7,000,000
jobs go unfilled every day. That number will, under conservative estimates, double in the next
six years to 14 million.
A new book warns
of the jobs cliff --and reveals a
comprehensive,
proven solution to stave off an economic
meltdown.
America’s Economic Dominance Is Threatened
by a Crushing Skilled Labor Shortage
I have known Edward
Gordon for the past 13 years and I think his newest book really highlights an
important moment in time for our nation.
America is at a crucial employment
tipping point – trillions of dollars in economic growth as well as the survival
of millions of businesses and careers are at stake.
“The
United States and the world are locked into a structural labor market race
between advanced technology on one side and demographics and education on the
other,” asserts Gordon. “By the end of this decade, many businesses will no
longer have the talent needed to sustain themselves.”
Gordon
has been the Paul Revere of the next revolution, one involving jobs and America’s
ability to position itself for the next great economic era. For much of the past two decades, Gordon has
consulted with corporate leaders, educators, government agencies, and NGOs,
sounding the alarm bell of an impending crisis – the skill wars that are now
negating the economy’s ability to grow and remain globally strong. But these dire warnings, though largely
unheeded, are now coming true.
His
newest book, Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis (Praeger,
September 2013), offers a thorough look at the converging forces behind the skilled
labor shortage crunch and presents a comprehensive, proven solution that can
help America remain competitive and create millions of jobs. The answer, however, is nothing short of
revolutionary, in terms of how business and government will work together, how
education will be reformed, and how workers will determine their career fate.
Below is a Q & A
with Mr. Gordon:
1. Why have corporations, schools, governments
been so slow to move on the jobs crisis? Society has been in denial. Public
opinion will only begin to shift as the majority of people become directly
caught up in this unfolding jobs revolution. But now we have reached an
employment tipping point. The broad requirements of the U.S. job market
can no longer be supplied simply by maintaining the current failing system. The
United States
and the world are locked into a structural labor market race between advanced
technology on one side and demographics and education on the other. Too few
Americans are prepared to run in this race. By the end of this decade, many
businesses will no longer have the talent they need to sustain themselves.
Around the world, workers and businesses are caught up in a transitional labor
market era. In this new era, the success or failure of individual businesses
and of regional or national economies will largely be determined by their
ability to provide more people who can meet labor market requirements with the
right skills at the right time.
2. How does Future Jobs propose a solution? Future Jobs explores the concept behind Regional Talent Innovation
Networks (RETAINs) and their credibility as a major labor market change engine.
RETAINs are community intermediaries. They act as hubs for cross-sector
partnerships engaged in a systemic redesign that matches skills and jobs to
regional economic development. RETAINs facilitate broader civic engagement by
forging links between businesses, educators, community leaders, and ordinary
citizens.
3.
Why do millions of jobs go unfilled when so many people remain unemployed or
underemployed? The
American education-to-employment system is largely failing to prepare more
people with the required skills to compete in this new labor market era.
Laid-off workers often lack the skills to move into jobs in growing sectors of
the economy. Businesses and government job training programs are largely
inconsistent, short term, or too generic. Too many younger workers lack general
education and specialized career skills, let alone a strong work ethic, to
sustain a middle class standard of living. They are now adding to the growing
American underclass. “We have underemployment, part-time work, people leaving
the labor force, reduced participation, more long-term unemployment,” said Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke (June 2013). This
could mean that the U.S.
unemployment rate issued each month is “not exactly representative of the state
of the labor market,” he said. In 2013, over 30 million Americans of working
age are unemployed or underemployed with millions more not part of the U.S. labor
market. The number of people looking for work (labor participation rate) was
near the historic low of 63.5 percent, while the average duration of
unemployment remained near historic highs.
4. Why can’t we
import qualified workers to handle these jobs? Until recently, U.S. businesses
have bridged the skills deficit by using the twin talent safety valves of
importing educated workers or exporting overseas high-pay/high-skills jobs
wherever they could find a skilled talent pool. These talent safety valves are
beginning to fail in part because this is also an international jobs–talent
issue. The World Economic Forum (2011) predicts that this disconnect will
persist for decades and the worst global talent shortages are yet to come. The
populations of Japan, South Korea,
and many European nations are in decline. India
and China
are moving into more sophisticated high tech manufacturing or IT services. They
both are now encountering severe shortages of engineers, scientists, and
technicians with the requisite educational preparation due to their deficient
public education systems and the inadequate quality of institutions of higher
learning.
5. OK, then can we outsource our way out of
it? As stated in the last answer, skilled talent is in short supply
everywhere. In China wages
are rising, and corruption adds significantly to the costs of doing business in
both India and China.
Reshoring or bringing jobs back to the U.S. is gaining momentum. A
reshoring trend, says Boston Consulting, is likely to bring up to 3 million
manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.
from overseas by 2020. Chinese wages
have been increasing at 18 percent annually for the last 10 years. Much of that
cost savings is now gone. Other factors in reshoring are a desire to get
products to market faster, a more rapid response to customer orders, savings
from reduced transportation and warehousing, improved quality, reduced theft of
trade secrets, and the elimination of bribes paid to corrupt foreign officials.
A Hackett Group research study (2012) found that the cost gap between the U.S. and China has shrunk by nearly 50
percent over the past 8 years, and is expected to stand at only 16 percent by
2013. However, U.S. reshoring
will only occur if we have the skilled workers to do these jobs.
6. How will government, education, business,
and nonprofits need to work together to stave off the growing job skills gap?
RETAINs break down the silos separating these and other segments of communities
so they can unite to address problems arising in times of regional crisis
including population and business flight, local economic stagnation, and
declining tax bases. Communities want to “retain” their life, viability, and
spirit to build a better, hopeful future. To do this, they must update their
local talent, develop their capacity to innovate and also attract new
businesses into a region. From their beginnings in the 1990s, the RETAINs
movement has been about much more than just economic development, or school
reform, or tax reform. RETAINs are regional, cross-sector, public-private
partnership hubs. They do not duplicate services already exist. They act as
non-profit intermediaries, rebuilding the pipeline that connects people to the
job market and filling in the gaps. RETAINs are reinventing a 21st-century
education-to-employment talent-creation system that can support a tech-driven,
knowledge-based economy. RETAINs are joint collaborations in community
building. The key words here are “bottom-up collaboration” defined as joint
authority, joint responsibility, and joint accountability among all the
partners.
7. Are there models of success that have
embraced your RETAINS approach? Transformation is never easy. Changing a
region’s employment and cultural outlook takes both time and perseverance. In
many cases, a local crisis pushed a community to take action on the talent
front. The individual leadership shown in each instance depicts how civic activism
can take many different creative paths to achieve meaningful change. All of
these Regional Talent Innovation Networks (RETAINs) and other talent
initiatives are still works in progress. But they have sustained support
through their initial stages and are making advances in transforming their
education-to-employment system for the talent requirements of a 21st-century
workforce. They include: regions of North Dakota;
High School Inc., Santa Ana, CA;
the New North in northeast Wisconsin; the
Vermilion Advantage, Danville, IL;
Partners for a Competitive Workforce, Cincinnati,
OH; and about 1,000 other RETAINs across the U.S.
8. Was the Great Recession a game changer for
the labor landscape? The spread of
digital technologies through almost every type of industry had meant the U.S. business
has less and less use for people with minimal education. The Great Recession
has accelerated an ongoing labor market shift that was masked by the many low-
or semi-skilled jobs created during the housing/financial bubble. In today’s
labor market, employment for low- or semi-skilled workers has fallen
dramatically. Even middle-skilled professionals have seen a steady decline in
jobs because of automation. In general, the job opportunities are brighter for
high-skilled people who have kept their knowledge and applicable certifications
up-to-date and who can relocate to where jobs exist. Increasing computer power requires more people
with increased brain power.
9. Which industries are growing to the point
qualified labor shortages will cause them to stall? There are four sectors
of the U.S.
economy in which the skills crisis is particularly acute. Each has its own
special problems and needs. HEALTH CARE:
To cope with a rapidly aging population, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
estimates that by 2020 jobs in health care occupations, including doctors,
nurses, pharmacists, lab technicians, therapists, dentists and many allied
career areas, will grow by over 20 percent.
IT: Gartner, a technology research company, expects 1.9 million IT jobs
to be created in the United
States between 2012 and 2015. AEROSPACE: As airlines seek more
fuel-efficient planes, they have placed a record number of orders for Boeing’s
new 787 Dreamliner and the European Airbus 380. However, both companies now
face significant worker shortages.
MANUFACTURING: U.S.
manufacturing employs over 11 million Americans as well as seven million in
related industries. But nearly 2.7 million U.S. manufacturing employees were
age 55 or older in 2011. As many as 600,000 skilled technical positions in U.S.
manufacturing were vacant, according to a Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte
Consulting 2011 study.
10. If you were
advising parents of teenagers, which fields of study would you recommend they
encourage their children to pursue? The first consideration is what career
sectors will be in demand between now and 2020. Occupational projections and
surveys by government, universities, and business research organizations point
to five general growth areas that are part of almost every U.S. industry:
(1) research and development, (2) information technology, (3) operations, (4)
management, and (5) sales.
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM)-related occupations will experience significant growth. The U.S.
Commerce Department estimates that by 2018 STEM employment will grow by 17
percent, compared to 9.8 percent for other occupations. Surveys conducted by
the Society for Human Resource Management in 2011 and 2012 report shortages of
engineers, sales representatives, accounting, and finance staff. High-skilled
technical positions and scientists also occupied top spots in these surveys.
Other sources point to growing shortages for health care professionals and
management staff in biomedical and life science areas due to the aging of the
large baby boomer cohort.
11. If the jobs
skills cliff is impacting nations globally, why will the US be injured
by it any more than other countries? We are in a watershed era of
historical transformation driven by major technological advances. The key
challenge is rethinking how we create stronger learning skills for more people.
The United States
has the world’s largest and most advanced knowledge economy. We need more
people to become “well educated” than ever before. What is the bottom line for
talent in 2020? The United
States can expect a skilled talent shortfall
of between 14 and 25 million workers to fill new and replacement jobs. Between
2020 and 2030, the Boston Consulting Group predicts high to very high talent
shortages across the United States in many economic sectors, including: IT,
business services, health care, public administration, education, financial
services, hotels and restaurants, transport, communications, trade,
construction, manufacturing, utilities, and other businesses. Such a scenario
will devastate the entire economy and may create an expanding poverty cycle.
Unless a new talent creation system is in place by 2020 that has begun to alter
those conditions, major social unrest across America will become a distinct
possibility.
Don’t Miss These Recent Posts
Making Your Book Promotable – Before It Is
Published
FAQ ON BOOK PUBLICITY
10 Ways To Get A Media Hit
Why Aren’t There Any Signs Of Books On The
Road?
Sell Books Where They Don’t – Including Funeral
Homes, Police Stations & Hair Salons
What Can You Do With Old, But Underexposed
Content?
The Role Of Money In Book Publicity
What Is Your Attitude Towards Book Publicity?
How Can Authors Measure Social Media Success?
25 Ways For Authors To Break Through &
Establish A Legacy
Do You Market Your Books Doggy Style?
Brian Feinblum’s
views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of
his employer, Media Connect, the nation’s largest book promoter. Please note,
Mr. Gordon is a client of Media Connect. You can follow him on Twitter
@theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This
is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2013
