The Future of Work

The current employment rate is 5.5% but that doesn’t tell the real story. Over ninety three million Americans are not working. The unemployment rate when factored in is over 10%. Could this become the norm? Can our economy survive when so many people are not producing in our economy? The feds have cut the GDP growth rate to 0% for the rest of the year which is not a comforting forecast for those of us that want to see vibrant growth to support all people that want to work. So why is this happening?

There are many political fights about what the right policies are to improve jobs and growth but what if we are in the middle of an economic transformation that we can’t see clearly just yet? What if this is not about government policies but more about the nature of work and jobs?

If we look at the fast food industry as an example we see an industry in transition. We have pressure to increase the wages of front line employees but at the same time we know people will not pay $10 for a McDonald’s hamburger. The solution business is turning to is automation. Fast food businesses are replacing workers with self-serve kiosks at an aggressive rate. I recently read an article where a company has figured out how to automate the entire cooking process at a fast food restaurant eliminating the need for everyone except a worker to keep the bins full of supplies needed to complete a Happy Meal.

The automobile industry, once the dream job of a lot of young kids, have been replaced with automation. These kids grew up seeing their mom and dad buy a house, go on vacation, have a few nice cars, and maybe even save for college on a factory wage at an auto plant. Some of those wages are still around but the number of people needed to build a car has diminished to the point that it is simply technicians keeping the automation equipment maintained. That is a different skill than the traditional factory worker. What is a kid to do today that held that dream?

The brick and mortar retail industry is being replaced with the Amazon’s of the new world. Radio Shack, K Mart, Sears, Borders, are all a skeleton of the past having been replaced or significantly reduced fron their past glory. And that “history” is not that far in our rearview mirror. This transformation is happening at a break neck speed.

The exponential growth of social media platforms has reduced the need for some businesses and eliminated others. Who needs a food critic, restaurant critic, movie critic anymore to get the reviews needed to make a good decision? Reviews in general have become a social function today and we are not going back. Social media has transformed journalism, book publishing and promotion, marketing in many categories, advertising, and politics to name a few industries. The traditional PR firm may now be competing with a one man shop with extreme talent and knowledge of how to use social media,

We use Linked in now to find careers and this has put a new wrench in the recruiting industry and traditional marketing of finding new talent. Everyone has a personal website, Linked in account, Twitter feed but not many have been able to monetize it to make it a paying career. A huge amount of information, content, and articles are available on these platforms but what is the economic impact?

Much of what we are seeing has not totally played out yet and some of these changes to work have improved our economy. But if we compare that General Motors in its hay day employed 600,000 workers which is 10 times more than Facebook and Google combined, the future of the job creation machine is something we must consider moving forward.

So what are some of the things we need to consider moving forward if the future of work continues to change? How will we address the fact that there will be entry level less jobs for people to get experience in the job market? Will education have to be adjusted and changed from and agregian economy to this new 22^nd century model?

What will we do when the pool of workers can’t support the Social Security promises to the rapidly retiring baby boomers whom make up a huge part of our population? Where will the money come from to support this group?

How will we deal with the people that are not currently college bound since they seem the most vulnerable in the short term?  

I have not even addressed the fact that with a global economy the engineering and IT jobs that have been a replacement for the factory worker are being divvied up around the global market place. It has never been truer or clearer that our kids are competing in a global competition in education and we are currently losing. We need to quickly change the way we teach our kids and who is qualified today to take on that huge responsibility.

Automation is increasing our free time which is a good thing on the surface. But with all of this free time how do we pay for the things we enjoy doing? If we have idle American youth with no prospects for a productive future we have a potential powder keg on our hands.

Our policies and solutions need to be updated just like the latest software release to address all the bugs we will continue to find. This will take business leaders, education leaders, and statesmen to solve. It will not be solved by pitting groups against each other. It will only be fixed by working together on a common goal with less emotion and more analysis.

I would love to hear your thoughts. Do you think about the future of work? Are you seeing trends in your industry that need to be considered? I would love to hear from you…