Here are two reports on the future of jobs in the US. A report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce entitled Help Wanted projects a serious shortfall in qualified workers:
by 2018, we will need 22 million new college degrees--but will fall short of that number by at least 3 million postsecondary degrees, Associate's or better. In addition, we will need at least 4.7 million new workers with postsecondary certificates.
A report from the Hamilton Project -- The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market -- makes the following points:
• Employment growth is polarizing, with job opportunities concentrated in relatively high-skill, high-wage jobs and low-skill, low-wage jobs.
• This employment polarization is widespread across industrialized economies; it is not a uniquely American phenomenon.
• The key contributors to job polarization are the automation of routine work and, to a smaller extent, the international integration of labor markets through trade and, more recently, offshoring.
• The Great Recession has quantitatively but not qualitatively changed the trend toward employment polarization in the U.S. labor market. Employment losses during the recession have been far more severe in middle-skilled white- and blue-collar jobs than in either high-skill, white-collar jobs or in low-skill service occupations.
• As is well known, the earnings of college-educated workers relative to high school-educated workers have risen steadily for almost three decades.
• Less widely discussed is that the rise in the relative earnings of college graduates are due both to rising real earnings for college workers and falling real earnings for noncollege workers--particularly noncollege males.
• Gains in educational attainment have not generally kept pace with rising educational returns, particularly for males. And the slowing pace of educational attainment has contributed to the rising college versus high school earnings gap.
Both the skills/education gap and the polarization of wages are serious problems facing the I-Cubed Economy. In my view, they will not be solved through our conventional educational and labor market policies. Those policies continues to be geared toward the labor markets of the industrial age. For example, we provide government support for unemployment insurance and re-training once people lose their jobs. But we have few programs to upgrade workers' skills and keep them competitive so they don't lose their jobs in the first place. That is way I've been advocating a knowledge tax credit.
The knowledge tax credit is just one example of how we need to change our thinking on public policy. I am sure that others can come up with dozens of other ideas. As these two reports indicate, however, we need to do this re-thinking now. Otherwise, the problems will simply continue to grow.
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