The Job Creation Disconnect

The Greensboro (NC) News and Record newspaper had a huge article the Sunday before last stating that this area has lost tens of thousands of good paying factory jobs in the last 15 years or so.  And if you're from this area, or much of the country, you're reply is probably, "Duh."  For those of you not in this area, the "Piedmont Triad" is the marketing name for this area in central North Carolina comprising the three main cities of Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and Highpoint, and the surrounding small towns.  This area traditionally was big in tobacco, textiles, and furniture making.  Guess what, many of those jobs have been outsourced to other countries.  In the tobacco world, the anti-smoking fervor also helped reduce that industry.  Like the article said, this area, like so many others, has lost over a hundred thousand jobs over the last 25 years or so.  We all know that.

As a recovering taxi driver, I'm one of the millions of people who hasn't been able to find a good paying job.  I've written for magazines, worked on the crews of TV shows, and done many other things over the years.  But none of that helps me get a job in today's work force here in North Carolina.  Unlike millions of unemployed people out there, though, I've been reading and educating myself on the big picture and macro-economic situation in our rapidly changing, tech-laden world.  Unfortunately, most of the people actually running our cities, counties, states and federal government have not read the books or listened to the dozens of lectures I have.  I know I'm a geek in this area, but it still baffles me how clueless so many people in power are to the big picture.  So here are some of the main issues in job creation today.  These aren't my conclusions, but the findings of experts in various areas.  This is why we're having such an issue finding good jobs today.

Robots:  I don't have exact figures, but industrial robots and other forms of technology have probably taken more former human manufacturing jobs than out sourcing.  ATM machines, for example, killed off hundreds of thousands of bank teller jobs.  We've all seen the TV commercials of the robot arms welding cars and other things.  That's where a huge number of jobs have gone.  Those jobs aren't coming back.

Outsourcing:  This started a lot earlier than many people today think.  When I was a kid in rural Ohio, people were complaining of a few companies shutting down factories and moving to the American South.  Some years later, big corporations started moving jobs into Mexico and Taiwan.  Then jobs went to Japan.  Then came Southeast Asia and China.  Again, those high paying manufacturing jobs aren't coming back.  Period.  Stop whining about this.  Those jobs existed for a couple of generations because of the labor unions and because industry was nation-oriented.  Once the business world got more global, American workers were just too expensive.

High Technology:  Technology has completely changed our world in my lifetime, and most of our industrial age organizations, and thinking, have not caught up with that.  One by one, our industries and institutions are crumbling in the wake of new societal norms and the way tech has changed the working world.  Today's high-paying jobs are largely in tech, computer science, engineering, and similar fields.  We don't have enough workers to fill many of these jobs in the U.S.  This is a huge part of the disconnect, on one hand, 30 million people, including me, can't find decent jobs, but there are thousands of jobs employers can't fill because we don't have the right skills.

Clustering and the brain drain:  No one in politics (that I've see) even has a clue about this huge trend.  The cutting edge tech companies have spent the last 25 years clustering in a handful of regions in this country.  Why?  According to professor Richard Florida (who wrote The Rise of the Creative Class), this happens because now the top companies are going to where the talented people live, rather than workers moving to where the big companies are.  In addition, many of the best and brightest people in our country are going to work in these few regions.  The San Francisco Bay Area (aka Silicon Valley), Seattle, the Boston/New York City/Washington D.C corridor, Southern California and Austin, Texas are the main spots where tech is clustering.  This creates a couple of big issues:  These areas are where venture capital and money are focusing and pouring into.  On the other hand, with the smartest people in these few areas, the rest of the counttry is not only struggling to create jobs, but they're stuck with the people of 2nd and 3rd rate intelligence trying to figure out how to create more jobs.  Pure and simple, most of this country is slowly dying economically, and they don't even realize it.  The area where I live is one of those regions.

Changes in communication:  Personal computers, the internet/world wide web, smart phones, tablets, social media and other advances in technology have completely changed the work world.  While most people use these devices and tech in their personal lives, they don't take full advantage of these technologies in the workplace.  In this area where I live, many people in their 50's and older avoid computers all together.  The civic leaders in most of the country don't fully understand how this tech is affecting society, and they're still trying to bring back the lost factory jobs.  The mayors, city councils, state legislators and governors are all fighting the wrong battle.  They're stuck in the mentality of the industrial world they grew up in, and simply don't have a clue how to create new jobs for the millions of unemployed people in these cities across the country.

This is just a brief look  at why we have so many decent people without good paying jobs, and why we have so many high-paying jobs that can't be filled at the same time.  I'll go into more detail on these issues in further posts.  My advice to the chronically unemployed:  Create your own job if you possibly can.  That's what I'm doing.

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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.