3 "A's" driving the economy, and the 1 word killing jobs
Renowned author Daniel Pink is optimistic about the future of the United States and its economy.
But in a speech Monday to Midwestern legislators, he also had a word of warning about their states’ future economies and prosperity.
"One word will obliterate jobs – routine," Pink told attendees at this year’s Midwestern Legislative Conference Annual Meeting.
Workers and policymakers in Michigan and other manufacturing-reliant regions of the Midwest already know what he means. "Routine" jobs in this key economic sector have been lost due to factors such as productivity advances and global-economic pressures.
"The factory floor doesn’t look like it did 40 years ago," Pink said.
And thanks to some other enduring trends – particularly the rise of automation and Asian economies – jobs in other sectors are being threatened and lost as well.
"The same thing is happening with routine work in the white-collar workforce," Pink said.
As result, he believes it is imperative for public policy – from revamping education systems to changing workforce strategies – to reflect this change.
"A different set of abilities matters more, and we haven’t taken that set of abilities seriously enough," said Pink, author of the best-selling "A Whole Mind."
"Right brain" abilities such as design, inventiveness, empathy and big-picture thinking are what it takes to excel in the 21st economy, Pink believes. Meanwhile, careers in traditional "left brain" fields (accounting, the law and software engineering, for example) will not be as secure as they once were due to the "three A’s" driving the economy of today and the future: abundance, Asia and automation.www.csgmidwest.org, where details of the event (including speakers’ presentations) will be posted soon after the conference ends.
TurboTax is just one of many examples of the consequences of automation. Much to the chagrin of accountants, Pink said, they are being forgotten at tax season by more and more taxpayers who instead are filing their own taxes with the help of computer software.
Pink noted, too, that in 2010, India will have more English speakers than any other country in the world. The ability and willingness of workers in that country to perform "routine" work is a threat to jobs here, he believes.
"The off-sourcing of white-collar has been over-hyped in the short-term, but it is being under-hyped in the long-term," he said.
Pink was the keynote speaker at this year’s MLC Annual Meeting. His presentation was followed by three policy breakout sessions on educational technology, privacy and innovation-led economic development.
Richard Norton Smith then gave an eloquent and stirring luncheon speech on political leadership lessons that can be learned from our nation’s Midwestern presidents of the past.
More information on the MLC Annual Meeting is available at www.csgmidwest.org
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