via The Atlantic and NPR

Today, at least 90% of the country has a stove, electricity, car, fridge, clothes washer, air-conditioning, color TV, microwave, and cell phone. Take a moment to savor this graph from Visual Economics, which shows the adoption rate of new technologies across the century:

One way to parse it is to ignore everything at the top and trace your eye along the 10% line:

– In 1900, <10% of families owned a stove, or had access to electricity or phones

– In 1915, <10% of families owned a car

– In 1930, <10% of families owned a refrigerator or clothes washer

– In 1945, <10% of families owned a clothes dryer or air-conditioning

– In 1960, <10% of families owned a dishwasher or color TV

– In 1975, <10% of families owned a microwave

– In 1990, <10% of families had a cell phone or access to the Internet

In his final of 3 posts, Derek Thompson of The Atlantic notes: “In 1900, less than 10% of families owned a stove, or had access to electricity or phones, and the Model-T was still a full decade away.” His first installment of this series followed shifting family budgets between 1900 and 2003. The second explained why food seems so much cheaper at the dawn of the 21st century. The third is different because it goes beyond numbers, to include issues of quality of life and the question of progress: “It’s not just that life expectancy at birth has grown from 49 years in 1900 to 78 today, but also the quality of our lives has been improved by law (e.g.: new safety and anti-discrimination laws), by culture (e.g.: women’s ascent in college and the workplace) and by technology.” (Believe it or not, the boom box was the fastest-adopted gadget of the last 50 years.)

Another piece from NPR traces the Birth of Silicon Valley. Now a well-known hotbed of innovation stretching along the peninsula southwest of San Francisco Bay, the story that emerges from this timeline is the transformative power of venture capital, as well as the onward march of technology. Click on the image below to explore the timeline.

By: Catherine Rampell
Via: The New York Times

Last month I wrote about how state budget cuts were forcing public universities to raise tuition and cut programs. Some of the subjects most valuable for job and economic growth — like engineering, computer science and health sciences — have been most vulnerable, because they also happen to be among the most expensive to teach.

One new and especially high-profile example is the University of Florida, which this month announced a plan that would gut its Computer and Information Science and Engineering Department.

Last week, Gov. Rick Scott of Florida signed a law cutting higher education funds in the state by $300 million, according to local papers. This follows cuts totaling $767 million over the previous five years, according to the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University.

The University of Florida, the state’s flagship school, has been hit particularly hard. In an opinion article in The Gainesville Sun, a former university administrator said this year would bring “$38 million in budget cuts, creating an accumulated reduction in state funding to U.F. of 30 percent, or $240 million, since 2006.”

The university has responded to these cuts with tuition increases, although the Legislature has set ceilings on tuition that keep schools from fully offsetting the cutback in state support. This is true in many other states, too.

So the university, like others across the country, is making some draconian spending cuts.

These include eliminating all graduate and research activity in its computer science department. Some of the department’s faculty will be scattered to other departments, and some will have their jobs converted to full-time teaching/advising positions with a much higher teaching burden. The school plans to cut the department’s entire teaching-assistant budget.

Needless to say, many of the faculty members are expected to leave, and their innovation, ideas and research will go with them.

For context, Governor Scott made some controversial statements last October about favoring higher education that generates more job growth and economic activity because education is fundamentally a kind of investment in your work force.

“If I’m going to take money from a citizen to put into education, then I’m going to take that money to create jobs,” he told The Sarasota Herald-Tribune. “So I want that money to go to degrees where people can get jobs in this state.”

“Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think so.”

By: Brent Rasmussen
Via: Harvard Business Review

We often hear from job seekers: “If I have the necessary skills and experience, why am I not hearing back from more companies?”

It’s a fair question, especially for the more than five million workers who’ve been unemployed for six months or longer (more than 40 percent of all unemployed job seekers). Struggling to get a foot in the door doesn’t mean this group is unqualified or lacks what it takes to do the job. With hundreds of applications submitted for a single open position, it’s indicative of a fiercely competitive labor market.

So how does someone who’s among the long-term unemployed stand out? Will employers even look past their employment gap — the time that’s elapsed since their last day on the job?

New research from CareerBuilder found that 85 percent of hiring managers and human resource managers are more understanding of employment gaps now than they were pre-recession. While that’s refreshing news, it comes with an important caveat: This group still needs to go another step to draw attention to their resumes.

Companies are still looking carefully at how unemployed job seekers have spent their time. There’s a notion is that if you’ve been out of work for an extended period of time, you begin to lose an edge on previously acquired skills. Whether or not you buy into the concept of skills erosion, it’s safe to assume that hiring managers are more likely to look past employment gaps for applicants who’ve stayed active in the interim.

So what do hiring managers recommend?

In the same survey, 61 percent said taking a class or going back to school is a great start. This can be as simple as taking a certification course (e.g., IT workers), attending professional seminars, or enrolling in community college courses. If the subject matter expands your skill set or can be applied in the next job, that’s information that should be featured prominently on your resume or in your cover letter.

Sixty percent of hiring managers said volunteering increases the candidate’s marketability. Volunteerism is a testament to a person’s character and work ethic. However, many job seekers are not doing the best job of promoting that experience on their resumes and cover letters. It can’t be an isolated bullet point buried on the page. Job seekers should choose volunteer work that can be woven organically into their existing professional narratives — and then be ready to sell it no differently than the rest of their work history. Ask yourself: What skills did I learn or hone? Can I quantify my impact or speak to how my efforts contributed to the organizations’ successes?

Seventy-nine percent said taking a temporary or contract assignment is advisable. Temp or contract work is not just for entry-level workers and young professionals. Opportunities are available across job types, experience levels, and salary ranges. If becoming a permanent freelancer isn’t in your plans, note that about one in four employers plan to transition some temporary workers into full-time, permanent employees in quarter two of 2012.

Fewer employers felt that the ambitious task of starting your own business (28 percent) or writing a professional blog (11 percent) were good ways to improve your marketability, but if those activities showcase your potential value, they certainly can’t hurt.

Say a job seeker has done all this and still isn’t faring any better? There are two job search tactics that are vastly underutilized, according to our research and conversations with employers: follow-through and presenting customized ideas to your prospective employer.

Two-thirds of workers don’t follow up with the employer after submitting their resume for consideration. If the hiring manager provides contact information, sending an email a week or two after submission can prompt a closer look (or maybe even a second look) at your resume. And when the interview opportunity arrives, it’s best not to focus solely on the past. Employers want candidates who have researched their company rigorously, and have prepared concrete ideas for what they’ll bring to the role.

A competitive labor market requires a dynamic job search. Regardless of how unemployed job seekers spend their time, the common denominator is to continue your professional development and show potential employers how you can help them.

By: Jack Mollen
Via: HBR Blog Network

It is time for immigration reform that will keep more top technical talent in the United States. Today, American colleges and universities are educating foreign nationals who come here to earn advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM fields). We educate them, and then U.S. immigration regulations force them to leave our country to return home, where they contribute to economic growth and the success of our competitors overseas. That has to change.

When allowed to remain in the U.S., foreign nationals with STEM degrees earned at American schools have gone on to become some of our most distinguished engineers and researchers. They add value to our economy and our companies. They generate new insights and contribute to innovations that change the way the industry addresses previously unsolved problems. Yet, U.S. employers face greater demand for STEM skills than the supply of STEM graduates. And the lack of immigration reform is constricting the pipeline of technical talent.

The 2009 study, Losing the World’s Best and Brightest (funded by the Kauffman Foundation, in collaboration with Harvard Law School, Duke University’s School of Engineering and U.C. School of Information and Harvard Law School), found that “foreign national students… are planning to leave the U.S. after graduation in numbers that appear to be higher than the historical norm as measured in STEM disciplines. A significant number of these students also say they intend to open businesses in the future.”

According to the study, foreign national students claim their reason for leaving the U.S. after graduation is because they “are very worried about obtaining the work visa required to pursue employment in the U.S. (a major concern for over 70% of respondents) and about the difficulties of obtaining permanent residency (a major concern for over 50% of respondents from China and Europe).” After coming to the U.S. to learn, they don’t want to have to wait a decade or longer just to receive Permanent Resident status and the security of knowing that they can continue to pursue their career in the U.S., employed by American firms, where they would contribute to U.S. economic growth.

In addition to the trouble of retaining STEM graduates in the U.S., EMC and other leading employers in the U.S. face enormous obstacles when we try to relocate top technical talent from abroad into the United States. For example, take the L-1B visa, which allows employers to bring tenured employees to the U.S. to perform work utilizing their specialized knowledge of proprietary products and processes of the sponsoring employer. This kind of employer-based nonimmigrant petitions were granted routinely in the past. They are now being audited or denied, even though the regulations governing submissions have not changed. According to the National Foundation for American Policy, denial rates for L-1B petitions filed with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services rose from 7% in fiscal year 2007 to 27% in fiscal year 2011.

Immigration reform that brings more technical talent to the U.S. will make the American economy and U.S. companies more competitive on the global stage. More competitive U.S. employers, in turn, will be the ones that create more jobs for others to fill.

Here are three steps the U.S. should take without delay:

  •Offer expedited green card processing for foreign nationals who earn Masters degrees or higher
   in STEM fields from U.S.-based schools and who then accept positions with U.S.-based employers.

  •Provide an efficient avenue to bring in key foreign talent from overseas subsidiaries to increase U.S.
  economic competiveness [sic].

  •Create a Trusted Employer Program for U.S. employers that maintain top internal compliance
   departments to ensure all immigration regulations are followed.

It is time to build up the U.S. economy by retaining top talent in the U.S., regardless of where that talent was born.

Many communities and regions rely heavily upon military installations to sustain their local economies. In some cases, the presence of an installation is akin to having a corporate headquarters or an auto assembly plant. Bases are often the largest regional employer and contribute outside spending, investment, and talent. Furthermore, installations can become part of the fabric of the community, influencing everything from public education to healthcare services to housing. Although this interconnected relationship can procure significant benefits, it also makes defense communities uniquely vulnerable to shifts in resource allocation at the Federal level.

The $487 billion in spending cuts mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act and a general shift in US global defense strategy have raised concerns in many military communities. These concerns are compounded by recent calls for a new BRAC round, likely in 2015. TIP Strategies, Inc. has worked with a number of defense communities throughout the US on economic development and workforce issues. We are currently working on two projects centered around military installations: Calhoun County, Alabama (Anniston Army Depot) and Clarksville-Montgomery County, Tennessee (Fort Campbell).

Recently, Alex Cooke, a senior consultant at TIP who has worked on many of our defense community projects, attended the 2012 Association of Defense Communities Winter Forum held in Miami. The event brought together a number of experienced public and private experts to provide insight and advice regarding the “new normal” defense communities are now facing.

Not surprisingly, the prospect of a new BRAC round was a focal point of discussions at the forum. Although the economic impact of a base on the surrounding community is not generally weighed in the BRAC process, all experts agreed that installations must demonstrate “military value” to survive. The following strategies were recommended to help community leaders ascertain the “military value” their local base represents:

— Establish a formal and ongoing mechanism for communication with the commanding officers (COs) at the installation.

— Schedule “commander’s briefings” for the congressional delegation on a regular basis.

— Build a grass-roots relationship with the command structure at the base. This goes beyond relying on local public officials: business, community, veteran, and retiree groups should all build relationships with local commanders.

— Utilize the online BRAC library. Learn what has been said and written about the base and similar operations in the past.

While contemplating the loss of a major regional asset is never easy, it is essential to consider the consequences early in the process. Defense communities will need to examine a wide range of options. They will need to anticipate alternative land and building uses and understand the issues surrounding environmental remediation of military bases. They will also need to be creative in attracting companies to absorb existing workers.

Planning for a base closure is most effective when pursued as part of a broader economic development strategy. At a minimum, this suggests taking a fresh look at regional assets. In the same way that diversification from a single major corporate player makes sense, so too does diversification from government and military employment.

To learn more about TIP’s experience in defense communities, click on the links below:

— Wichita Falls (TX) – Defense Diversification Plan

— Clarksville-Montgomery County Economic Development Council, TN – Labor Market Assessment

— Pensacola Bay (FL) Area Chamber of Commerce & Escambia County (FL) – Economic Diversification Plan

— Okaloosa (FL) Economic Development Council & Walton County (FL) Economic Development Corporation- Economic Diversification Plan

by Adam Davidson

via NPR Planet Money


Every week, Robert Stout of Kings County Jerky slices meat by hand. Photo by Adam Lerner/adamlerner.net

One day Chris Woehrle decided to finally leave his corporate job and pursue his dream: to become an artisanal food craftsman. And so, every day at home, he’d basically pickle stuff.

“I had a refrigerator full of plastic food buckets that were full of pickles and kimchee and sauerkraut and harissa and salsa and ketchup and mustard and, you know, any kind of craft food you could make,” Woehrle says.

Woehrle lives in Brooklyn, where shops are filled with handcrafted, grass-fed, organically raised whatever. Too much of it, in fact. Every time Woehrle had a good idea, he found eight other companies were already making precisely the same kind of mustard or pickled radish.

“You don’t want to play a marketing game where it’s just like, let’s out-market the other pickle people,” Woehrle says.

Eventually, though, he and his partner found a hole in the market: all-natural beef jerky. Kings County Jerky was born. Two guys, a small warehouse in Brooklyn and 25 pounds of beef a day.

The Kings County approach is a model for how manufacturers in many sectors can do better. Ignore low-priced commodity products. Focus instead on customizing high-quality goods for a select audience willing to pay a premium.

It works even on something as simple as a spring.


Photo: Dan Kedmey/NPR Juan Delgado (left) and Steve Kempf of Brooklyn’s Lee Spring company stand with a 50-year-old coiling machine, still in use today.

“Springs are critical to the day-to-day functioning of everybody’s lives,” says Steve Kempf, CEO of Lee Spring in Brooklyn.

My eyeglasses have springs. Our audio recorders have springs. And each of those springs has to solve a slightly different problem.

“You take this wrench here for example,” he said, picking up a wrench from his desk. “It’s got a very unique L-shaped spring design. And so the product designer wants to come up with an elegant design, and he also has a very specific force he wants when you let go of this wrench so that it opens in your hands and feels comfortable.”

Think of this as an artisanal craft wrench. And a craft wrench needs a craft spring. This is good business, by the way. Companies will pay more for a spring that precisely meets their needs than they will for some off-the-rack spring.

The springs at Lee Spring are gorgeous displays of ingenuity and skill. Making them requires knowledge and artistry. It’s a true craft. Craft jobs typically pay more, so the workers at Lee Spring tend to do better than workers who don’t have all those spring skills.

Even big manufacturers — like Toyota, General Electric, Dow Chemical — are focusing more of their business on custom-making products for customers willing to pay more. It’s one of the best alternatives to competing with China and other low-wage countries, which have perfected the commodity business of turning out lots and lots of identical products as cheaply as possible.

Forget that model. In America, we can focus on craft. That’s where the money is, and that’s where the hope lies for American manufacturing.