Interesting viewpoint from our old friend Charles Hughes Smith ... from
(snip)To understand alternatives to conventional corporate/government jobs, we have to understand "the economy we have, not the one we wish we had."
The average jobseeker is hoping to nail down a corporate or government position, for the usual reasons: security, pay and benefits. This is understandable, and it works for those who do manage to nail down a corporate/government job.
But what about everyone else? What do they do for a career? And what about those who take the Corporate America/state job and realize it isn't a good match for who they are and where they want to go?
The conventional options are on the margins of the economy: a low-wage part-time job or risky self-employment. No wonder most people want a secure Corporate America/state gig.
But there aren't enough secure, high-paying corporate/government jobs for everyone who wants one. The conventional (and carefully unstated) view is: tough luck, welcome to the low-wage serfdom basement of the economy. Take a part-time McJob or three if you can get them and spend your life scraping by.
I don't see low-wage serfdom as the only alternative to a shiny Corporate America/government bureaucracy job. To understand the alternatives, we have to understand the economy we have, not the one we wish we had or the one we might have in the future.
I often receive emails asking for job/career advice, and this is to be expected, given my latest book is titled Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.
My first response is to list the four conditions that make finding paying work easier:
1. Living in a place with a diverse range of opportunities for work.
2. Developing a network of people who know I’m looking for work and who trust me to do a good job.
3. Having more than one skill so I can take a variety of jobs.
4. Knowing what kind of work I like doing.
Beyond these common-sense points, job-seekers and those changing careers need to understand the disruptive forces transforming the economy.
There are three fundamental forces disrupting the conventional order, and everyone with their eyes open sees them at work every day:
1. Essential resources are becoming more expensive.
2. The system of expanding credit/debt to fund more consumption (i.e. “growth”) has reached marginal returns and is failing.
3. Networked software, automation and robotics are reducing the need for human labor on a global scale.
As a result of these three structural forces, economic instability is not going to go away any time soon. Technology leapfrogs the obsolete and inefficient; no wonder conventional sectors and the market for traditional 9-to-5 jobs are both stagnating.
The realization that ever-expanding debt and consumption are unsustainable has given rise to a new understanding of the economy called Degrowth (French: décroissance, Spanish: decrecimiento, Italian: decrescita).
From the perspective of sustainable prosperity, growth based on ever-expanding debt-based consumption is the road to ruin.
This shift from debt-based consumption to a more productive sustainability is bringing profound changes to the nature of work itself and social arrangements in the workplace.
Though we can’t foresee all the ramifications of networked software, automation and robotics, we can predict one aspect of this systemic disruption: technology will disrupt the most expensive, least efficient sectors of the economy because that’s where the greatest reductions in cost can be reaped.
In our economy, these are healthcare, education, government and national defense, all traditionally viewed as stable sectors with guaranteed job security. That is changing, as the soaring costs of these sectors now exceed the economy’s ability to fund them. If an economy expands by 2% each year and healthcare costs rise by 5% each year, eventually healthcare runs out of oxygen—there isn’t enough income generated by the economy to fund its continued expansion.
Few “experts”—academics, pundits and advisors—have accepted the reality of these forces or thought through the interacting consequences. As a result, we’re on our own in setting a course and navigating the inevitable storms ahead as the old system lurches from crisis to crisis, weakening further as every politically expedient reform fails to address these structural realities.
Outmoded Career Advice Is the Norm
Though the transformative power of these three forces is self-evident, remarkably, conventional career counseling is still stuck in the past, offering three basic bits of advice:
1. Choose a career that aligns with your core talents and interests.
2. Get as many credentials as you can -- degrees, certifications, etc. -- because the gatekeepers who do the hiring require them.
3. Since the goal is secure employment, try to get a job in the government or a big corporation.
In my view, the conventional advice has it all backward. What worked in the past is no longer working because the economy and the nature of work are both being disrupted by forces that cannot be controlled by those threatened by these fundamental changes.
In the conventional view, a college degree prepares one to enter the workforce. This is no longer true, as higher education has largely failed to keep pace with technology and a fast-changing economy.
As for adding more credentials to keep ahead of the pack—degree inflation dooms this strategy for all but the few who manage to secure multiple degrees from elite universities. And even this is no guarantee of lifetime security for everyone, as the number of open slots in gatekeeper-dominated institutions is much smaller than the rapidly expanding pool of over-credentialed applicants.
What matters more than credentials is the ability to keep learning new skills over one’s entire productive life.
And while it’s certainly solid advice to align one’s work with one’s talents and interests, even this advice misses the key dynamics of the emerging economy—which I define as the parts of the economy that are thriving on innovation rather than depending on cheap credit and asset bubbles for their survival.
The thriving parts of the economy rely less on gatekeepers and credentials and more on skills, flexibility, professionalism, mastery and networks of collaboration.
In the emerging economy, security arises not from institutional promises but from a diversity of skills and income streams and a flourishing network of other trustworthy, productive people.
As a result, the goal for jobseekers isn’t just to identify one’s talents and interests but to acquire a diverse suite of flexible skills and a network that enables you to put these skills to good use.
In this view, work isn’t what you do between 9 and 5: it’s a lifestyle informed by a flexible, open perspective and guided by entrepreneurial values.(snip)



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the other 5% .......................

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