed out of the market and citizens became dependent on the formal job system.

All of this brings me memories of how, about ten years ago, it was nearly impossible for normal people to install their own solar panels in Spain. It wasn’t that solar panels were technically illegal, but the government introduced what everyone called the sun tax. It was a set of fees and penalties created after heavy lobbying from the electric companies. The message was simple. If you generate your own electricity, you still have to pay the big utilities. People installed panels anyway, but it was a financial punishment for trying to be independent. The situation finally changed in 2019 when the sun tax was removed through Royal Decree 244 2019 and self-consumption became legal, simple and accessible for everyone.

And the same energy lives inside the food laws. You cannot sell your eggs, honey or cookies without an industrial-scale certified kitchen, which is ridiculous. It is not fair to ordinary people. In many cases it feels like these laws exist mainly to protect large companies so they can defend their monopoly on food. Most people do not have the tens of thousands of euros required to build an industrial kitchen. That is completely unattainable. But a small-scale home bakery pumping out cookies is attainable and it should be allowed.

What fascinates me the most about the United States is the rise of the farm stand culture. Women especially have built entire small-scale businesses from their kitchens, porches and front yards. They are selling sourdough bread, jams, pickles, cookies, soaps, candles, herbal products, eggs and honey. Many states have cottage food laws that allow people to make a full income from their homes with minimal paperwork. It is so normal in America that people stop their cars at a wooden stand by the road and buy fresh cookies in a paper bag. They buy eggs from a neighbour. They buy handmade soap from a mom who has three kids running around in the background. This culture gives people real independence. It gives women financial freedom in a way that Europe still does not. American women can stay home with their children and still build a profitable business with their own hands. They can test product ideas without spending thousands on certifications. They can start tiny and grow naturally. The freedom the system gives them is incredible and it shows what people can create when the law is not standing in their way.

One of the biggest cultural differences between Europe and the United States is trust. Americans are trusted to try. They are trusted to experiment. They are trusted to fail and try again. The system assumes that people are capable of learning on their own. That is why small-scale home production is allowed. The government trusts you to bake a cookie without poisoning your neighbourhood. They trust you to collect eggs without creating a disaster. They trust you to run a small food stand from your property without being a national threat.

Europe, on the other hand, has a culture of heavy paternalism. The system assumes that citizens cannot handle anything without strict supervision. Every egg must be certified. Every cookie must come from a stainless-steel approved kitchen. Every candle must pass safety standards designed for factories, not individuals. It is not a question of safety. It is a question of control. Europe tries to protect people from every tiny risk and in the process blocks all opportunities for small-scale independence.

In the United States freedom creates innovation. In Europe regulation creates dependency. One system encourages people to build. The other encourages people to go for a 9 to 5 job because you cannot build yourself in most cases. The legal structure shuts down almost every independent avenue, so people take employment not because they want stability, but because every entrepreneurial door has been sealed shut.

Meanwhile, the United States stayed far more liberal on this front. You can earn a pretty decent income with your own hands over there. You can test an idea without thousands of euros in permits and stainless-steel surfaces.

I hope Europe will be forced to adapt because people need that hope. They need to know that if their job disappears, they still have options beyond sitting at home stressing about the next stable job that may never come.

Not everyone is an entrepreneur. But even that is partly because of what schools teach. Schools still groom children to be good workers. They do not teach innovation, creativity or self-employment. That will also have to change because a world run by AI will need people who can create, adapt, experiment and build from scratch.

Maybe the future of jobs in Europe will not be a shiny sci-fi landscape after all. Maybe it will look surprisingly familiar, more like a return to community skills, micro-businesses, personal reputation and small entrepreneurship.

A return to human-scale work.