By Catherine Rampell
via economix.blogs.nytimes.com

We’ve written several blog posts about the small share of American college students majoring in the so-called STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — with the implicit premise that more bachelor’s degrees in technical fields is both desirable on a macroeconomic level and is professionally advantageous at the individual worker level. A former dean of an engineering school suggests that thinking may be wrong.

Daniel Jelski, a chemistry professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz and previous dean of New Paltz’s School of Science & Engineering, argues in a New Geography essay that humanities degrees may be more important for tomorrow’s job market than is generally believed.

He bases this on three “Laws of Future Employment”:

Law #1: People will get jobs doing things that computers can’t do. Law #2: A global market place will result in lower pay and fewer opportunities for many careers. (But also in cheaper and better products and a higher standard of living for American consumers.) Law #3: Professional people will more likely be freelancers and less likely to have a steady job.

The implications of Laws #1 and #2, he says, are that STEM jobs will not be particularly safe in the future, since he believes they are “easily computerized and tradable.”

The more valuable skill sets, he argues, will be those that computers can’t offer, like empathy and sociability — skills that you might be more likely to learn in an English course than one in linear algebra.

By Liz Dwyer, Education Editor
via www.good.is



With the unemployment rate hovering near the 10 percent mark—and hiring freezes and layoffs still the norm—an increasing number of college grads are turning to the one employer who’s always hiring, even in tough economic times: Uncle Sam. The number of bachelor’s degree holders enlisting in a branch of the United States Armed Services is on the rise.

Over the past two years, the Army’s seen the biggest spike in diploma-holding enlistees. In 2010, almost 6,000 college graduates signed up for duty, 2,000 more than in 2008 when the economy still seemed healthy. The Navy saw 1,425 college graduates enlist, up from 1,000 in 2008 and the Air Force bumped its college graduate enlistment up to 900 from 2008′s total of 553.

We may be at war, but Ben Harris, a political science and communications double major from Ohio State University, isn’t dwelling on the possibility of dying in combat. He graduated two years ago, and given the realities of the recession, he had to settle for a job at a “chicken-finger place” and shack up with his parents. Instead of heading off to graduate school to wait out the tough economy—and rack up more student loans—Harris told the Columbus Dispatch that he’s considering joining the Army or the Air Force because, “I’ll get more skills and more education.”

The perks—VA benefits, access to military base stores, preference for government jobs, and a reduction in student loans (the Army will repay up to $65,000 of a soldier’s qualifying student loans, the most of the armed services branches)—are undeniable. Plus, when you enlist with a bachelor’s degree, you enter as an officer, which means you receive higher pay.

The only branch to not see a significant enrollment bump is the Marines. According to Maj. John Caldwell, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Command, “Young men and women join our ranks to become a United States Marine. They do not see the Marine Corps as a path to something else but rather as a destination unto itself.”

photo (cc) via Flickr user Boston Public Library

Over the past two months, we have been engaged in a conversation about the future of jobs with economic development practitioners at the TEDC and IEDC conferences.

Now, we’d like to create an open forum to continue this dialogue beyond the conference setting. In the comments section of this post, you’re invited to respond to the following questions, or pose additional questions for your peers.

How will the “future of jobs” change how you approach economic development?

What mechanisms have you created to support corporations and freelance workers in your community?

Below you’ll find a video of Jon’s recent IGNITE presentation from IEDC’s Leadership Summit in San Antonio. The IGNITE structure allows speakers 5 minutes total to present in the form of 20 slides, with 15 seconds per slide. A brief overview of the presentation follows the slide show.

The Future of Jobs from GIS Planning on Vimeo.

This is a discussion about the future of jobs. The idea of what a job is has changed throughout history (and continues to change). Farmers and craftsmen have always had trades, or livelihoods. Since the industrial revolution, a fundamental shift in the nature of jobs has occurred; individuals are employed by entities (corporations) and in return for their labor (9-5), they are compensated (wages) and receive benefits (healthcare, etc.). When unemployment is high, as it has been in the aftermath of the recent recession, we must ask ourselves who should create jobs: the public sector? the private sector? Can the economy continue to grow, even if jobs are not being created? (answer: yes).

The economy grows when value is created. Corporations can create value by increasing productivity (but not necessarily increasing employment), and independent contractors can create value outside of a traditional employee-employer relationship. If we take this thought experiment to its logical extreme, could there be corporations without people on the horizon? Will trade guilds become an organizing structure for independent contractors in a variety of professions?

If jobs are no longer the most useful or accurate measure of economic development success, how can practitioners best promote economic vitality in their communities? Are there mechanisms by which cities, regions, and states can offer resources to corporations and freelancers that will support their ability to create value, regardless of hiring trends or employment status?

We invite you to participate in this conversation in the comments section below.

By Helen Coster
via forbes.com

In June 50 recent college graduates, from some of the best schools in the U.S., will join start-ups in struggling cities as part of Venture for America, a new program designed to help young companies, promote entrepreneurship and generate job growth. As VFA fellows, the graduates will receive five weeks of training at Brown University—where they’ll learn Excel and other consulting and banking-type skills—before moving to Detroit, New Orleans, Cincinnati and Providence for two years. Fifty companies— like The Brandery, in Cincinnati, and Detroit Venture Partners— will pay the fellows up to $38,000 a year, plus health benefits, to do everything from buying office supplies to making sales calls— whatever the small, fast-growing companies need.

“It’s true that a challenge is to put a fellow in a position where he or she can contribute and develop,” says VFA founder Andrew Yang, 37. “These companies have to have a genuine need for someone. It’s very difficult for a start-up to compete alongside big consulting firms and banks when they’re only looking to hire one or two people.”

Yang developed the idea for VFA in 2008, while speaking on an alumni panel at Brown University. Yang, then the head of Manhattan GMAT, had taken a circuitous and expensive path to entrepreneurship. After graduating from Brown in 1996, he felt directionless and, lured by prestige and security, applied to law school. After a stint at a big firm, and swimming in law school debt, Yang realized that he didn’t want to be a lawyer and launched a short-lived dot-com. Although he later became the chief executive of a successful start-up, he wanted to prevent other young graduates from making the same mistakes.

Back at Brown, Yang met fellow alum Charlie Kroll, who had started an 85-person software firm in Providence, a city that struggles to retain recent college graduates. Yang wondered whether a program, modeled after Teach for America, would help draw young talent to Providence and other cities. Start-ups would benefit from talented, hungry, inexpensive labor. Student entrepreneurs would have an alternative to banking and consulting jobs, and the opportunity to continue their entrepreneurial growth. To sweeten the deal, at the end of two years Yang’s program would award $100,000 in seed funding to the most high-performing fellow.

In 2009 Kaplan acquired Yang’s company, and he pursued his plan in earnest, reaching out to entrepreneurs in four cities where clusters of entrepreneurial activity already existed. Charlie Kroll in Providence organized a meeting of 25 local start-ups. Another contact helped him network in New Orleans. Yang raised $500,000 from private donors, hired a skeletal full-time staff, and in the fall of 2011 began visiting over 30 college campuses, promoting the program.

Over 1,000 students have begun the application process, and VFA recently selected the first seven of 50 fellows. They include a mechanical engineer from Yale, a Boston College senior who built a social networking app that he sells on iTunes, and a University of Pennsylvania finance major. Yang eventually wants to run a recruitment database and charge start-ups for access.

Yang says that cities have been eager to work with him. The City of Detroit is providing fellows with free housing, and Newark mayor Cory Booker and others have inquired about the program. Yang’s goal is to create 100,000 U.S. jobs by 2025—ideally because VFA fellows will start their own firms and hire people, or help existing firms scale. “If you’re an entrepreneur in Detroit you’re going to get so much more support from the community than if you lived in San Francisco or New York,” says Yang. “The community cares about your success.”

via Morning Edition, NPR

As the Mayor’s Conference takes place in Washington D.C., city governments are dealing with severe problems at home — from high unemployment to funding cuts. Steve Inskeep talks to Mick Cornett, the Mayor of Oklahoma City, about how his city has managed to avoid some of these problems.

via NPR Planet Money


In his latest New York Times Magazine column, Adam Davidson writes, “mobility has reached its lowest level in recorded history…This suggests, among other things, that people aren’t packing up for new economic opportunities the way they used to.”

To continue the discussion, we asked two demographic experts on different sides of the debate – Joseph P. Ferrie of Northwestern University and William H. Frey of the Brookings Institution – to answer the following question:

Have Americans lost the economic incentive to move?

William Frey’s response:

In a recent campaign stump speech, Presidential candidate Mitt Romney testified, “I believe in freedom. I believe in liberty. I believe in an opportunity society.” I was waiting for him to next say, “and I believe in the right for Americans to move any place, anytime to achieve their goals.” He didn’t say that, but high migration levels surely have done much to keep our economic engine humming – compared with the more stagnant levels in Europe and Japan.

Of course, migration, both short distance and long, hit historic low points in the last four years (I summarized the trends here and here).

Does this mean that we are on our way to economic stagnation, which will keep large numbers of our work force perpetually stuck in place? I don’t think so.

Migration rates have certainly declined since the 1950′s, when we had a younger (and thus more mobile) population, and renters were buying GI-Bill financed homes. Since then, the population has became older, more settled into owned homes, and dual earner couples proliferated. The nation’s shifting demography made us a little more sedentary. But this does not mean that opportunities became less available to young people or that they were less likely to migrate to take them.

As late as 2005, a healthy 29 percent of twenty-somethings changed residences annually. Migration driven population booms occurred in dozens of Sunbelt metropolitan areas, attracting workers of all skill levels.

What happened next was the triple tsunami of a bursting housing market bubble, a financial crisis, and the Great Recession. Potential movers, especially young people, were unable to finance a new home, sell their old one, or obtain a job. Many young adults are stuck in place, living with their parents, putting off marriage, and remaining underemployed.

We are certainly in an economic mess, which may keep part of a generation from moving on with their lives. But when the economy does pick up, there will be a pent-up demand for migration among these young people and the next generation. It’s in our national DNA. And it won’t necessarily follow an education-based mover stayer divide. Hispanics and Asians of all skill levels will contribute mightily to our labor force, as they disperse around the country.

Still, it’s probably true that Mitt Romney’s unfettered capitalism will need some assistance from the government toward training this next generation for the jobs they move to take.

Have Americans lost the economic incentive to move?

Joseph Ferrie’s response:

In the 1830s, the extraordinary mobility of the U.S. population was noted by Alexis De Tocqueville: “[M]illions of men are marching at once toward the same horizon…Fortune has been promised to them somewhere in the west, and to the west they go to find it.” How did we get from there – a nation perpetually in motion – to here – a nation seemingly stuck in place?

The population’s movement peaked in the late nineteenth century. Why? The simple answer is the movement of the western frontier. It left in its wake nascent urban centers, sites that could process and ship farm products to the east and import manufactured goods back to the west. These communities ranged from small towns to great cities that sprang up almost overnight. Chicago is the most dramatic example: its population grew from 4,500 in 1840 to more than 500,000 in 1880. Population growth this rapid provided enormous opportunities for potential migrants. They easily obtained jobs in factories, warehouses, and city offices. At the same time, the U.S. was a place with substantial differences across regions in the products and industries, providing migrants a range of choices in destinations that modern movers no longer see before them.

One lesson that can be drawn from this look backward at past U.S. migration is that geographic mobility and economic mobility were closely linked for much of the nation’s history. The US had exceptionally high rates of economic mobility in the nineteenth century, compared to older European countries. The second is that going forward, geographic mobility will be less closely linked to economic mobility. The U.S. has become more economically homogenous. Americans now experience, if anything, somewhat less income mobility across generations than many Europeans.

This is unfortunate in at least one respect: it makes the route to economic mobility today considerably less forgiving than it was in the past. In the nineteenth century, an ambitious son or daughter could see their income rise simply through the act of changing location, an investment that could be made until well into their adult years. Today, by contrast, education is the route to advancement, but educational investments are already largely determined by the time individuals have reached their early twenties. Economic mobility and the “American Dream” of a better tomorrow are, if not dead, at least a great deal more elusive than they were in the past, when a train ticket to Chicago was virtually all it took to make a big step up the economic ladder.