Where Will the 21st Century Jobs Come From

In this Concordia panel discussion from 2013, several prominent people discuss one of the biggest issues facing society in the 21st century:  Where will all the jobs come from?  Short answer, no one really knows.

When I went googling for info on this subject, I was amazed how little turned up.  In a 2014 article I often cite, there are believed to be 30 MILLION or more unemployed and under-employed people in the U.S..  We're the wealthiest nation on earth, and yet we have a huge problem here.  I've heard reports that unemployment in France is 30% for young adults.  One of the panelists above states that unemployment in Greece for young people is 60% at the time of this discussion.  The big takeaway here is that the world needs to create tens of millions of good jobs in the 21st century, and no one has a clue how that is going to happen.  The most amazing thing is that this is a huge issue nearly everywhere (except Silicon Valley), but hardly anyone is doing anything about it.

Billionaire real estate mogul, reality TV star, and leading presidential candidate Donald Trump says that he has created thousands of jobs in his businesses, and will create "lots of jobs" if he becomes president.  Uh... OK... how?  He doesn't say.  His business empire consists of many hotels.  Would you want to be a maid or bellboy making $8 an hour in a Trump hotel, or say work as a Google intern making $5,000 a month?  Do you see my point?  Most of the jobs Trump has helped create are low wage service jobs.  As a former taxi driver in Orange County, California, where Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm are, I'll let you in on a little secret.  Every place that has a huge tourist industry, like Anaheim, CA, also has a ghetto nearby made up of all the low wage service workers who work in those hotels and resorts.  How many high paying tech jobs has Trump created?  Not many.

The other non-traditional presidential candidate with a big jobs plan is Bernie Sanders.  His plan is to put 13 million Americans to work re-building our country's crumbling infrastructure.  This is an awesome idea.  It kills two big birds with one stone, creates jobs and re-builds things that need it.  But could Bernie, a Democratic Socialist, actually win a general election?  If so, could he get a dysfunctional Congress to actually implement this great idea?  Both are pretty unlikely.  The other idea here is that presidents don't actually create many jobs.  Growing businesses create jobs.  For those businesses to grow, you need a fairly affluent middle class with lots of disposable income to buy the products those businesses make.  As we all know, that's what we've lost here in the last 30 years or so.

So we're back to the core issue.  Who is going to create MILLIONS of high paying jobs for the former factory workers and recent college graduates in the U.S.?  There's no good answer.  On one hand, there are lots of tech jobs companies are having trouble filling.  On the other hand, those are about the only well paying jobs these days.  Whenever I look at this problem, I keep coming back to one idea.  Entrepreneurship.  To really put people back to work in fulfilling, well paying jobs, millions of unemployed and under-employed people are going to have to create their own jobs.  There's no one else to do it.  Are you up for that?  Most people aren't.  None of us were taught to do this in school.  Schools actually do just the opposite, they were created to turn people into compliant factory workers.  Anyway you look at it, this is a big issue that not near enough people are working on.  That's what this blog is about.

Get A Job

This is probably the worst radio edit of all time for a really great song.  Have you ever been in a situation where people who see you just don't know what it's like?  Everlast.

It's frustrating.  This week, the drama nob got cranked to eleven here in the household.  I got blindsided by things I didn't know were going on.  On one hand, I was offered some help in an area that I could really use it.  I didn't ask for the help, and it was initiated by someone talking behind my back.  That's really frustrating.  I accepted the help, because it came at a crucial time, again, unasked for by me. 

On the other hand, a couple of people I have a lot of respect for told me, "Maybe you should get a part time job."  I just nodded.  I know millions of other people in this country hear this on a regular basis, too.

Their frame of reference is 30 years ago when they began their professional careers.  At that time, factories in this country were just starting to shut down and move to other places.  But the job market was still strong.  Jobs were easy to find.  Decent paying jobs were pretty abundant.  Entry level jobs were everywhere.  You could walk into the office of most any company, fill out a paper application, maybe give them a resume', and get hired, often times on the spot.

But we don't live in that world anymore.  The people who wanted to help me simply don't realize what today's job market is like.  They're intelligent people.  But they just haven't had to deal with this situation in years.  I've already applied for pretty much every entry level job in this town, several times.  Even entry level jobs now require a 30 minute online psychological evaluation, graded by a computer.  Our digital resume's are scanned by a computer and searched for the appropriate keywords.  Then, if you even get called (which I never do) there are multiple interviews for a job like wiping off tables and taking out the trash at McDonald's.  In the end, they person in charge usually hires their friends and relatives.  This is, after all, still a small town.

I'm not alone.  That's what this blog is about.  There are 30 million or more people like me, unemployed or underemployed.  I'm more motivated than many of these people.  Ive decided to create my own job.  I've been self-educating myself on how technology has changed our working world for years.  I'm now working 12 to 14 hours a day building a small business.  But none of that matters to people with a 1980's mindset.  They still say, "Get a job."  I nod, hold the frustration until I can release it later in art, and I go back to the 21st Century.  This blog.  My other blogs.  My social media.  My crowdfunding campaign.  My fledgling small art business.  I'm busy working in today's world.  They are entrenched in a world that began 30 years ago for them.  In that world they'll stay...  Until technology comes along and revolutionizes their industry.  It's only a matter of time.  Then they'll know what it's like.  That's where the song above comes in.  Keep plugging along people.  Create your own jobs if you have to.

Crowd Funding My Small Business

Singer/songwriter/musician Amanda Palmer went to college and then worked as a self-employed "human statue" for years while getting her music career going.  She's now one of the best known musician/entrepreneurs out there.  She has a really hardcore following of around 25,000 people.  That makes her a loser to most major record companies.  Yet she did a crowdfunding campaign to produce an album a couple years ago and raised a record $ 1 million+.  She encourages people to download and torrent her music.  Yet she's doing better than most musicians out there, and doing it on her own terms.  If you are an artist, have any kind of business (or even a non-profit), I highly recommend taking 14 minutes to listen to her TED Talk above.  It's a great insight into how to be a working artist these days.

A couple weeks ago, I started a GoFundMe campaign to raise $1,000 to get my small business going.  For the most part, I'm hitting up old friends from the BMX world, and other people in my Facebook world.  I had no idea when I started if this would actually work.  To my old friends and acquaintances, this raises a bunch of questions.  Why didn't I start a business 25 or 30 years ago like so many of my friends did?  Why don't I have a "normal" job at age 49?  Why did I suddenly decide to become an artist?  Why not go drive for Uber since I used to be a taxi driver?  Why am I broke at my age?  Why would anyone give money to a guy who used to be homeless?  Why don't I borrow money from my local friends and neighbors here in North Carolina?  I'm sure it goes on and on. 

So here are some of those answers.  I wanted to start a business 30 years ago, but I was way too shy to be a good salesman.  I've learned over the years that, like it or not, selling is a huge part of running a business.  That sounds obvious, I know.  But a lot of people, especially in creative work, work on an idea but aren't able to sell it.  Either you have to be your own salesperson, or you have to hire one.  That's why my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend didn't turn into my own business.  I wound up teaming up with Chris Moeller, one of the best salespeople I've ever met, and producing the first couple S&M bikes videos.  The Ultimate Weekend, my 1990 personal project, sold about 500 copies in the U.S. and an unknown amount overseas.  I sold the world rights to it.  In 1993, the S&M Bikes video 44 Something went on to sell around 8,000 copies, making it one of the best-selling BMX videos of the 1990's, and possible all time.  I made a decent low-budget video, and Moeller sold the hell out of it for years.  But I wasn't able to sell on my own then.

Why am I broke and starting over at age 49?  After an injury in 1999, I left my good paying job as a lighting tech in Hollywood and became a taxi driver.  Taxi driving isn't a job, it's a small business.  We had to pay lease on our cabs every day or every week, ranging from $550 to $875 a week.  On top of that, we had to pay for gas, another $300 a week on average.  Keep in mind that the average ride was about $12, and we normally got one ride every two hours from dispatch.  If you do the numbers, they don't add up.  In the good times, a taxi driver had to really know the area and the bar and club scene, AND had to hustle like crazy.  I earned a great reputation of always paying my taxi lease, even when many other drivers were getting behind.  Then, like so many other industries, new technology entered the picture.  Taxi companies went from radio dispatching to computer dispatching.  In one day, literally, a single day, the whole business changed.  The companies put a lot more cabs on the road, and it became harder and harder to scrape by.  I gained a ton of weight working those crazy hours, and started having serious health problems.  I had to walk away because of the poor business and health issues. 

Ultimately I wound up in the small town of Kernersville, North Carolina, right when the Great Recession hit.  I couldn't find ANY job.  Here, in this highly conservative part of the country, backgrounds like mine, with a wide variety of jobs, don't play well.  By one estimate, there are about 30 MILLION unemployed and under employed people in the U.S. right now.  I'm one of those people.  I decide to take matters into my own hands and put my full effort into art and writing.  Those are both things I've made some money at in the past, and I've actually made my living writing at times.  Instead of fighting for the handful of factory jobs left or fighting everyone else for a low pay service job, I'm creating my own job.  To do that, I need some help.  This is where the crowd funding campaign comes in. 

I've learned there are different ways to use crowd funding in today's world.  One example is a guy named Cat Man, the Carolina Panthers self-proclaimed #1 fan, who gets on TV and the jumbo tron nearly every game.  But he didn't have the money to go to the Super Bowl to watch his beloved Panthers this weekend.  So he launched a GoFundMe campaign to ask for donations.  Last I heard, he raised something like $8,000 in a couple of days.  Good for him. It wouldn't be a Panthers game without Cat Man there.  He's that much a part of the scene.

I'm taking a different tack, similar to the way start-ups use Kickstarter.  I'm not asking for donations, I'm asking for orders.  For $25 I'll draw you an original picture that I usually sell for $30.  And I'll throw in a zine, too.  Why?  To jump start the business and get it going quite a bit quicker.  I've been doing a few drawings, but I need to find work on a much more consistent basis.  It's working, slowly but steadily.  I'm far from making a living at this, but I'm on my way. 

The biggest thing I've learned about crowd funding, from books, online sources, and Amanda Palmer herself, is that you need a following of some kind for this kind of fund raising to work.  My network online is limited mostly to old school BMXers, but that's where I have to start.  In this new blog, I'm working to set an example for the other 30 million unemployed/underemployed people out there as to what's possible in today's world.  Things don't work the way they did 20 or 30 years ago.  It's a whole new game, and a lot of people are having trouble adapting, myself included.  This blog is a chronicle of my journey from a former homeless man to someone able to thrive in today's world.  You're along for the ride if you keep following.