Preparing For The Future Of Work, Education, Economy

By Dorian Scott Cole

As many as 30% of jobs at all levels are likely to be impacted by automation (artificial intelligence and robotics) within the next 15 years. We're already past the tipping point. New jobs will require advanced training or education. Over 90% of jobs created since the 2008 Great Recession have required education beyond high school.

Things are rapidly changing. Technological changes exponentially make other things possible. How do we prepare for the rapidly changing future of work, education, and the economy without a crystal ball? Understanding our economy and how to make it work is a principal goal of this book.

We can look at the new requirements for work, which has a huge impact on education. We can look at what has happened to the economy and see what we need to change to make it work for everyone.

This book uses resources from those in the know: Harvard, MIT, Georgetown University, Brookings Institute, Mckinsey & Company, and many other great institutions, all who play major roles in business management, technology development, and education.

This book tells about the kinds of jobs that will be displaced, the new types of jobs, and the educational requirements for them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorian Scott Cole
• Release date: Jun 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463765333

Dorian Scott Cole

Dorian Scott Cole is a professional communicator, with education and experience in writing, engineering technology, psychology, religion, radio announcing, acting, and movie and TV production, having had full careers in several fields. He worked as a senior development analyst for Writers Workshop, L.A. He teaches writing and acting in independent settings, and has written VisualWriter.com since 1996.He is the author of several Web sites, and produces entertainment videos through his company, Movie Stream Productions. His production series, STL Comedy, included 22 professional actors, and 10 writers.Dorian lives near St. Louis.

Book preview

Preparing For The future of

Work, Education, and Economy

AIP Initiative: Adapt, Innovate, Prepare

Mission: Help communities to be included in the economy and address related problems, through educational preparedness, business adaptability and recruitment, and well rounded continuing education.

Copyright © 2020, Dorian S. Cole

Includes © white papers written in 2019

Dorian Scott Cole, CEO

TechGenie Media, LLC

Vision: Excellent jobs, wages, and education for everyone

Instilling confidence to move ahead in education

Engaging curiosity to dig deeper

Stirring the soul to greater things

Adaptability to new jobs through education

Building a greater community for all

ISBN: 9780463765333

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: Why? The ever-changing American job landscape

The pace of change

What is changing, and is it important?

Job types that will change over the next fifteen years

Markets and the economy are also changing

Short term job outlook – two years out 2019

Chapter 2: What can we expect from government

What can we expect from employers?

Will business change?

How do we address the job and wage problem?

Chapter 3: Preparing for the Future of Education

Chapter 4: Education Delivery Methods

The Need for local, quality, higher education that leads to good jobs

Chapter 5: Developing a quality Community higher education program

Targeted educational goals for relevant courses and sources

Risk Management

Professors and Teachers

Chapter 6: Course Purposes

An example of possible courses from a preliminary selection of 45 mostly MIT student courses

Chapter 7: Course costs

Chapter 8: Toward a More Prosperous Economy For Everyone

How money supply elasticity supports growth

Toward economic participation for all

Conclusion to Toward a More Prosperous Economy For Everyone

AI and Automation Impact on Economy Reference

Chapter 9: Generation Z – Everything is changing

Generation Z has a new outlook on life

Engaging Generation Z requires knowing them

Attracting Young Adults

Appendix 1: 2016 Wage Requirements for two person families

Appendix 2: Courses taken the first two years of college

Appendix 3 – How the banking system works

General References

Author's Note

About the Author

Other books by this author

Connect with Dorian Scott Cole

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Grateful appreciation to my wife, Sheila, who sacrifices so that I can write, and who is my beta reader and strictest critic. The remaining faults are all mine.

Disclaimer

References and quotation marks indicate when I'm using or distilling information from reputable sources. I try very hard to maintain high integrity of sources. Unreferenced comments are my opinion, either from experience or considering others' thoughts. I have tried specifically to avoid notes from Harvard and MIT course material and other copyrighted material.

Image Credits

Cover composition: Copyright © Dorian Scott Cole, all rights reserved.

Cover Image:

Kevin Dooley at Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/6861256042

Creative Commons license: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0): Attribution and image change required to be noted.

Image was cropped to fit the cover properly.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

CHAPTER 1: Why? The ever-changing American job landscape

Six-million years ago people invented beds and pillows.¹ It might have been fifteen-million years earlier, but the statistics are a bit difficult to dig up. Someone probably made a career out of making beds, and then hired others. It's the first known use of technology, but not the world's oldest business. Work changes are always about technology.

Technology changes everything including a good nights sleep, sometimes to a poor night's sleep as we worry about the future. It creates new products that improve our lives and work. It enhances manufacturing to improve productivity, meaning less labor. It creates new medical treatments. It also destroys many jobs. It moves relentlessly toward the future.

What does this mean for our future work? It's complicated. Understanding what is changing and why, is required to understand, adapt, innovate, and prepare for the next fifteen years.

Job changes are an evolving area. Various factors can impact what is happening, including recessions, lag time in technology deployment, and experience. This is a cautionary statement. Some statements may seem contradictory. Being forewarned is forearmed.

The pace of change

The pace of change since that time when the beds and pillows were invented has steadily picked up pace, so that technology drives change faster and faster, building on itself. It's exponential–the pace of change chart line is going nearly straight up². And not only do things change very fast, we have to adapt very fast, and even our social leanings change. Surprise! We are now solidly in our Fourth Industrial Revolution³. It's digital. The ground is shifting again.

Whether we're stitching together beds or computer code, our jobs are likely to change for the better. More of them will be less monotonous or won't require as much manual labor*. Manual labor and disease are killers. People in the 20th Century when Social Security was created, were only expected to live 60 years on average. Technology has extended life expectancy to 78 years, and most people–the mathematical mode–will live to at least age 86, although obesity is now reducing this.

*A substantial number of people want boring jobs. Supporting their families is their only objective. Additional education, training, and responsibility is often seen as an unwanted or even unattainable burden. Shaping the future has to be done with care.

The downside of this change is that as jobs are displaced by technology, there is no one-to-one job replacement. The person holding the job that's getting replaced will either have to get retrained or lose employment. People entering the job market need to know these new skills, or they won't get hired.

According to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, 99% of all new jobs created since the Great Recession require some formal education beyond high school.

Education hasn't kept up

Fifty years ago, the U.S. had the best-educated workforce in the world. But we've been backsliding while other countries have zoomed ahead of us. The result is that millennial workers in the U.S. are now tied for the lowest level of basic skills in the industrialized world, Tucker and Betsy Brown Ruzzi wrote in a policy brief "Message to America.⁴"

College may not be the answer. Education will be fully addressed in later chapters.

What is changing, and is it important?

Automation has historically brought us major benefits. For example, As automation frees our time, it increases the scope of what is possible, we invent new products, new ideas, new services that command our attention, occupy our time and spur consumption, and those irritating Fidget Spinners.

People who are displaced move on to other jobs, often within the same organization. In the early days of the US, people were mostly tied to food production. Change has been revolutionary. Farming still feeds the world, but it went from 40% of jobs in 1900 to just 11% today. Manufacturing went from 32% to just 7% in 2020, losing 4% in 20 years.

People are now occupied in businesses that hardly existed a century ago, such as health and medicine, finance and insurance, electronics and computing, and credit counseling. Technology creates jobs while displacing others.

Technological change displaces people. Those displaced need to be