Infographic: Workforce Trends to Keep in Perspective When Planning Your Future
Like a rising and falling tide each generation infuses our economy with new ideas, habits and standards. Understanding how the workforce has been changing and will continue to change over the coming years is an asset to anyone, but especially new grads, students, job seekers and entrepreneurs. It isn’t only a question of the rapid rise of a new generation this time around. We’re also enjoying the development of new technologies at an unprecedented rate. That means everything’s changing more drastically than it did for previous generations.
It’s challenging to pinpoint exactly what America’s workforce will look like in 20 years. Numerous factors can affect that outcome; China as a rising economic power or a shift in the balance of the world’s energy supply, for instance. What do we know are the trends that can be observed right now, and hopefully that’ll begin to illustrate what this change is and where it’s taking us.
An issue that’s received a lot of press is the fact that baby boomers, now aged 50 to 65, are starting to retire. Generally when this happens, there’s a push to have their more tacit skills transferred to younger workers. These boomers were once pioneers in specialized fields like IT, engineering and healthcare. Today, the knowledge they’ve accrued is invaluable. They’ll be tough to replace and companies will soon (some too late) realize that it’s critical to have boomers relay and mentor younger talent. Ideally they would have already started to do this, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for most companies. As younger members of the workforce, any student should note this trend if they want to get ahead. Developing relationships with experienced boomers can be the doorway to gaining knowledge that isn’t easily taught.
As younger members of the workforce students any student should note this trend if they want to get ahead: developing relationships with experienced boomers can be the doorway to gaining knowledge that isn’t easily taught.
As younger members of the workforce students any student should note this trend if they want to get ahead: developing relationships with experienced boomers can be the doorway to gaining knowledge that isn’t easily taught.
Women in generation X are in their 40’s now and a lot of the time don’t feel like they’re getting ahead like they could be.. or even in the same fashion that their male counterparts are. This is resulting in them leaving and using their industry knowledge to start their own companies or join smaller companies like startups in a leadership capacity. Large employers have noticed this and seem to be interested in helping women advance, but the fact of the matter is that 1 in 6 women in executive roles at Fortune 500 companies are still only paid 75% of what male c-suite executives are paid. And that means this trend of women jumping ship in search of a faster rise to a lucrative future will continue.
The rapid growth in the minority population is sure to affect the workforce in many ways, but exactly how this will play out in future years can vary depending on our country’s legislative future. A new bill affecting these new workers or new immigration policies can change the course of this trend. As it stands the US Labor Bureau estimates that by 2020, 40% of the eligible US workforce will consist of minorities. For an array of reasons, many employers, particularly in the professional services sector, are still hesitant to hire newly immigrated minorities. This could be due to a variety of reasons including language barriers, personal bias and lack of financial support.
One of the more interesting trends has spawned from a variety of new market factors. The rise of the Internet, the affordable care act, etc. have created the perfect environment for a new culture of independent workers to thrive. This is called the “contingent workforce” and it’s comprised of temporary workers of all kinds. Some may freelance on the side while working a day job, others may be intrapreneurs (external contractors dedicated to a specific company for a period of time) and still others could be small business owners or even people in between jobs.
The fact that 1 in 5 new jobs are filled by temporary workers really shows the growth this space is going through. Recent research has pegged the number of freelancers in the US at around 53 million (as of 2014). That’s a huge number and, just like the other trends we’ve looked at, it’s indicative of a pivotal shift that’s happening in the state of our workforce. When you’re planning your career path, keeping this data top-of-mind will give you an competitive advantage, position you more strategically and better align your goals with reality. See the infographic for a visual representation of the data we talked about in this article.