At the rate jobs and professions are disappearing, the adults of the future will have to start planning their careers in kindergarten.
If this is beyond the realms of possibility, think again. The speed of change, the level of technological disrupters and the competition for employment is unprecedented.
Forty per cent of Australians employed in cities today, will have a moderate to high likelihood of their job disappearing within the next 10 to 15 years. That is five million jobs. For those in rural Australia this number increases to sixty per cent according to a CEDA report.
The future of Australia’s job market, according to the Federal Employment department is “looking a little like Marilyn Monroe’s hourglass figure – lots of jobs at the top and at the bottom, with slim pickings in between”.
Many of the middle level jobs are being off shored or disappearing. According to a 2013 Off Shore report “the occupations most at risk include those in information technology, administration, and jobs in finance and insurance and the professional, scientific and technical services sectors”.
It also “estimated 80,000 service-sector jobs have been moved overseas in the past four years and predicts hundreds of thousands more will go in the next three decades.
Australian’s more than ever have to take personal responsibility to ensure they have the necessarily skills to obtain employment and remain employable. It is not something that can be reviewed occasionally or taken for granted once employed. It is an economic imperative for individuals, families and for national productivity.
If past behaviour is a predictor of future behaviour the modern workforce cannot rely on governments or employers. Australians know this.
Organisations are constantly reviewing options to reduce costs. Governments consistently change or threatened to change policies that affect their citizen’s economic prosperity. Superannuation retirement age and benefits are under ongoing review.
If there is any message the government needs to reinforce; It is don’t rely on us, rely on yourself anything else is a bonus.
This message may be despairing for the current generation of unemployed workers over 50, who have inadvertently fallen into a deep chasm that divides the workers of the 20th century from those of the 21st.
In the later part of the 20th century many employees did not expect to be employed in the same job for life but they did expect to be employed until retirement. They were not misguided. They were just the first generation of employees who had not anticipated the future, or how the degree of disruption would affect their lives.
If there is any lesson to be learnt from the pain of what I like to call the “chasm generation” it is this. Forewarned is forearmed.
The employee of the future has to take control of their employment and invest in the skills required to gain and maintain employment. To achieve this time and energy must to be invested in understanding industry trends and the impact of technology on those industries.
To be an employee of the future there is no choice.
Once out of the workforce, as the generation over 50 clearly demonstrates, it is difficult to re-enter. Many skills quickly become obsolete or at the very least less valuable in the market place.
An example of the importance of industry trends on employment would be the impact of the cashless society. Last year Denmark government moved to scrap the obligation for retailers to accept cash. According to many recent articles, there wont be any paper cash within ten years in Australia.
This is just one trend worth considering if choosing a career’s in banking, designing bank notes, bank robbing, odd jobs for cash, and security to name a few.
Current growth industries in Australia are Health Care, Professional and scientific services and education and training as long as they cannot be outsourced over seas. However these industries as well will be influenced by growth in technologies such as Humanoids, Artificial Intelligence and 4D printing.
The last scene in the 1999 film “The Bicentennial Man” played by Robin Williams, clearly delivers this message about how times and technology are changing. Robin is hooked to a machine that is keeping him alive and is cared for by a nurse android. At his request the android switches off the machine. Nursing careers may be seen as secure according to current trends, however with the rise of the robots this may not be forever.
It is a social and economic imperative that Australians take personal responsibility for their careers more so than ever before. People and families must invest time understanding future trends and the impact of those trends on their lives and careers. People who choose this approach may have some chance of future employability. Those people, who choose not to, may be called lucky or simply fools.
