“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write;
but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
~Alvin Toffler
▬ How many people does it take to turn a windmill?
▬ How many new manufacturing / labor intensive industries are knocking on US doors?
▬ Does Wall Street care if unemployment goes down so long as shareholder earnings go up?
▬ How many countries are outsourcing their jobs to the US to produce good paying jobs here?
In the 40th edition of “What Color is Your Parachute?” author Richard N. Bolles calls the future workplace “troublesome” and that the job search process will be “job hunting survival.”
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, 1.8 billion people entered the free market system after years of communist rule. Competition is not just coming from India and China, it’s coming from former Soviet-dominated countries like Romania, The Czech Republic, East Germany, Kazakhstan, and Lithuania. The people in these developing nations are lean, mean, and prepared to work hard for their fair share of the capitalist way of life.
America is under siege
For the first time in our country’s history, we are under siege economically, from real competition that is not only here to stay, but that will become more competitive in the years and decades to come. While America becomes an apathetic, ambivalent, and lazy nation, billions of people in developing countries around the globe are enjoying their new-found freedom and are prepared to work as hard as it takes to overthrow us economically.
In the heyday of the Industrial Revolution, one-third of all working Americans were in manufacturing; today it’s less than 9%. Technology and globalization are eliminating jobs in America.
US companies are using labor-eliminating technology to eradicate jobs. We have planes that can fly without pilots; forklifts that can operate without human operators, robots replacing assembly workers, and ATM’s and self-service everything replacing almost everybody.
How to Survive in the NEW Workplace
- Turn off the TV, stop listening to all the negative and confrontational voices, put down the phone and plan your future. Focus on your expectations; not those of others.
- We all need to readjust our values, take a stand, and demand more from our elected officials – and ourselves.
- Let’s utilize our gifts of creativity, resourcefulness, and the ability to think – more importantly, the ability to RE-THINK. I do not believe the US must become a nation full of entrepreneurs… though the percentage needs to rise substantially. What we WILL have to do is learn how to rapidly downsize our lives without compromising quality of life – and start to manufacture and produce things again with lower overhead and earning less money. Smaller homes, one-car families, and seeking happiness from within.