The newest issue of THE FUTURIST magazine features writing from career and labor experts John Challenger and Edward Gordon. The picture they paint of the future of work may prove surprising for a number of readers. For instance, des
pite the presence of millions of people out of work, a shortage of skilled labor could have a devastating effect on the U.S. economy in the decade ahead, according to Gordon.
pite the presence of millions of people out of work, a shortage of skilled labor could have a devastating effect on the U.S. economy in the decade ahead, according to Gordon.The American education system isn't preparing enough people for the type of science, technology, engineering, or math related opportunities that are being created in the high-tech economy, he argues. In other words, there are plenty of open jobs out there; what's missing are candidates with sufficient skills. He forecasts that without more skilled workers, the U.S. economy will stagnate under the dual burdens of high unemployment and some 24 million job vacancies by 2020.
"The picture of the U.S. economy that emerges is one of abundance and poverty: abundance of labor, poverty of talent, and economc pain everywhere," he writes.
These skill shortages could be quite painful. They'll mean higher costs for less-reliable service in some crucial areas. Imagine you’ve broken your hip and you need medical attention. You dial 911. The operator asks you about your coverage and you respond that you’re covered by Medicare and have some supplemental insurance (you’re in agony while this is happening). The operator tells you, “We have a long wait at the moment. If you want to get that hip fixed today, the cost is $4,000 cash or debit. Or we can drive out to administer some painkillers.”
This is an alarming example, but not without precedent. Last December (2008), Northwestern Women’s Hospital in Chicago was forced to tell female patients calling to book a mammogram that, because of a shortage of radiologists and technicians, no mammogram appointments were available until September 2009. This is telling of the possible effects of labor shortages in the years ahead, according to Gordon.
Get Training, Get Hired
John Challenger, chief executive officer of the firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, agrees that the market for skilled labor will be robust even as unemployment continues to remain high.
In his article “Finding a Job in the 21st Century,” he offers some advice for people seeking work during the downturn: Be willing to look outside your region and even outside your industry, but look within your job function.
For instance, the growing health-care field needs not only doctors and nurses, but also managers, human resource professionals, and even journalists and communications workers to track and publicize new developments and medical breakthroughs, he says.
"Finding opportunity in the future may mean sacrificing the dream of working for a particular cherished employer or even for a particular type of company. Many industrial titans of the twentieth century won't exist five years from now. That doesn't mean skills won't still be in demand," he writes.
Qualified IT workers will be particularly sought after, but a lot of that new hiring will take place outside of the traditional PC or software industry.
If the global health-care industry is to meet rising demands for service from an aging population--while containing ballooning costs--the industry will need to rely on doctors that who have been trained online in virtual settings. Health-care providers will need to cut down on wait times and in-person consultations; they'll want to detect symptoms and diagnose patients remotely through advanced sensing technologies. All of that will require people with programming and IT skills.
The September-October issue of THE FUTURIST also features info on green jobs (what they are, what skills and education they require, how much they pay), a short guide for baby boomers looking to re-career, and an op-ed from Wall Street Journal columnist Alexandra Levit on the future of work from a Gen Xer's perspective.
Readers can pick up the newest issue of THE FUTURIST for $5.95 at bookstores and newsstands. Or they can go online to http://www.wfs.org/futurist.htm .
THE FUTURIST is a bimonthly magazine focused on innovation, creative thinking, and emerging social, economic, environmental, and technological trends.
THE FUTURIST is a bimonthly magazine focused on innovation, creative thinking, and emerging social, economic, environmental, and technological trends.
Among the thinkers and experts who have contributed to THE FUTURIST are Gene Roddenberry, Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Buckminster Fuller, Isaac Asimov, Vaclav Havel, Margaret Mead, Betty Friedan, Arthur C. Clarke, Joel Garreau, and Ray Kurzweil.
Comments
"Bard-Alan Finlan holds a degree in computer engineering from the University of California at San Diego, as well as degrees in music and theology. 'The industry says it wants the most recent skills, the hot skills, Java, for example.', said Finlan, 43, who works as a temporary senior technician. 'But I could learn Java within a month. I've sent out 200 resumes over the past 15 months, but I can't find a full-time job.'... His annual salary? $36K."
"We do feel that the files contain an indication of the overall health of the technical job market... 16,854 lay-offs... 20,400 salary freezes... 32,179 lay-offs year-to-date... 32,600 salary freezes to date. 15+ articles mentioning salary cuts."
Studies by researchers from
Computing Research Association (CRA),
Duke,
Georgetown University,
Harvard,
RAND Corporation,
Rochester Institute of Technology,
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,
Stanford,
UC Davis,
UPenn Wharton School, and
Urban Institute,
have reported that
The notion that we don't have enough "skilled" labor is the Big Lie of the age. In the last 18 months, over 2.5 million people in the IT and high tech area have been laid off. These people have 4 year degrees, master's in IT. These people all learn new skills quickly. Why is there a shortage?
Well, it's simple: They are too old. Why, many of these people are over 35 YEARS OLD, which is the new "old" in IT. You need to be young and CHEEEEEPPPPPPP to get hired. Most of the "high skill" that is being looked for is "cheap labor willing to work 80 hrs / week for 20K a year." That plus low health care cost is the definition of "high skill" today.
Since qualified IT workers will be sought after, just go to an elected member and pay him/her to raise the foreign worker quota and attack the "comparable" wage criteria.
Plenty of cheap foreign IT workers are available.
What we do not need is foreign scab wetbacks who are incompetent liars here to steal jobs. Many of these foreign IT fakers are here to not only steal jobs, but to steal actual assets. Recently, a foreign IT worker came here from India (home of the biggest liars in the world), and embezzled about 8 million dollars. He was caught by the sharp eyes of American IT workers.
We do not need the shiftless wetbacks from India who cannot get jobs in their own country. The H-1B program needs to end totally, today.
I'm so sick of this propaganda. The "shortage" is a flat out lie being promoted by the fascist global corporations and their puppet politicians. There are no shortages of American tech workers. If you look at tech workers globally, there is a shortage of tech workers to implement the police state systems of the global corporate fascists (DAVOS). They are using the United States as a big training camp. The propaganda campaign of shortages which is obviously absurd is used to justify the importation of foreign workers to train them - and too bad for you American citizen if they take your job. In the NWO, your living standard will decline to the lowest common denominator anyway so get used to abject poverty and work on your slave mentality because that's the future for you and your progeny - and for all the working people in the world as a matter of fact.
There is no shortage of highly trained workers, and there never has been a shortage. If there truly were a shortage, wages would climb until the fields were crowded. However, real wages have been falling for decades. Given this information, it is clear that there is no shortage.
Shortage shouting is a favorite tactic of the placement firms, because it feeds the impression that their services are needed to find highly skilled people. I have yet to find a single HR person that understands the technologies that I work with, never mind knows how to use them. So HR is clueless when it comes to what it means to do these jobs.
We need to end these cheap labor importation schemes and get back to hiring American workers. If the corporations would prove that they are willing to do that, then young people would flood back into these positions.
My relatively smart kid wants to go into sports administration -- why? Because he sees the hours I work, and that my wages have fallen ever
The 'Shortage of US Engineers' line is a lot of hogwash. What there is a shortage of according to the greedy CxOs that spout this dictum is a shortage of cheap, dirt cheap, gimme my bonus cheap foreign workers willing to work for slave wages.
Where is the other side to this story, the side that points out the falacies and faults in the articles published in The FUTURIST? Have the reporters at the Examiner become propagandists for the corporate elite and industrialist? I dare say that you are more worried about keeping your lousy jobs than you are writing balanced pieces.
Hi, Thanks all for these comments. I thought I would take a moment to respond to Doc Savage in particular.
By May 2009, unemployment in the United States jumped to 9.4 percent. However, with more than 14 million unemployed, more than 3 million jobs were still vacant according to Manpower International. A breakdown of unemployment by education levels is revealing. The unemployment rate for high-school dropouts was 15.5%, contrasted to 10.0% for high school graduates, 7.7% for those with some college, and 4.8% for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
The United States Bureau of Labor statistics projects a 53% jump in employment for "network systems and data communications analysts" between 2006 and 2016, making it the fastest growing job in the country (STEM jobs were 3 out of the 4 fastest growing jobs).
H1-b visas and outsourcing are addressed in some depth in the actual articles. I am the senior editor of THE FUTURIST and edited this special report, so there's my bias
...more than 3 million jobs were still vacant according to body shop ManPOWER International.
If you look at mass lay-offs (which still only count lay-offs done in large numbers at a time by big employers) you'll see that it's not uncommon for 2M-3M to be fired and 2M-3M to be hired each month.
BLS monthly employment by industry (production workers in software publishing) and quarterly data by detailed occupation still show IT employment is stagnant, while NCES and NSF data show that the population with expertise in these fields has continued to increase. Still, the BLS quarterly data by occupation drops from that pool of expertise those who are no longer employed in those occupations (i.e. under-employed and unemployed and discouraged).
2009-07-05: MH, a laid-off automotive engineer, took CAD/CAM/CAE training, finishing 2008 May. Got automotive engineering work unrelated to the training. Was laid off, again, 2008 October. "He has since sent out as many as 15 resumes a day but has had no interviews." With help from governor's office, got approval for additional training, an 18 month civil engineering course.
2009-05-27 12:07 FB to Portia wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
"The same thing happened to my mom when she had to look for work this past year after a lay-off. Though she had graduated in the early 80s, she didn’t really understand my frustration until she went through it now. Searching for work in 2008 really changed her opinion of my experiences. (These are her words, not my opinion.)
On that note, Sunday marked my two-year college graduation anniversary, and Tuesday marked my first day as a permanent, benefitted employee! It took 2 years and 2 days, but it finally happened!"
Studies by researchers from... Urban Institute, have reported that we have continually been producing far more US citizen STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) workers than we've been employing in these fields.
In testimony to the House Science and Technology Committee, Harold Salzman reported that we've been producing as many as 3 times the numbers of STEM workers as we've been employing in these fields.
Bruce de la Vega brings up many excellent points, some of which reinforce key arguments the authors make in the articles. Even for the best skilled individuals, the labor situation will be messier than it has ever been before, full of freelance and temporary employment. On the one hand, the U.S. economy will need more STEM skilled workers to maintain technological innovation (this doesn't appear to be up for dispute), yet layoffs, disruptions, and bad management will continue to decimate many industries in the years ahead as many flawed business models become unsustainable. The workers wind up paying the price for bad management. The strange reality is, need for skilled workers in the broader economy AND mass layoffs of skilled workers by shrinking or dying industries won't be mutually exclusive. For anyone actually having to go through the firing, hiring process, it still stinks. But developing STEM skills remains the best strategy for improving attractiveness to potential employers
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