In this series I will discuss the US job market from the 1950’s to 2018, focusing on how from a trending analysis perspective, it’s an ever shrinking job market over the long term and what the US needs to do to continue to create new jobs and what individuals need to expect out of the current job market and the near future.
And now to our featured presentation: 
Preview / Intro to the Series:
Part 1: The Post World War II Economy
US Job Expansion Post World War II was a fluke due to the rest of the western world being in ruin and having to be rebuilt. This lasted around 2 to 2.5 decades. We take a look at the job market between 1950 and the end of the 1960’s.
Part 2: Quick run through the 1980’s through the 1990’s
In part 2, we will run through the period between 1980’s through the 1990’s up to the dot com bubble and we stop there and continue on the dot com bubble bust and 9/11 in part 3.
Part 3: Graduating with a Job Pre 2001
In part three I don’t focus on a long era, instead I speak about the 1996 through the 2000 (pre-dot-com-bubble-bust) era where it was extremely easy for College Grads to have multiple job offers before leaving college some with signing bonuses in cash, stocks, and well above average salaries even in today’s job market. I discuss the recession from the dot com bubble bust and 9/11, and how after that short period, it has been increasing difficult for entry level jobs from 2001/2002 on through 2018. Finally we look at how automation has now reached the white collar job market and again this is why I say we have an ever shrinking job market.
Part 4: The Great Recession of 2008
Here’s part 4 of my series on the Ever shrinking Job Market. In this episode we will discuss the fall out of The Great Recession of 2008 and how it affected the Job Market up to the election of Donald Trump and still has echoing effects today.
Part 5: Women in the Work Force
In part 5 of the “Ever Shrinking Job Market” series, we discuss how women entering the work force en masse while absolutely fair in an equal society like we have here in the West, nearly halves the number of available jobs per the number of participants in the work force pool. There is a fallacy that women entering the work force would create jobs, and in this episode we talk about why that is the case.
Part 6: Automation – In both Blue Collar and White Collar Jobs
Here we discuss how increase in automation whether it be robots on the factor floor to STP (Straight Through Processing) and “Process Automation Robotics” on the desktop puts an ever increasing pressure on the Job Market, by increasing efficiency and decreasing the need for people in both traditional Blue Collar but also White Collar, especially your run of the mill “non-specialized” office job.
Part 7 – Globalization is Unstoppable
In 2002 you could offshore or outsource a Programmer or IT worker to India at a ratio of 1 US Programmer to 6 Programmers in India. Today, in 2018 that has come down to 1 to 2 or 1 to 3 depending on required skillset. As cost of living rises around the global, and the Internet continues to become faster and cheaper telecommuting increases and it no longer matters where your workers are located so long as they have a fast internet connection and the required skillset. Workers will have to compete in a Global Job Market, where the same job can be performed anywhere in their own country or in any other country on Earth. It is a simple supply and demand problem. As the number of programmers, IT workers, Information Workers, even Medical Imaging workers increases, even while the number of jobs increase, but it outpaced by the number of available workers, wages will come down in developed nations like the US and increase to comparable wages in developing nations as the developed work continues to ship jobs around the global looking to save on costs.
In the end skilled workers will have to compete for the same jobs with people from around the global. This also means that in large countries like the US that have diverse regions and local economies from State to State, workers may move around the country to wherever they prefer to, so long as they have a remote / telecommuting job. In the end the people who will have jobs are people with the right skillset and a fast internet connection that can support HD Video Conferencing, fast remote desktop environment to virtualized desktops in the cloud or private data center, and Real-Time Team Collaboration tools with rich feature sets that mesh together video, voice, virtual whiteboarding, document creation, and project management or project lifecycle tools.
Part 8 – Population Growth
Does population growth increase the Job Market?
Ask yourself: For every person that is born, does a new job auto-magically get added to the job market? Answer: No… But: There’s some mathematical relationship, probably some logarithmic scale, definitely some fractional growth, that is growth in the job market at a rate of less than 1 for every person born. Probably a lot less than one. That is because to support a growing population with everything from Food to Teachers and Doctors, it’s not a 1 to 1 relationship. A doctor can treat many patients and a teacher can and does teach multiple students at once. The same it true for farms, you don’t need to hire more farm hands to support an additional couple of acres of land, especially with machinery.
If you have a topic related to this video series that you would live me to cover, please leave a comment below!
~Planck