Note: You are experiencing only the raw content of this site, without the intended layout and design. Either your browser has ignored the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) files for this site, or you are using an outdated browser which does not support Web Standards. Learn more.

EDS' Next Big Thing Blog: Read and Respond to What the EDS Fellows Say About Technology

Read and respond to what the EDS Fellows have to say about the future of technology on EDS' Next Big Thing Blog on eds.com.

Driving Forces propelling the next big thing in IT #6 – Reduced/altered workforce

by Jeff Wacker

The demographics of the US , European and Japanese workforce are changing rapidly. In a “pig in the python” scenario, the current baby boom generation is passing through the workforce. This swell of people has been well accommodated by the world’s businesses. Unemployment in the western nations has remained at economically acceptable levels.

But, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as baby boomers in the US retire, there will be 40 million fewer workers available to fill their jobs. Similar scenarios are believed to exist for Europe and are already manifesting themselves in Japan . Jeff Taylor, founder of the online employment site Monster.com, calls 2005 “the calm before the storm.” That storm, according to Taylor , is “the worst labor shortage of our lifetime,” which will hit by 2010, as many boomers exit the working world. You’ve got about 75 million boomers who can retire and only about 35 million workers to take their places. We’ve never had such a wholesale drop-off of workers doing important jobs in this country.”

I tend to view this situation from a different perspective. because I believe we are going to have significantly fewer jobs to offer in the future. Futurist Richard W. Samson and management guru Tom Peters use the term “Off Peopling” for the trend of moving current job activities off a human worker and into machine-automated replacements (I have called it “off-humaning” in the past but I guess I'll have to get with their program). This trend has already started and will accelerate. What this means is that there simply won’t be as many jobs for workers as there are current workers. So having fewer workers may be somewhat of a blessing.

But whether it is blessing or curse, it simply is. And companies must acknowledge this as a strong driver of how business will need to operate in the future. Off-shoring will certainly play a role in making up for this deficiency, but you simply cannot scale humans to meet the accelerating changes. Increased business automation will be a central part of the next big thing in IT in the future.

Published Friday, July 01, 2005 4:11 PM

Subscribe to this post's comments using RSS

Comments

Posted by Moira Biggins Monday, July 04, 2005 4:24 PM

Maybe we should do some hard thinking about whether we continue to do all the work we currently do. Perhaps people would prefer a simpler lifestyle with more leisure, instead of the pressurised working environment that most Westerners experience. We need to consider our overall quality of life.

Posted by Michael Dwyer Tuesday, July 05, 2005 7:28 AM

The paradigm the article is working in, is that of an economic model which presumes that the purpose of business is to get bigger forever (self evidently false).
The coming storm will not come from retiring western qualified workers. Consider the current massive export of Chinese goods. A lack of workers in the U.S.A and other such countries will not be noticed.
Might I suggest that the storm will much more likely come from two sources.
The U.S. balance of payments is here now. When that is felt, many will be thrown out of work and retirees will see their nest egsgs disappear. Those US imports from China will not be able to be paid for.
If that were not enough, we have a resource problem as often discussed under the heading of "Peak Oil". Exxon Mobil give 5 (five) years http://www.energybulletin.net/6271.html as an indicator of when this will hit.
I don’t think the Chinese are “off peopling”. They have 20 million people alone in the clothing industry.
The challenge for business is to adjust to a global economy which is under no one’s control.
The future is very wobbly but not for the reasons of baby boomers retiring.

Posted by Gary Potter Wednesday, July 06, 2005 3:45 PM

I believe that a good number of the jobs today will be replaced via "off peopling" and the jobs that will be affected will not be limited to baby boomers like myself. It's reasonable to expect that and it's also reasonable that the new value worker will be able to demonstrate both analytical and creative (left/right brain) thinking. Those that make the transition will become the high value employee - those that don't will find that their position can/will be replaced by machines.

Posted by Jeff Wacker Wednesday, July 13, 2005 8:08 PM

Gartner has a term for those employees who are trained to be versitile in an environment where perpetual employment is no longer likely. They are, naturally enough, called "versatilists". Where specialists are a mile deep/inch wide and generalists are an inch deep/mile wide, versatilists are a kilometer deep but several meters wide, with each "meter" representing competence in yet another discipline.
Specialists are at risk of obsolesence in a rapidly changing world. Generalists are at risk of not being believable in a complex world. Versatilists are resilient as well as valuable. A worthy goal.

Posted by jbr Friday, July 15, 2005 7:58 PM

one other quite scary thing in this demographic mix is the huge bubble of govt workers that are set to retire in the next 5 years. while these workers may be slow and set in their ways (ever been in a post office for service?), at least they are there. in 5 years, it appears there will be a significantly large govt worker population drop. not surprisingly, the govt is not hiring ahead of that event.

now, this may have a positive benefit; since there won't be as many govt workers available to process retirement claims, people who want to retire will have to wait longer until their claim can be processed. thus, stemming the tide of workers leaving.

if you read the BLS reports closely, you will spot this concern.

Posted by kds Friday, July 15, 2005 9:12 PM

And in response to the large numbers of government workers retiring, I don't believe the jobs will be filled. Governments are already turning to outsourcing for many services. This move is currently billed simply as downsizing. Or is it preparation?