Читать книгу Future Proofing You - Jay Samit - Страница 12

Hundred‐year‐old companies are being displaced by newer, leaner startups. In a booming economy, retailers such as Radio Shack, Payless, Toys‐R‐Us, Kmart, and Macy's shuttered over 5,000 stores in 2017 displacing tens of thousands of workers. Of the original Fortune 500 companies, only 10.4 percent are still on the list.⁷ And when large companies fail, so do their underfunded pension plans. Over 120,000 retired United Airlines workers saw their former employer's pension fund collapse when the company filed for bankruptcy. The same thing happened to the pension funds of the once great industrial giants Delphi and Bethlehem Steel. So where are these so‐called secure jobs?

Manufacturing jobs in the United States peaked way back in 1979. Even if factories are coming back to America, they are going to be employing robots, not humans. According to the Washington Post, American factories now produce twice as much as they did in 1984, but with one‐third fewer workers.⁸ Studies show that each factory robot replaces six human jobs. Foxconn, the world's largest manufacture and maker of the iPhone, now has 10 lights‐out production lines. (The lights are out in the building because no humans work on those production lines.) In 2017, Foxconn announced that their goal was to replace all 1.2 million employees with automation.⁹ Our public school system was designed to educate workers with enough reading and math skills to boost factory productivity but not enough skills to venture out on their own. The standardized instruction and conformity we were taught in school leaves most people ill prepared for a postindustrial globalized world dominated by artificial intelligence and robotics.

Only one‐third of Americans have a college degree, and yet high school no longer prepares young adults for a trade or even how to find a job. And for those of you who racked up massive college debt, I am sorry to be the one to break the news to you but, research now shows that earning a degree from a major university has no long‐term impact on income, job satisfaction, or life satisfaction.

Security doesn't even exist for those working at the most prestigious corporations. Employees at successful tech companies, such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon, keep their jobs on average for less than two years.¹⁰ Even for the most educated among us, there is no job security. The adage that security robs ambition needs to be updated: it isn't security that robs ambition, but the illusion of security that robs ambition. The good news is that it isn't too late to change your trajectory and learn how to make money.