THE CHANGING WORKFORCE 

Our ancestors enjoyed the first jungle village as we entered the Agricultural Age, later forebearers the country village, the first town, our great grandparents probably the first small cities. The past century especially, has seen the emergence of the big city as the mother lode. The Industrial Age required, recycled and rewarded people who contributed the city growth. But the days of the big city are numbered. Technology today is by-passing, with the speed of light, the previous advantages of metropolitan living. Violence, crime, pollution, high taxes, vacating high-tech creative operations with their job-creating entrepreneurs, overpriced and crumbling housing, collapsing infrastructure, disintegrating social and economic services designed for another time, are contributing to the diminishing appeal of big cities. During recent years there has been an observed trend for some big city residents to move back to less dense areas. Technology today which allows many workers, especially in the communications segment, to operate from almost anywhere, is accelerating the migration. Those moving maybe the elite of tomorrow.

"Community" is taking on a new connotation. We used to think of that word as meaning "people living in a particular district" or "a social unit within a larger one and having interests, work etc. in common." Now members of a social unit may be scattered around the globe. Geographic proximity is no longer required. As electronic nomad Steven K. Roberts, head honcho and cutting edge advocate of Nomadic Research Labs of California, says "As long as your head is in cyberspace it doesn't matter where your body is". Roberts, usually "on the road" with his bike, is in touch with the world via satellite, radio, computer modem, cellular phone and three computers. He even types as he rides. An example of one of the new lifestyles.

Roberts is also an example of how centrifugal forces which once bound societies together in another time and place, are now tearing them apart. But he has found how to create a lifestyle both rewarding and profitable by doing what was, until recently impossible.

Miners, who dig into the earth, and farmers who till the soil, now make up a mere five percent of the North American work force, down from 98 percent 200 years ago. Workers who still make things, conducting repetitive movements for high-volume manufacturers compose about 25 percent of the current labor force. Those highly-skilled blue-collar workers from the Industrial Age, due to down-sizing and advancing technology, have not been able to retain their previously high-paying occupations. Their future is uncertain. Such service personnel as maids, waitresses, janitors, taxi operators, store clerks, again performing repetitive tasks, but generally on a one-to-one basis, now form 30 percent of the workforce. Eventually, almost everyone who manufactures a product or performs a service that can be replaced by a machine will be replaced by a machine. About a third of these people, with inflation, already are slowly falling behind in their standard of living. That still leaves 40 percent.

The rising, and in many cases rapidly-rising segment, is the top 20 percent of the workforce who perform analytic/symbolic communications age creative services, that can be sold world-wide and consist of problem solving or problem identifying or brokering of strategic activities. This field favors writers, video producers, scientists, engineers, free or abstract thinkers, people willing to risk, experiment or collaborate and legal or banking executives and eclectic consultants. Such skills are portable and in demand everywhere.

Those who learn to operate in a vastly changed and still-changing global environment; those who can walk on quicksand and dance with electrons; those who amass an array of varied experiences; those who see connections where others see chaos, will flourish and find opportunity in every disturbance. These people are usually from families with parents interested in their development and progress. They closely safeguard their health, travel widely for both work and learning, read a lot and comprehend the benefits of computer-literacy can in the new fluid, global and photonic workplace. These people have nowhere to go but up.

The 20 percent who can't even find employment in the fast-fading industrial market place will become a sub-class of techno-peasants, politely called "unemployables" due to lack of education, survival and other skills, and who are socially unacceptable because of attitude, alcoholic or drug dependence and basic ignorance of what is happening around them, will face bleak futures. They will inherit what's left of most big cities. Social/economic break-down of workforce in transition:

Earth workers 05% and falling Production workers 25% and falling Service workers 30% rising slowly Analytic/creative workers 20% rising rapidly Technopeasants 20% falling rapidly

Total 100%

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