the future of your job

THE FUTURE OF YOUR JOB
By now most of us are used to the idea that we will not be hired at one company, work there for forty years and retire with a pension. That concept of work was short lived and declared dead years ago. We know that we will need to change occupations several times in our career. Any job that has a bit of skill to it will require constant addition to our education. In short, the world keeps changing and we had better keep up.
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A couple of decades ago, those bright boys at the top of the corporate food chain discovered computers. A few decided that middle managers whose sole job was to convey information up and down the hierarchy were obsolete. Thus began the flattening of the classic pyramid command structure. It took awhile, most companies are still to this day befuddled as to what a computer chip can do. But by and large, we see the death of middle management. And with it a trend towards the reversal of the bell curve of wealth. In Americas mythical golden days we saw a small poor class, and a small wealthy class with the bulk as middle class. Even those not officially in the salary range were on the way up economically and could be considered middle class. Any immigrant family could work hard, send their offspring to college and in two generations arrive in the suburbs. Middle management was of course not the sole means of this. Unions gave an escape clause to those uneducated poor. The government actually ran good schools way back when, college grants were easy to get. But for many reasons this era is over and today the wealth curve is reversed. You are either poor or wealthy and the middle ground continues to shrink.
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One could point to the Vietnam War as the beginning of the end. The incredible cost of that conflict along with the War On Poverty tipped the scales from a economically balanced Federal government to a perpetually crisis-prone leviathan. Of course today that cost seems trivial, but the die was cast and we have yet to look back. Today we have so much wrong with our economy it is a wonder we are still going. But rather than starting again on the many problems of our system, lets take a look at the future of our job market.
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We are in trouble, folks. The economy is shredding manufacturing jobs. Soon, they will constitute no more of a percentage of workers than does farming. This is unstoppable, and there is no going back. The future is information and services. But wait!! If that wasn’t bad enough, losing the traditionally good paying jobs, we have another problem on our hands. Information Technology jobs are starting to be exported. Those jobs that were supposed to replace the manufacturing work are also being sent overseas. Knowledge work is going to India, the Philippines, Russia and Eastern Europe to name a few. Major tech parks are going up around the big cities in India. Bank of America, Texas Instruments, Intel, Lehman Brothers, HP, AmEx, Dell, Kodak, IBM, GE, Microsoft, P&G and Citibank have Indian workers there doing our “new economic age” work. Mortgage lenders, hospitals and architectural firms are farming out work.
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Radiologists interpret CT scans, engineers design mobile phone chips for T.I., Biologists do research for pharmaceutical companies. An Indian engineer starts at $5,000. At first it will be just like manufacturing. The overseas work will be substandard, but cheap enough for some applications. Then, over time, quality will improve. Our jobs disappear or our wages come way down. Companies are under tremendous pressure to cut costs. Lawyers and governments are sucking off their profits, as are pensioners and competition. Henry Ford might have raised workers pay to enable his workers to buy the product they made, but don’t expect that kind of far-sighted business sense in this century. To remain competitive long term our economy must shred government, curb litigation, plow money into education ( real training, not P.C. brainwashing ) and research and development, and stay on the leading edge of technology. We can keep our farming jobs with bioengineering, our manufacturing jobs with value added high tech and our information jobs with leading edge R&D. But will we? If we do we will remain at the top. If not we go the way of the last Empire, Great Briton. They have yet to recover from World War One. WWII just did them in for good. Of course we may not go the way of defeated empires. If we get out of the empire business. Lets wait and see about Iran and Syria. If we attack on another weak premise I fear we are stepping into deep kemshi.
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If you are going to get a private sector pension, be very careful. If enough companies go bankrupt over unfunded pension liabilities ( it is that serious of a problem right now ) we might see bankruptcy courts forced to deny future pension payments either because of the sheer numbers of companies or the inability of the government to pick up the obligations. Public sector pensions are in just as much trouble, but with a printing press and the power to tax, they will last a bit longer. But even there watch out. The news as of late is full of local and state governments cutting back on vital services because of budget problems. And you ain’t seen nothing yet.
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I am not offering any solutions here. The path ahead is really unknown, too many factors can go too many ways to tell how it will all turn out. But you may wish to consider your job and ask yourself if it is in danger of being exported. Can a foreign college graduate with a second language of English do your job? Just off the top of my head I would say that the only safe short term job is in the creative field ( foreigners don’t do our culture well ) or cutting edge tech. I sure would not spend money on one of those private school courses teaching computer programming or some such. You know the ones, daytime TV is full of them hawking an instant good paying job. Danger, Will Robinson!! Remember, if it’s too good to be true, it is. These schools are selling obsolete skills.
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Live below your means, and keep an avenue open for another career. When you change jobs more than likely your income will decrease. Stay out of debt, try for no mortgage if possible. A house might be a sucker bet for a few years at least. If your standards must remain high at least consider a modular home on your own land. Half the cost of a regular house and most zoning boards are kind to them, unlike manufactured homes. If your area is declining economically and you feel a move might be in order down the road, buy a cheap mobile home in a park- the payments and lot rent most times beat an apartment in cost and you can resell for something ( though not much ). Learn to cut your costs now, if possible. Trial and error now is better than when it is forced on you later.
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We may just be in a slump, but we might also have started a long term decline. The life of conspicuous consumption should be over for those of us remotely concerned with the future. A few years of hardship now and later, with no debt, you can spend frivolously. Broad trends can seem worse than they are, but it never hurts to plan for the worse. END
Written five years ago. I might have been TOO optimistic. Reprinted from my Bison Newsletter e-book, available at http://www.bisonpress.com/
Reprints just on Sunday until I get back to posting more often, due to my move to the New And Improved Dakin Compound.