Rana Faroohar of Time discusses the 5 myths of the economic recovery. And a variety of folks have been talking about some of these issues for a long time, notably Thomas Friedman in his The World is Flat that in part, inspired the start of this blog. It's becoming clearer there are only two ends of the economy that can create jobs in the US:
- The High Knowledge End: High knowledge (i.e. a graduate degree or Ph.D.) takes years of schooling particularly in science and technology and is a longer term solution and applies to students at the high school stage today.
- Those older individuals who are already in these high knowledge fields need to think hard about what value they bring to the “global” economic table given that businesses and hire several scientists and engineers in China or India at the cost of the single individual at a high cost location like the US. And as numerous reports suggest multinational companies are doing exactly that.
Promoting entrepreneurship for the US high knowledge end is probably the policy answer for the folks who already have these high knowledge skills.
- The High Touch Service End : This is the delivery or distribution channel piece. Included at the low wage end are all kinds of services like hair salons nail spas and restaurants. Go to any Town Center in America and you’ll be surprised by the very high number of new hair and nail spa types of places. Obviously these businesses work, but neither employees nor owners are laughing to the bank.
- There are high touch high skill jobs are also knowledge end but don’t need a Ph.D. These include healthcare sector jobs like nursing, high end technical trade skills and very specific business analytic and support skills.
The big change we have to start accepting is that the mid-range factory skills or service skills will continue to migrate overseas. The new skills and value add will need to be support the high knowledge skilled entrepreneurs that can help the high tech knowledge sector take off.
And guess what – the support high touch “non-outsourceable” jobs might be fairly well paid, can employ masses, and will require only relevant training that does not take years. Contact StratoServe.