Some great work from Amanda Cox at the New York Times looking at US Labour Markets:
At every age, the chances of not working have changed in the last 15 years. Teenagers are far more likely not to work. Older people are retiring later and working more. In the ages in between — the periods of life when most people work — the changes have been smaller, but they are still substantial.
Source: New York Times
In the late 1960s, almost all men between the ages of 25 and 54 went to work. Only about 5 out of every 100 did not have a job in any given week. By 2000, this figure had more than doubled, to 11 out of every 100 men. This year, it’s 16. (People in the military, prison and institutions are excluded from these figures.)
This from the Atlantic:
In 1974, the radio broadcaster Studs Terkel published a book of profiles to have “people talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do.” The title of the book was, simply, Working.
Source: The Atlantic
That was appropriate. Working was what people did all day, particularly if they were men in their 20s, 30s, 40s, or 50s. In the 1970s, as in previous decades, about 95 percent of men between the age of 25 and 54 were either working or actively looking for their next job. Only 5.5 percent of them were what economists consider “inactive”—out of the labor force.
But somebody revisiting Terkel’s project in the next decade would be encouraged to find a more flexible title. In each decade since the 1970s, the inactivity rate for 25-54-year-old men—the share of guys neither working nor actively seeking a job—has gone up. Each decade, not working becomes more and more a part of what we’re doing all day.
For those living and working in rural areas, the importance of providing genuine pathways to skilled employment for local populations, particularly young-people, is paramount. We understand in great detail, the challenges of ageing rural populations and structural adjustments. This is more than just a “microcosm” of the challenges facing our national economy.
Working in the field of skills development, labour markets and rural and regional planning, the nature of this model of collaboration and its result, has genuinely raised my interest and admiration.
I have had the honour of attending the dual official opening[s] of the $AUD 11.3 Million dollar, Central Ranges Trade Training Centre, a uniquecollaboration of nine Government and Catholic secondary schools spanning a potential student population of some 3,500 across the shires of Mitchell and Murrindindi and the City of Whittlesea.
Southern Hub – Whittlesea
I say “unique”with genuine intent. It is rare [at least in my 30 years of experience] to see a level of collaboration, governance and coordination, that sees a number of individual schools, TAFE Colleges [Goulburn Ovens and Kangan Batman], Industry partners and a community-based planning network [Central Ranges LLEN] agree to fore-go individual funding, to maximise and pool available funds to establish a distributed network of infrastructure and human resources to supply a quality and depth of training opportunity that is clearly greater than the some of its parts.
Today in Seymour, the “Northern Hub” was officially opened by the Federal Minister for Skills and Training, The Honourable Brendan O’Connor and the Member for McEwen, Mr. Rob Mitchell. This completed the “bookend” of the opening of the Southern Hub, at Whittlesea Secondary College, just over a week ago. This complements the two other minor hubs, established and on-stream in 2012 at Alexandra Secondary College and Assumption College Kilmore.
Central Ranges TTC – Northern Hub – Seymour
In this expanded regional network, there are schools from the Government and Catholic sectors, their key leaders, school Principals, have chosen to take on a level of planning complexity and responsibility that is not easily reconciled with their “day-to-day” core-business, yet is clearly in the best interests of young people and employers throughout the region to gain access to training facilities and high-level qualifications in key areas of long-term skill-shortage.
Engineering Students – Seymour
Northern Hub – CRTTC
Broadford Secondary College, as lead school in the consortium, coordinated and managed the five year project, yet received no capital investment. Seymour College and Whittlesea Secondary College, provided technical, programmatic and planning expertise and shared this with all schools and partners. This is what genuine leadership is, at the community level, these leaders have taken responsibility to build something for a region and the young people within it, well-beyond their individual school gates…
The other partners, specialists, governments and individuals have all contributed, having recognised the depth of collaboration and commitment of this consortium. To also complete such a complex task on budget and ahead-of-time, certainly challenges the stereotypical view of the public sector.
A genuine model of cluster-collaboration with concrete, long-term success. Congratulations to all involved.
Links
The Central Ranges Trade Training Centre Consortium
Can a 3D printer cool the Planet? Stay with me on this..
As we once againhear that the 1990 IPCC Climate modelling for the planet is “on trend” or “coming true”, I ponder the relationship between some of the major policy challenges Australia faces and see opportunity where at present we seem only to be experiencing confusion and much hand-wringing. It appears as clear as it was in 1990 that climate is the context for all other policy work.
There is no doubt that past and current political leaders have dropped the ball, and if my understanding of the research is correct, we have already locked in a temperature rise that current political leaders appear too timid or intellectually incapable of addressing.
We need greater strategic collaboration between education, IT, manufacturing, workforce and environmental portfolios than ever before. This is a challenge for all levels of government.
You might ask what the Climate, Australia’s NBN, Employment and Education policies have to do with one another? … Well, that’s my point.
There appears little or no effort [or perhaps ability] to truly connect some of the major policy challenges facing the country and the globe. Australia, as a nation, is very well placed to respond to and lead the changes required to address the challenges of global climate change and simultaneously address the current national and global debates about education and skills for modern communities and their economies.
There is [rightly] much concern in policy circles about the skills and opportunities that will be available to young people in the future. There is also, [rightly] concern about the relative level of skills and employability within the Australian workforce and the competitive advantage [or lack there-of] of the Nation over the coming decades.
If one looks at [for example] the current political debates surrounding teacher salaries and school performance, infrastructure spending for the National Broadband Network, the tense debates on Murray Darling Basin and particularly the ongoing critical debate about the necessary ”adjustments” or ”transformations” required in the Australian manufacturing industry, it would be easy to be overwhelmed by any one issue and you would certainly be excused for not relating one issue to the next, let alone, the debate about climate change.
I was struck by a piece from The Economist in 2011:
More than 20% of the output of 3D printers is now final products rather than prototypes, according to Terry Wohlers, who runs a research firm specialising in the field. He predicts that this will rise to 50% by 2020.
This got me thinking about the pending revolution in manufacturing and the preparedness [or not] of our Education and Industry sectors.
Concepts of school or home-based manufacturing seem fanciful, but for those of us that have witnessed the changes in the printing industry, it is not such a big leap to see what is coming.
Schools, universities and their IT departments were some of the earliest adopters of “new” dot-matrix and “desktop” printing technologies. We saw a profound change in an established “heavy” industry over just two decades, and we are still witnessing the fallout from those changes in the news and media fields today.
I have no doubt we will see a similar adoption and change in the coming decade, although this time, the change will be across the entire PROCESS of manufacturing.
Our educators, schools and universities are more important than ever before.
Consider the recent news.
In February of this year, an 83 year old woman had her lower jaw replaced, using a jaw that the surgeon PRINTED in a 3D printer.
As recently as last month, GE Aviation, part of the world’s biggest manufacturing group, bought a privately owned company called Morris Technologies. Morris Technologies is expert in 3D printing equipment and will be printing parts for jet engines. [The Economist]
A new start-up company, FormLabs, has even announced a high quality DESKTOP 3D printer in development.
It has been quite routine for about a decade for prototyping pieces in 3D printers. Architects, Engineers, Medical researchers, Physicists, Chemists and many others are all familiar with this field.
This is what 3D printing looks like:
Conceptually, 3D manufacturing becomes an additive more than subtractive process, thus less raw materials, [lower carbon footprint] and the benefit of unitization [less parts] is realised [because each item can be altered all within software, there is no re-tooling, or in many cases, any tooling [beyond the 3D printer and operator]. This fundamentally changes the nature of the enterprise, at every level, from supply, logistics, quality control, marketing… You name it, it changes.
The competitive advantage becomes almost solely the skill of the user; their ability to respond to market need and their ability to protect their intellectual property.
When one combines this with a highly trained and skilled workforce that has access to computing and bandwidth resources, you create the circumstances for genuine innovation.
Consider for a moment the major inputs required for an economy based on virtualised manufacturing.
The education, skills and collaborative abilities of the new manufacturers will be paramount. Their access to bandwidth will be central to their viability. Their relationships with research institutions will be critical. These manufacturers will not require some/many of the industrial-age inputs that have produced such carbon-intensive enterprises that now threaten the planet. This is one of the few times when the use of the word “revolution” could be genuinely justified and not considered hyperbole.
Innovation clusters and the ability to network strategically will be the norm.
In last months Technology Spectator, Thomas Birtchnell and John Urry envisioned four ways that 3D printing could change the world. They posited four alternate futures:
Home Factories – Where everyone has a 3D Printer.. They print all the “STUFF” they want. They buy designs online, trade in designs, even make their own designs. “Shops” with “stuff” disappear. Amazon has nothing to deliver.. This might seem fanciful, however, we all know how ridiculous a printer in every home seemed in 1981?? I knew lots of people that worked in typing pools?
Print Shops – Manufacturing “returns” to places such as the UK, USA or Australia. Efficiency gains and new business models create a renaissance. Again, this might seem impossible, given the “religion of the outsourced”, but consider an announcement from Time Cook, CEO of Apple this week..
Fab labs – Communities of interest, clusters of innovation, local or regional manufacturing hubs, hinged on open-source technology and skills. The high-tech “farmers markets” of the next decade.
A 3D Bubble – The 3D industry collapses, and remains a niche, specialist endeavour with little or no take-up. [Given integration of policy by governments, this might be more likely than not??]
I would suggest that any combination of the first three “futures” suggested by Birtchnell and Urry are desirable.
Australia seems particularly well placed to take advantage of the benefits in such changes to the manufacturing process if it is able to harmonise its key strategic public policy platforms in education, IT infrastructure, manufacturing and climate.
I think a 3D printer in a classroom just might cool the the planet!
Once again, the labour market data in Australia shows a remarkably robust labour market, with seasonally adjusted unemployment stable in July at 5.8%. ANZ CEO Mike Smith last night stated that he saw unemployment here stabilising at 6%, which would be remarkable. The problem is that that would require a fair pick up in the economy in the second half of this year, which is…..
The unemployment numbers yesterday were again remarkably good relative to what is happening elsewhere in the world. The headline u/e rate is up to 5.8%. Since July last year we’ve lost about 160,000 full time jobs, but part time jobs are up about 127,000. Of course we need to create jobs to stop the unemployment rate from rising, but compare these numbers with the US. Paul Krugman this week pointed out that the US has lost more than 6 million jobs since the recession started, and it needed to create 8 million jobs to stop the unemployment rate from rising over the same period.
Jeff Borland has a splendid article (gated, sorry) in the latest Australian Economic Review on what happens to the labour market in recessions. 4 Key points:
The impact across industries differs greatly. In past recessions, employment tends to fall in agriculture, manufacturing and construction, but also tends to rise in ‘recreation and personal services’, and sometimes also in the ‘community services’ industry.
In percentage point terms, youth unemployment tends to rise more than prime-aged unemployment in recessions,
In recessions, long term unemployment tends to increase more than short-term unemployment.
