The Economic Policy Institute may be a great organization with really smart people but it's hard to tell from where I'm sitting. I don't have the time to do research on this non-profit think tank. I'll break my Personal Rule Number 8 and suggest that because they are featured on Yahoo! News that they are a legitimate organization.
This article comes from the AP (Pallavi Gogi, Business Reporter) and features a familiar diatribe about US jobs going overseas:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_overseas_hiring;_ylt=ArBZlCbNRoAECtBQ1QZCK2.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNpNTNzb3M0BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAxMjI4L3VzX292ZXJzZWFzX2hpcmluZwRjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzIEcG9zAzcEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcnkEc2xrA3doZXJlYXJldGhlag--
What's different here is the comparison between sending jobs overseas and the perceived market value of the company that does business like that. In short, investors like it when companies get rid of "regular jobs" here in the USA.
Robert Scott, the Senior International Economist from the Economic Policy Institute puts this very clearly: "There's a huge difference between what is good for American companies versus what is good for the American economy," says Scott.
What is good for American Companies may not be good for America, but what about you? Is this good for your job prospects? Career opportunity? Your economic outlook?
I'm not a protectionist or a nationalist in any way. I agree that in the international market for work, Americans have out-priced and underperformed themselves out for the market. Is that bad?
Could that be good? What if you understood this reality and worked within that new world market to better yourself and your economic outlook by changing your ideas on what work really means?
Good or bad is not the issue. Change is the issue. Work is changing because of this and many other critical factors in the business equation of the 21st century.
It's not a 1900's job market here in America, and certainly not in India, China, Brazil or the Russian Republic. Think about how the job market has changed in those places. Think about those people and their expectations for the kind of work you have always known as "work".
You would be naive to think that the jobs we send overseas are always a boon to the lifestyle, financial health, culture and environmental outlook of the people who's lives are different doing this new work. Again, I'm not saying it's good.
It's a dynamic and fundamental change in the way we think about work. It's one of the reasons your life will not be the same.
Very soon.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
So, What Do You Do for a Living?
Why is it that your work.....what you do for a job.....seems to define you as a person in the social world? After your name, this question seems to come up rather quickly in introductory conversation. People get tagged with certain occupational labels and a myriad of sterotypes start flying across the room.
Work is important in human interaction. You don't have to be a cultural anthropologist to understand how the world started changing when proto-humans developed tools to allow for productive time spent outside of hunting, gathering, fighting and having sex. I'm sure there are some that trace this functional identity issue to some of the core challenges in behavioral psychology, sociology, law, and our basic culture itself.
Let's focus on what's outside your window right now, in the real world, and leave the academic pursuits to others. What do you do for for your normal job? How is that related to your long term career goals? Are either of those part of who your really are?
For many people, your job is not your career and it's not what you'd like to be identified with as a deep and lasting personal commitment. Because work is sometimes not your identity. It's what you do to be able to be yourself when you're not working.
The nature of work is different in the 21st Century than it was even a few months ago. For centuries, we've done a variations on the master-slave, capitalist-consumer, tradesman-society, and corporation-workforce transaction. Now things have drastically changed. Corporations cannot support the normal employment transaction within the international economic arena. Outsourcing, contracting, "Lean" process design, cheap transportation, and real-time information exchange have all given your normal work a huge make-over. If you have not experienced those changes yet, don't worry. You will.
The evidence is so clear and frightfully in our face that lots of people refuse to take a look: The Postal Service, American Auto Workers (and now their international counterparts) , IBM, General Electric, US Steel (does that still exist?), Japanese Electronics, Ship Building, European Banks, even Wal Mart (one of the worlds largest employers) is re-thinking their normal employee transaction.
This blog will start to look at the dynamics of work, and how this basic part of your life is (or will be) completely changed in the next 18-24 months. That seems like a short time frame and in the internet world, it's probably 3-5 years.
You are welcome to post here on how your job has morphed, changed, disappeared, or multiplied in the recent past. How do you plan on "making a living" in the future? How is that a part of who you are? Or should it be?
I'll keep you posted from the inside of the employment transaction machinery. I work with employers and applicants on matching up people with work.....project work, regular work, any kind of work. It's been what I've done for about 30 years and it's a fun, enlightening, and scary job.
It's apparently part of who I am. Which was my original question. Why is that?
Work is important in human interaction. You don't have to be a cultural anthropologist to understand how the world started changing when proto-humans developed tools to allow for productive time spent outside of hunting, gathering, fighting and having sex. I'm sure there are some that trace this functional identity issue to some of the core challenges in behavioral psychology, sociology, law, and our basic culture itself.
Let's focus on what's outside your window right now, in the real world, and leave the academic pursuits to others. What do you do for for your normal job? How is that related to your long term career goals? Are either of those part of who your really are?
For many people, your job is not your career and it's not what you'd like to be identified with as a deep and lasting personal commitment. Because work is sometimes not your identity. It's what you do to be able to be yourself when you're not working.
The nature of work is different in the 21st Century than it was even a few months ago. For centuries, we've done a variations on the master-slave, capitalist-consumer, tradesman-society, and corporation-workforce transaction. Now things have drastically changed. Corporations cannot support the normal employment transaction within the international economic arena. Outsourcing, contracting, "Lean" process design, cheap transportation, and real-time information exchange have all given your normal work a huge make-over. If you have not experienced those changes yet, don't worry. You will.
The evidence is so clear and frightfully in our face that lots of people refuse to take a look: The Postal Service, American Auto Workers (and now their international counterparts) , IBM, General Electric, US Steel (does that still exist?), Japanese Electronics, Ship Building, European Banks, even Wal Mart (one of the worlds largest employers) is re-thinking their normal employee transaction.
This blog will start to look at the dynamics of work, and how this basic part of your life is (or will be) completely changed in the next 18-24 months. That seems like a short time frame and in the internet world, it's probably 3-5 years.
You are welcome to post here on how your job has morphed, changed, disappeared, or multiplied in the recent past. How do you plan on "making a living" in the future? How is that a part of who you are? Or should it be?
I'll keep you posted from the inside of the employment transaction machinery. I work with employers and applicants on matching up people with work.....project work, regular work, any kind of work. It's been what I've done for about 30 years and it's a fun, enlightening, and scary job.
It's apparently part of who I am. Which was my original question. Why is that?
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