The Jobs Of Tomorrow

Why the United States lags behind other industrialized countries in sharing the benefits of innovation with workers and how we can remedy the problem. The United States has too many low-quality, low-wage jobs. Every country has its share, but those in the United States are especially poorly paid and often without benefits. Meanwhile, overall productivity increases steadily and new technology has transformed large parts of the economy, enhancing the skills and paychecks of higher paid knowledge workers. What’s wrong with this picture? Why have so many workers benefited so little from decades of growth? The Work of the Future shows that technology is neither the problem nor the solution. We can build better jobs if we create institutions that leverage technological innovation and also support workers though long cycles of technological transformation. Building on findings from the multiyear MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, the book argues that we must foster institutional innovations that complement technological change. Skills programs that emphasize work-based and hybrid learning (in person and online), for example, empower workers to become and remain productive in a continuously evolving workplace. Industries fueled by new technology that augments workers can supply good jobs, and federal investment in R&D can help make these industries worker-friendly. We must act to ensure that the labor market of the future offers benefits, opportunity, and a measure of economic security to all.

While adoption of new technologies is understood to enhance long-term growth and average per-capita incomes, its impact on lower-skilled workers is more complex and merits clarification. Concerns abound that advanced technologies developed in high-income countries would inexorably lead to job losses of lower-skilled, less well-off workers and exacerbate inequality. Conversely, there are countervailing concerns that policies intended to protect jobs from technology advancement would themselves stultify progress and depress productivity. This book squarely addresses both sets of concerns with new research showing that adoption of digital technologies offers a pathway to more inclusive growth by increasing adopting firms’ outputs, with the jobs-enhancing impact of technology adoption assisted by growth-enhancing policies that foster sizable output expansion. The research reported here demonstrates with economic theory and data from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico that lower-skilled workers can benefit from adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies biased towards skilled workers, and often do. The inclusive jobs outcomes arise when the effects of increased productivity and expanding output overcome the substitution of workers for technology. While the substitution effect replaces some lower-skilled workers with new technology and more highly-skilled labor, the output effect can lead to an increase in the total number of jobs for less-skilled workers. Critically, output can increase sufficiently to increase jobs across all tasks and skill types within adopting firms, including jobs for lower-skilled workers, as long as lower-skilled task content remains complementary to new technologies and related occupations are not completely automated and replaced by machines. It is this channel for inclusive growth that underlies the power of pro-competitive enabling policies and institutions—such as regulations encouraging firms to compete and policies supporting the development of skills that technology augments rather than replaces—to ensure that the positive impact of technology adoption on productivity and lower-skilled workers is realized.

In Tomorrow’s Jobs Today, you’ll learn career tips, leadership secrets, and strategies from today’s most innovative business minds and renowned brands across the globe, including Paramount Pictures, State Farm Insurance, and PwC. You’ll discover exciting careers in emerging fields and find the unique toolset and education to land your dream job! Gain expertise with insights from Smart City CIOs, Data Protection Officers, Software Developers, Informatics Specialists, and many other skilled professionals on what it takes to succeed. Get indispensable resources like job descriptions, salary ranges, and a comprehensive directory of associations supporting these new professions. Explore technologies like Blockchain, Big Data, AgTech, the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Telematics, Health Information Technology, eDiscovery, and Cybersecurity and understand how they’ve transformed the job landscape. Tomorrow’s Jobs Today lets job seekers walk a virtual mile in the shoes of trailblazers who are changing the world! You’ll learn firsthand the diverse range of skills employers look for in top candidates and what to expect from a typical day at the office. This best-seller is for students determining which career track to embark on, guidance counselors and parents helping them, professionals between jobs, and everybody who wants a glimpse into the future of work!

Times are changing and the labor markets are under immense burden from the collective effects of various megatrends. Technological growth and grander incorporation of economies along with global supply chains have been an advantage for several workers armed with high skills and in growing occupations. However, it is a challenge for workers with low or obsolete skills in diminishing zones of employment. Business models that are digitalized hire workers as self-employed instead of standard employees. People seem to be working and living longer, but they experience many job changes and the peril of skills desuetude. Inequalities in both quality of job and earnings have increased in several countries. The depth and pace of digital transformation will probably be shocking. Industrial robots have already stepped in and artificial intelligence is making its advance too. Globalization and technological change predict the great potential for additional developments in labor market performance. But people should be ready for change. A progression of creative annihilation is probably under way, where some chores are either offshored or given to robots. A better world of for jobs cannot be warranted – a lot will be contingent on devising the right policies and institutes in place.

Written by researchers in education and urban policy, this volume offers useful insights into how to provide urban workers with the educational qualifications they need for real world jobs.

Presents a projection of potential developments in the U.S. labor market over the next five to ten years and discusses the preparations necessary to develop the 21st century workforce. Discusses the skills that will likely be most relevant in growing occupations, the value and limitations of our current post-high school educ. and training systems, and the characteristics of a more effective educ. and training structure. Examines the sectors that are expected to grow and develop over the next several years. The Amer. Recovery and Reinvest. Act will create new opportunities in already-expanding industries such as health care and educ., and also will create new opportunities in fledgling industries, such as renewable energy production and distribution.

World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolu­tion, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work. Schwab argues that this revolution is different in scale, scope and complexity from any that have come before. Characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, the developments are affecting all disciplines, economies, industries and governments, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human. Artificial intelligence is already all around us, from supercomputers, drones and virtual assistants to 3D printing, DNA sequencing, smart thermostats, wear­able sensors and microchips smaller than a grain of sand. But this is just the beginning: nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than a strand of hair and the first transplant of a 3D printed liver are already in development. Imagine “smart factories” in which global systems of manu­facturing are coordinated virtually, or implantable mobile phones made of biosynthetic materials. The fourth industrial revolution, says Schwab, is more significant, and its ramifications more profound, than in any prior period of human history. He outlines the key technologies driving this revolution and discusses the major impacts expected on government, business, civil society and individu­als. Schwab also offers bold ideas on how to harness these changes and shape a better future—one in which technology empowers people rather than replaces them; progress serves society rather than disrupts it; and in which innovators respect moral and ethical boundaries rather than cross them. We all have the opportunity to contribute to developing new frame­works that advance progress.

From bestselling writer David Graeber—“a master of opening up thought and stimulating debate” (Slate)—a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs…and their consequences. Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After one million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. There are hordes of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. “Clever and charismatic” (The New Yorker), Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation and “a thought-provoking examination of our working lives” (Financial Times).