I first developed this presentation in 2008 after losing my job as a Dell Messaging Manager for consumer desktop PCs and exploring new career options. Kathy Lansford remembered it and asked if I would do it again on 11/19/10 for her LaunchPad Job Club. What follows is an enhanced version of that original talk.
These slides include my rough speaker notes. Afterwards is a list of key points from my closing 4-min video and links to other videos I used. Here’s my 1-page Handout and a SlideShare version that can be viewed full screen.
America 2021: Jobs & the Economy – I recently added this edited transcript of a “Jobs & Recovery Roundtable” with six experts who I respect, including ITIF President Robert Atkinson. The panel explored ways to get America making things and prospering again, including the need to both create jobs and strengthen infrastructure – not just physical infrastructure but also “New Economy infrastructure” such as intelligent transportation systems, smart grid, electric battery charging systems, broadband, health IT, and skills & education. Although most panelists were pessimistic of our chances, they had good ideas and made many good proposals. I found the entire conversation stimulating and added some of my own thoughts throughout.
By Wayne Caswell, Technical Marketing Strategist, Consumer Advocate & Futurist
| The FUTURE: it ain’t what it used to be.
Technology is evolving so fast, and at an increasing pace, that Past Skills may not be enough for your Next Job, or the job you Want. |
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| I’ll be addressing step 3
Step 3 of the logical Job Search – researching opportunities and assessing career options – usually comes AFTER assessing your skills, interests and values and BEFORE writing a marketing plan or resume or scheduling interviews.
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| Puzzle Analogy
This analogy fits from both a job seeker perspective and an employer perspective. The objective is to find the right piece to fill a spot in the puzzle, but in today’s job market there are a great many competing puzzle pieces, i.e. job seekers, each with attributes that make them unique. |
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Think of your approach to the task of puzzle building.
The analogy is like having hundreds of applicants for one job opening. |
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| The final moments puzzle building go quickly, because each opening is well defined, and with fewer pieces there’s less clutter on the surface. Even when a puzzle piece isn’t oriented to make its fit obvious, it soon becomes obvious at that point.
But that’s not today’s job market. We’re like individual puzzle pieces among millions, and it’s not just one puzzle but tens of thousands of them in different industries – with all of the pieces jumbled together. No wonder the job search is so difficult. |
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| Georgetown University’s Market Research
“Jobs & Education Requirements through 2018” >100 pages, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Ford Foundation Attempts to answer questions such as
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| Required Reading for parents
Kids should see this chart.
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Getting a degree is not just about getting employed; it’s also about advancing once you are employed. That’s because employers tend to provide more training to those with a degree, i.e. with proven aptitude and interest.
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As a market researcher myself, I often notice what is NOT in reports, and I was disappointed to find no mention of:
Is there a Bias in the Education System? |
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The power of a Mainframe >> PC
Stationary >> Mobile (notebooks, smart phones)
Man/Machine interface >> Machine/Machine
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| My Toothbrush
Modern cars have dozens of embedded microprocessors for antilock brakes, rear-view mirrors, tire pressure sensors, fuel ignition systems, and much more. Homes have even more – hundreds of processors embedded in everyday objects that we don’t associate with computing, including thermostats, light switches, and door knobs, but since I couldn’t bring those items with me, I brought my toothbrush.
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Exponential Growth
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For Comparison:
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| Memory: 64K PC vs. 4GB in XPS 720CPU: Moore’s Law (Quantum physics vs. state change in transistors & magnetic disks). How will we use it? Text vs. Graphics & Games with Realistic Explosions
N/W: Bandwidth, Wireless vs. Fiber, Cloud Computing, National BB Strategy, Japan (already Gigabit/sec). Storage: Local or Remote? 30 Exabytes: 1.5M years of HD movies. What to store? (Your entire life in HDTV only needs 20 Petabytes.) How to find, make sense, protect? Displays: Smaller (contact lenses), Larger (UHDTV), Thinner, Power efficient (e-paper needs no power), 3D |
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| Other Factors:
Extrapolate past trends (apply ACGR), but Futurists also examine various other scenarios, market drivers and inhibitors, and likely outcomes to predict strategies for Best outcome, including:
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| Smart Phones are disruptive to markets. They’re replacing: PCs, PDAs, Calculators, Handheld Video Games, Landline Phones, Cellular Phones, GPS Navigation, Watches, Cameras, Photo Albums, Newspapers, MP3 Music Players, TV Remotes, the Wallet, and more. |  |
Network of Things
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| Endoscopic Pill:
Here’s a practical use of such miniaturization. It’s how doctors now examine the small intestine, since a colonoscopy can only examine the Large Intestine. |
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| 5th Generation w/ Accelerating Pace
Converging Information Science (bits), Bio Science (neurons & genomes), Nano Science (atoms) & Sociology (behaviors & consumer adoption curve). (from Ray Kurzweil’s “Singularity”) |
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| Here electronics tap into the nervous system of a cockroach.Someone using a PC can send wireless signals to cause the cockroach to move, stop, turn left, turn right, or climb. But what’s a practical application for such research? |  |
| Robi is an explosives expert. He goes into dangerous places in search of explosives before we send in humans.Like the cockroach, Robi ‘s back back computer, which also has a tiny video camera, taps into his brain. That way, a person using a wireless PC can see everything Robi sees and stimulate pleasure sensors to cause Robi to turn or move. |  |
Below are key points from the video. Here are the Job Implications:
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VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS:
Did You Know . . .
- The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs . . . by the age of 38.
25% of workers have been at their employer for <1 year. Over half have been there for <5 years. - According to former Secretary of Education Richard Riley . . . the top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004.
- So, are we preparing for jobs that don’t yet exist . . . that will use technologies that haven’t been invented . . . to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet?
Name this country . . .
- Richest in the World
- Largest Military
- Center of world business and finance
- Strongest education system
- World center of innovation and invention
- Currency the world standard of value
- Highest standard of living
- England . . . in 1900.
- The U.S. is now 20th in the world in adopting broadband Internet (Luxembourg just passed us) . . .and we’ve lost our 60-year lead in Tech innovation in 2005, now lagging behind Singapore, Iceland, Finland and Denmark.
Did you know . . .
- The U.S. is the most unequal society of ALL industrialized nations.
- The average Executive in Japan makes 11* more than the average worker . . . The average Exec in Canada makes 20* more . . . The average Executive in the U.S. makes 475* more.
- In 2006, the top 20 hedge fund & private equity managers made more in 10 minutes . . . than the average U.S. worker makes in a year.
- From 1990 to 2005, CEO pay rose 298% while corporate profits rose 106% . . . and U.S. worker pay rose just 4.3%.
Did you know . . .
- It’s estimated that a week’s worth of New York Times . . . contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.
- There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month . . . To whom were these questions addressed B.G.? (Before Google)
- The number of text messages sent and received every day now exceeds the population of the planet.
More than 3,000 new books are published . . . daily. - It’s estimated that 160 exabytes (that’s 16.0 x 1019) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year . . . That’s more than in the previous 5,000 years.
- The amount of new technical information is now doubling every 2 years . . . and it’s predicted to double every 72 hours by 2010.
- So, e-paper will MUST become cheaper than real paper.
Did you know . . .
- Predictions are that by 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computation capability of a Human Brain . . .
- And by 2023, a $1,000 computer will exceed the computation capability of the Human Brain.
- First graders will be just 20 years old then and beginning their (first) career.
- And while technical predictions further out are hard to do . . .
- By 2037, a $0.01 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human brain.
- By 2049, a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race.
- By 2059, a $0.01 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race.
What does it all mean?
SHIFT HAPPENS.
Videos used in Wayne’s talk:
- Careers of the Future – 4th grade students discuss the jobs they would like to have in the future. (Kid’s are naturally more optimistic about future employment than their out-of-work parents. They’ve been taught that anything’s possible.)
- The Job – This video provides a humorous but pessimistic view of the future of employment from the perspective of unemployed white-collar workers.
- Hatsune Miku as 3D avatar – Miku is a well known singer in Japan but this time her voice goes out through a 3D hologram avatar in a sold-out live concert. The crowd is real; the music sound is great; and the Japanese really enjoyed the concert. (I chose this video as an application example that exploits next-generation graphics, computing, storage, networking, and memory. It’s also an example of how far the U.S. has fallen behind in tech innovation.)
Economic Insights that were NOT covered in Wayne’s talk:
Without good paying jobs and discretionary income, who’s to buy the goods and services that the wealthy profit from? They’ll eventually need to address the disparity issue in order to keep growing their own incomes. Consider these stats…
Despite the economic crisis, the list of billionaires has grown by more than 200 and their aggregate capital has expanded by 50%.
In 1950 the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s was about 30 to 1. Since 2000 that average has ranged from 300 to 500 to one.
Since 1980, the richest Americans have seen their incomes quadruple, while for the “lowest” 90% of us, incomes fell. The average wage today is lower than it was in the 1970s, while productivity has risen almost 50%.
According to Federal Reserve figures, real weekly wages in the U.S. rose until 1973, and have been declining since. From 1977 – 1989, the wealthiest 660,000 families gained 75% of “average pretax income” increases, while most middle income families saw only a 4% increase — and those in the bottom 40% of income had real declines. In 1990, the median income was $29,934; in 1973, it was $30,943 (constant dollars). Women in the workforce and an increased reliance on credit helped forestall lifestyle crashes, but that also got us into our current economic bind.
The average annual earnings of the top group increased from $315,000 to $560,000 in twelve years. An estimated 28% of the total net wealth is now held by the richest 2% of families in the U.S. The top 10% holds 57% of the net wealth. If homes and other real estate are excluded, the concentration of ownership of financial wealth is even more glaring. In 1983, 54% of the total net financial assets were held by 2% of all families, those whose annual income is over $125,000. Eighty-six percent of these assets were held by the top 10% of all families.
The award-winning documentary, “The Corporation” offers more insight.
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