January Gordon
Report
Introducing a New White Paper: Job Shock
Part
I: Introduction: Why Read This?
Welcome
to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in a COVID-19 challenged world economy.
Their combined impact on the U.S. job market will stretch to 2030 and beyond.
Say hello to “Job Shock!”
“Job
Shock: Solving the Pandemic and 2030 Employment Meltdown” will be released as
monthly topical Gordon Reports. This will give readers a greater opportunity to
consider their outlook on the future of employment. “Job Shock” will present
our most up-to-date research on the future of the U.S. labor market over the
coming decade. We will review both long-term and short-term problems and
solutions to them that are now under way across the United States. “Job
Shock’s” premise is that America’s students and workers are as much in need of
knowledge injections as they are of vaccine injections against COVID-19.
Defining
the Realities of Job Shock
Technologies
that have transformed American workplaces now require higher skills. The United
States is not creating more high-pay, low-skilled jobs; it is creating more
high-pay, higher-skilled jobs. Unless we confront the reality of this
talent mismatch, we face a decade in which there will be too many unskilled
people without jobs who run a high risk for lives in poverty and too many
skilled jobs without people. This potentially threatens to undermine the
broader economy and increase the social disruption that has already begun.
In
today’s job market at least 50 percent of today’s “good jobs” (those with
higher pay and benefits) do not require four-year college degrees. These jobs
need students who graduate from high school with a good general educational
foundation, i.e., strong reading/math comprehension, good written and verbal
communication abilities, problem-solving and teamwork skills. Students then need
to obtain a career certificate, apprenticeship, or a two-year degree from a
technical or community college. We are not preparing enough students for the
talent realities of the current U.S. job market.
The
United States has millions of well-educated, talented workers. But the
unrelenting demands of Job Shock tells us that we will need to double their
numbers over this decade to run our high-tech economy.
Job
Shock from COVID-19
The
on-going COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated this skills gap and sped up
employment meltdowns. It caused the sharpest increase in the official U.S.
unemployment rate ever recorded, rising from 3.5 percent in February 2020 to a
peak of 14.7 percent in April. At the close of 2020, 12 million of the 22
million jobs lost at the start of the pandemic had been regained. The December
unemployment rate of 6.7 percent reflects the number of workers permanently
laid off because of the pandemic. The labor force participation rate also
remains low.
But
the effect of COVID upon different industries and jobs has been very uneven.
The leisure and hospitality sector has been particularly hard hit with its
low-wage workers experiencing the greatest job loss. Payrolls for couriers and
messengers have increased by over 20 percent.
While
many businesses lay off workers, others are struggling to fill job vacancies.
Overall U.S. businesses continue to cut job training programs, further widening
the skills gap. Businesses are increasing investments in automation and
technologies that facilitate remote work. The continuing Fourth Industrial
Revolution will further raise demands for workers with the skills needed to
invent, use, maintain, or repair advanced technologies.
The
COVID-19 pandemic is illustrating that skill shortages can have lethal results.
COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have hundreds of vacant jobs in such
areas as engineering and quality control. There are acute shortages of
critical-care doctors and nurses as well as lab technicians to process COVID
tests. How many of the over 400,000 dead (greater than the death toll of
the U.S. armed forces in World War II) could have been saved if we had fewer
shortages of medical personnel in COVID hot spots?
Also,
the skilled people we take for granted to meet our daily needs are in short
supply. As computer systems have become more and more central to our daily
lives, breakdowns and threats to the security of our private information
proliferate. Finding a qualified plumber, carpenter, electrician or medical
technologist has become more difficult in many communities. If more effective
talent development efforts are not initiated, there is a real danger that the
world will not end in a big bang, but that it will come to a slow grinding halt
due to a lack of workers with the skills needed to maintain advanced
technologies. Welcome to Job Shock!
Job
Shock Objectives
The
goal of the “Job Shock White Paper” is to raise awareness of the broad scope of
the changes needed to equip students with the education and skills needed for
21st-century jobs and careers. And we must retrain workers with the specific
skills needed by employers. There are solutions already under way in
communities across the United States that can help your local area. But these
solutions are not easily available to all.
We
see the most promising responses to Job Shock coming from regional cross-sector
partnerships composed of business owners and managers, educators, parents,
government officials, union leaders, non-profit associations, and others. These
partnerships have begun regionalized initiatives to rebuild their outdated
education-to-employment systems.
“Job
Shock” is a call to action. We need to work together in initiating the systemic
changes needed to prepare more people for better paying jobs and thus create a
more equitable and prosperous economy over this decade.
Part
II of “Job Shock” will provide an overview of how technology has dramatically
transformed workplaces and occupational requirements over the last 50 years.
Unfortunately, other parts of American society have failed to adapt to these
labor market changes thus contributing to the social unrest the United States
is now experiencing.
The
monthly Gordon Report Webinars will be focusing on key topics of the “Job Shock
White Paper.” For more information on signing up or viewing these webinars, click
here.
Please
note: Consider reprinting the Gordon Report in all or part in your blog,
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source and send a link or copy to imperialcorp@juno.com.
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also invite to submit your questions or comments by email or calling us in
Chicago at 312.664.5196.
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you for your continued interest in our publications.
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