USA Today (May 8)
Though it may seem preposterous, a labor shortage will strike the U.S. “America is about to run short of workers for the simple reason that people are retiring.” In the coming decade, the retirement age population is expected to expand by 37.8% while the working age population will only increase by 3.2%. Those set to retire “will leave jobs while continuing to buy things—food, shelter, haircuts, airplane tickets health care and more—which will have to be produced by the remaining workforce.”
Financial Times (April 9)
Japan’s corporate culture “had a certain rationale in the catch-up era” of the 1960s and 1970s. Today, however, “it makes no sense at all.” Today, Japan needs “a multidisciplinary workforce capable of switching mid-career, not only between different companies but also between entirely different fields. It needs to bring more women into the workforce, not to make up the numbers but to usher in new thinking.”
Tags: Corporate culture, Japan, Mid-career, Multidisciplinary, New thinking, Rationale, Women, Workforce
Wall Street Journal (March 11)
Japan may be at the leading edge, but population graying is a truly global phenomenon requiring new approaches. “As the over-60 population grows much faster than the younger working-age cohorts, while life expectancy increases, the 20th-century model of work and retirement becomes increasingly unsuitable for economic growth. The key will be finding new solutions to engage older Americans in the workforce.”
Tags: Economic growth, Engage, Graying, Japan, Life expectancy, Over-60, Population, Retirement, Solutions, U.S., Unsuitable, Work, Workforce, Working-age
Wall Street Journal (March 2)
“The fundamental economic issue facing America” is not headline-grabbing income inequality, but rather “jobs—their scarcity and the quality of those that people manage to find.” When the marginally employed are included, the real unemployment rate is closer to 13% and part-time jobs now account for 18% of the workforce. “Job losses in the low-wage and minimum-wage category is the critical issue of our day: Too many of the poor are not working full time or at all.”
Tags: Full-time, Income inequality, Job losses, Jobs, Minimum wage, Poor, Quality, Scarcity, U.S., Unemployment, Wages, Work, Workforce
Los Angeles Times (December 8, 2013)
“Between 2000 and 2010, as newspapers lost readers of their print editions, some 120 paper mills were closed in the United States and Canada, with a loss of 240,000 jobs, or about a third of the paper industry’s workforce.” But paper still has a future. In fact, paper has about 20,000 uses, including cardboard and bags, according to a British association of paper historians. We won’t become a paperless society overnight.
Tags: Canada, Cardboard, Historians, Jobs, Newspapers, Paper mills, Paperless society, Print editions, Readers, U.S., Workforce
