Since 2000, rising American productivity has become de-coupled from job growth: Despite sizzling profits and the ever-receding horizon of a brighter future for all—just on the other side of endless “disruption”—the celebrity industries of Silicon Valley and Wall Street are hollowing out middle-class jobs. When anything at all is filling the void, too often it is the cruelly misnamed sharing economy or hourly work for minimum wage, both greased with record levels of household debt.
After a century of insisting that the secure, benefits-laden job was the frictionless meritocratic means of rewarding society’s truly valuable work and workers, today we find that half the remaining jobs are in danger of being automated out of existence. Of the 10 fastest-growing job categories, eight require less than a college degree. Over 40 percent of college graduates are working in low-wage jobs, and it isn’t in order to launch their start-up from the garage after the swing shift at Starbucks
In our February 2015 Citi GPS report Technology At Work we cited three primary
reasons why we believed the impact of technology change on the economy was
different this time: (1) the pace of change has accelerated; (2) the scope of
technological change is increasing; and (3) unlike innovation in the past, the
benefits of technological change are not being widely shared — real median wages
have fallen behind growth in productivity and inequality has increased. In the report
that follows, Citi again teams up with Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne from
the Oxford Martin School to answer a number of the questions that were generated
post the original report – on a range of topics from susceptibility to solutions.
There seems little doubt that the pace of technology change has accelerated.
Whereas it took on average 119 years for the spindle to diffuse outside of Europe,
the Internet spread across the globe in only 7 years. Going forward, as argued in
the Citi GPS Disruptive Innovations III report, the cost of innovation continues to fall
as cheaper smartphones will help bring 4 billion more people online. The next stage
of connectivity will move from people to 'things' with Cisco estimating 500 billion
devices will be connected by 2030, up from 13 billion in 2013. Increasing digital
connectivity is fuelling a data boom, with data volume estimated to be doubling
every 18 months, and computers are likely far better able to handle this volume than
people
Thanks for your post and the excellent links. Just going through them now.Anyone younger than the age of 50 should understand that having a "career" in a traditional sense is becoming less and less a reality due to the rapid increase in technology.
This change was covered well here:
http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/the-future-of-work-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-job
And most recently in this Citi/Oxford report "Technology at Work v2.0 The Future Is Not What It Used to Be":
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/reports/Citi_GPS_Technology_Work_2.pdf
Emphasis added
Also see this outstanding book for an idea of what to expect as a result of rapidly expanding/changing technology:
The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee | | 9780393239355 | Hardcover | Barnes & Noble
Increasingly, with only 10-20% of workers having careers (mostly the managerial class, with some exceptions), the entire idea of "human capital" as a part of one's personal PF must undergo reconsideration and be considered strictly in ROI terms. This would include: (a) education to pursue; (b) educational institution and corresponding costs/expected payback; (c) job offer negotiations; and (d) managing one's work from a sales and marketing viewpoint (i.e., resume used strictly as a marketing tool/interviews viewed strictly as sales calls/deals to be "closed"). No job offers are accepted without a higher counteroffer, and loyalty to employers is always secondary to one's own financial security and advancement.
I believe it was Michael Kitces who stated human capital is the most important part of one's overall lifetime PF. In light of current and future accelerated technological changes, it would be advisable for anyone under 50 to manage their work life as strategically, if not more so, than their PF.
I voted career because I always used my career skills in every job I had. Maybe it is just semantics but I would feel sorry for someone who just did the job without applying their skills and knowledge to improvement of the process.On the vote, I voted job. Always thought of a "career" as some well defined path from here to there, and for me my life has been anything but. Never thought I would end up where I did, from where I started...