Are Disappearing Jobs "A Job Shift"

Is The Job Becoming Extinct

Editor's Note:The new design of the blog had as one of its major purposes providing information and resources that would help our community understand that we face some difficult challenges. Having read the book in 1995, and been profoundly influenced by it, Job Shift lies at the heart of the work that has gone in the contribution this blog can make where the "good ol' boy system was replaced by a wide community involvement. As we near the completion of our redesign, the headlines seem to confirm our purpose. Things tolerated already too long in our community need to be brought into the light of pubic accountability, and it is hard to think about any part of our community that is not in need of critical examination. Through technology, tremendous information is available on the site that changes every day (Ann Coulter is back!) and posts that appear several times each week relentlessly following up that should not be overlooked will still be informative with their unique edge.

Based on a significant book written in 1995, Job Shift, the Sanford Herald's headline Wednesday, Jobless Rate at Almost 10%, should have come as no surprise. And a review of the paper's archives reveals a steady stream of employee cut backs and plant and business closings In human terms that means in Lee County, 2,684 people reported being unemployed in November out of a 27,430-person workforce.

William Bridges’ Job Shift is a provocative book. Its premise is that one of the single most significant factors in adult life, “the job,” is disappearing, and that our individual and national well-being require a radically different perspective on how to make a living. In other word's, our community's leaders need to recognize the "jobs" aren't coming back--not by an improving economy nor by recruitment of more manufacturing. This means that a lot of issues need to be looked at through a new lens until there is a massive response to a paradigm shift.

His forecast that a number of factors would result in a shrinkage in the number of permanent jobs turned out to have been wrong only by underestimating the speed at which this would happen. Historical insights serve well to put the book’s subject in perspective. For instance, until the industrial revolution a “job” meant nothing more than “a task done for pay.” Job = “full time, 40 hour a week activity” is a meaning that is less than 200 years old. Bridges argues persuasively that the nature of work and the economy over the last few decades is leading us back to a more fluid, less certain situation where there’s just as much work, but where fewer and fewer people will approach the workplace in the tidy box of “a job.”

We tend to operate on the assumption that jobs moving off shore and outsourcing are responsible but that is not it at all. According to Gartner Research, over the past decade, U.S. manufacturing jobs have declined by more than 11 percent,. But at the same time, Japan’s manufacturing employment base has dropped by 16 percent, while the number of manufacturing jobs in countries including Brazil have declined by some 20 percent, And one of the largest losers of manufacturing jobs has been China. At one time 25 percent to 30 percent of the U.S. population was involved in agricultural jobs. But today, only 3 percent of Americans work in agriculture, yet they have turned the United States into a net agricultural exporter. “The same thing is now happening in manufacturing,” Dan Miklovic, vice president and research director at GartnerG2, said. “Through automation, through improved productivity, we’re driving the number of jobs down on a global basis.”

Recent polling seems to indicate that Americans sense this in not just a mid-course correction. Polling data released by Rasmussen Reports™ today reflected that Americans are solidly optimistic about the economy’s recovery, but most expect it to take up to five years to come back. On Tuesday Rasmussen reported that their polling showed that Americans are narrowly divided over whether the United States will still be the world’s most powerful nation at the end of the current century.Thirty-seven percent (37%) of adults believe America will be number one, but 34% disagree, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Twenty-nine percent (29%) are not sure.

A good place to start is the Economic Development Commission. It is much like the record companies. They and the entire music industry built their business model on the distribution of an album and later CD. To get that one song someone loved required them to spend nearly $20 for an entire album featuring other songs no one found all that great. Now the business model was changed by technology and the industry has had no choice but go along. That one song is no longer trapped on an album. Instead it can be purchased separately for about $1 for those who are honest or downloaded for free for those who are not.

The Economic Development Commission's model is one of attracting a "package of static of jobs" with the justification that incentives increase the tax base even if no jobs are created--an increasingly risky bet if the business is home based yet global.

Certainly our government and civic leaders take a 10% unemployment rate seriously, but until the driving forces are re-examined and new paradigms emerge we can be drowned in a wave of change that could have instead been the basis of our own community focused cottage business.

The four videos available through YouTube are mid page to start everyone thinking. They are very similar but each brings some new perspective. A couple have had several million viewers from across the world. They especially raise questions about what should be expected from education. We need leaders to get their heads out of the sand and ruthlessly pursue the new future.