me for more than a decade on leadership, problem solving and organization skills. One of the finest lessons she taught me was how to handle introducing the drastic changes that were out of our control to the staff that were sure to protest. I learned from her that resistance, resentment, followed by acceptance is the process that humans go through when faced with unwanted change. Understanding the process, she simply introduced and trained everyone on the new system, and ensured that everyone would adhere to the changes through incentive or threat of sanctions (whatever it took). She knew people would grumble and even attempt to sabotage the changes initially, but eventually they would adjust the same way they always did.
We have entered into a new economic era in America. You can resist it about as much as you can single handedly stop a freight train. Resentment will only slow you down from taking the proper steps to improve your situation. As a matter of fact, if you do not embrace the change, you will surely sabotage your own success. It’s critically important for you to accept the reality that the world has changed and that the change is not a temporary shift. Most of the changes we are experiencing will be here for decades, and even when they fade we will not go back to yesterday. We will be introduced to something new and drastically different than we have ever seen before.
Taking a page out of Ms. Klein’s book, my advice to you is simple, the changes we are facing are here to stay, get over it, accept it, and let’s move forward. Most of the manufacturing jobs and other industrial age industry jobs are gone forever, the time of easy credit and borrowing are gone, and the ability to stay on a single job for 25 years, retire and collect a pension no longer exists. You can’t turn back the hands of time so the faster you accept the new normal, the quicker you can put yourself in a position to stop the financial bloodletting and start laying the foundation for wealth.
Reinventing Yourself for the New Job Market
“I think the unemployment rate will be permanently higher, or at least higher for the foreseeable future. The collective psyche has changed as a result of what we’ve been through. And we’re going to be different as a result.” - Mark Zandi
“There will be a continued hollowing-out of the middle class” - H.W. Brands
“I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma.” - President Barack Obama
When I originally came up with the idea to write this book, I wanted to target the entrepreneurial minded or investor minded person, but after speaking to so many people about their financial plights and realizing that not everyone is going to immediately abandon the traditional means of earning income through employment, I decided to include those that aren’t quite ready to jump into the deep water and fend for themselves. I still approach the subject of employment through the eyes of an entrepreneur that recognizes that the world has changed so prepare yourself for something that may look and feel different than what you are accustomed to.
One very serious affect that a recession has is the inevitable layoffs that occur as companies struggle to keep their doors open by cutting their greatest expense – labor. The unemployment rate is the number in the civilian labor force divided by the number of unemployed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines unemployment as people who do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the past four weeks, and are currently available for work. It also includes people who were temporarily laid off and are waiting to be called back to that job. It doesn’t count the jobless who didn’t look for a job in the past four weeks, or are so discouraged that they have stopped looking for a job.
Unemployment during this recession reached a 25 year high. Unemployment peaked at 10.2% in October 2009. It rose steadily from its low of 4.4% in March 2007. More than fifteen million adults are currently unemployed. Although the unemployment rate should be a major concern to people, it is not unexpected in such a dramatic economic downturn. The statistic that should concern people most is the fact that more than seven million jobs have vanished after a decade that created relatively few jobs (a net total of just 464,000). By contrast, 21.7 million new jobs were generated between 1989 and 1999.
Many of these lost jobs have vanished forever. People out of work at least six months number a record 5.9 million. Unfortunately, many of these people have found themselves unemployable because their jobs have become obsolete. Protestors march with picket signs everyday trying to hang on to jobs from industries long gone to distant shores where corporations can find less expensive labor and materials. Gone are the days when you could graduate high school and work at the local factory or graduate from college and hold a management job at the mill for thirty years and retire with a pension.
Temporary layoffs, from which a person could reasonably expect to be called back to work, were more common in the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s when union membership and manufacturing jobs were more prevalent than today. Other contributing forces are the increases in businesses squeezing more work from current employees and their increased reliance on part-time workers and consultants.
Most economists say it could take at least until 2015 for the unemployment rate to drop down to a historically more normal 5.5 percent. Others predict that the job market and wages will stay weak with high unemployment numbers for the next decade.
As gloomy as all of this data seems, it doesn’t mean that there will not be ample opportunity to make more money than ever before without having to punch a clock on a nine-to-five job. With innovations in technology, transportation and communication you now have a global workplace to tap into.
Outsourcing, which many Americans see as the downfall of this country, can also be the saving grace of this country. Aside from the fact that outsourcing has kept inflation down, thus maintaining a higher standard of living for the average American, it has also provided new opportunities for those with the technical skills that emerging economies around the world require. Once we get past our own arrogance, we can see that as the US dollar declines against the British pound, the Euro and the Yen we are a cheaper source of labor for companies in other countries. You can become the “outsourcee” to other countries that lack the affordable labor pool with the skills required for their growth. You can place your skills on websites that cater to a global audience of companies that require services such as www.elance.com.
There is also money to be made closer to home if you are willing to examine the future trends of how companies will do business in the new economy. Companies are scaling down to skeleton crews, and will begin to hire specialists (independent contractors) on a job by job basis. This allows a company to reduce its operating costs and maintain a higher profit margin as opposed to keeping a full time staff that would require union wages, sick leave, vacation time, payroll taxes and health benefits.
In order to have steady income you must retrain and repackage yourself as an independent contractor that moves from company to company offering your specialized knowledge at a price. Independent contractors can perform specific functions for a company ranging from, telemarketing, advertising manager to electrician, and sign an independent contractor agreement specifying the range of time they’ll be working with the company and how and when they are compensated. You become a highly-valued specialist and the very thing most people only dream of becoming… your own boss.
Outsourcing your skills or becoming an independent contractor is not a simple task to accomplish. However, neither is getting up to go to work and having other people dictate your agenda, your meal breaks, what time you’ll go home, and then leaving feeling under-appreciated and realizing you can get axed at anytime. Weigh your options, start doing the research, and make something happen.
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