“We should all be concerned about the future because we will allhave to spend the rest of our lives there,” said Charles Kettering,American manufacturer and inventor.
The success of books like JohnNaisbitt’s Megatrends and Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock istestimony to the concern many people have about the future. AlvinToffler, in Preview and Premises, expressed well the reason for ourinterest in the future: “Looking into the future–which no one cando except in a metaphorical sense–is a way of improving decisions inthe present.” Thus, by listening to the weather forecast we canmake a better decision about the clothing to wear.
By anticipatingchanges in the needs and tastes of consumers, businesses can introduceproducts more likely to sell. Similarly, information about the futurejob market serves students who are planning their careers, counselorswho are assisting them, and educational planners who are structuringcurriculums to meet the needs of tomorrow’s economy. Recently, interest in future job market opportunities has beenheightened by two factors. First, major industries such as automobile,steel, machinery, and textile manufacturing have been racked by twomajor recessions and increased foreign competition, causing plantclosings and sharp declines in employment. Second, there has been amuch heralded appearance of new technologies–such as microelectronicsand genetic engineering–that have the potential to alter greatly oldindustries and occupations and create new ones.
Students, counselors,and planners wonder how these factors are likely to affect theindustrial and occupational makeup of the economy and what skillstomorrow’s workers will need. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been projecting occupationalemployment trends for nearly 40 years for use in career guidance andeducational planning. But the Bureau is not alone in developinginformation about the future world of work.
Many others also publishsuch material. This article seeks to alert users to the differentapproaches authors use when writing about the future; points out thelimitations of the literature; and highlights some of the differentviews that have been expressed on two major issues concerning the futurejob market–the importance of manufacturing and emerging careers. How Authors Look at the Future Predictions about the future are not new. In his recent book, ThePatterns of Expectations 1644-2001, Ignatius F. Clarke states thatmodern literature about the future had its origins in the late1700’s, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. During thisperiod, there was a growing awareness that the future would differ fromthe past because of advances in science and technology. Thisrealization led to many works in which authors discussed the shape ofthe future. The books that appeared then and since can be groupedroughly into two categories–the speculative and the scientific.
Many writers about the future have relied largely on speculation todescribe the shape of things to come–writers such as Jules Verne andH.G. Wells. One of the earliest and most important of the speculativeworks was L’An 2440 by Sebastian Mercer.
L’An went through 11editions between 1771 and 1793, was translated into three languages, andinspired books by a host of other writers. Mercer’s predictionsfor the year 2440 were the result of his speculation about the effectsof the technology emerging during his time. Mercer predicted that thistechnology would enable society to create a near perfect world.
Heenvisioned, for example, that balloons, which had first been flown inParis in 1783, would transport goods and people around the globe. To anextent, Mercer’s predictions came true. In the 1920’s and1930’s, giant dirigibles were used to transport people across theAtlantic, and today there is increased interest in using dirigibles as afuel-efficient form of transport. However, as we know, technology hasdeveloped far more than Mercer anticipated.
And, while technology hasimproved many aspects of life, it has not created a near perfect world. Five years after the last edition of L’An was published,another author tried to anticipate the future through a more scientificapproach. In 1798, Thomas Malthus’s Essays on the Principle ofPopulation used geometrical and arithemtical ratios to show that asscientific advancement increased life expectancy, the population wouldgrow faster than food supply–resulting in widespread famine.Malthus’s predictions proved incorrect because he had notanticipated improvements in agricultural technology. However, his ideasgained enough attention to spur other attempts to ‘forecast’the spur and to earn the discipline of economics a nickname that hasstuck to this day–the dismal science. According to Ignatius Clarke,forecasting was given impetus by the problems caused byindustrialization, the development of social science theory, theimprovement of statistical methods, and the advance of literacy andeducation. Both speculative writings about the future and forecastscontinued to develop in the 20th century as technological advance andsocial change constantly reinforced the idea that the future woulddiffer from the past. Today, many individuals and groups are writing about the future.
Authors such as Arthur Clarke and Alvin Toffler use their knowledge oftechnology and society to speculate about many political, social, andeconomic issues. Many groups do forecasting. Private consulting firmsforecast how stock prices will move, how citizens will vote, howconsumers will spend money, how many houses will be built, and a varietyof other items. Federal agencies also produce many projections: theBureau of the Census projects population growth, the National ScienceFoundation estimates the future demand and supply of scientists andengineers, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the size andcomposition of the labor force and industrial and occupationalemployment. BLS publications such as the Occupational Outlook Handbook andOccupational Projections and Training Data present information on futureemployment opportunities specifically for the use of students,counselors, and educational planners.
Some other publications alsofocus exclusively on the future job market, such as Emerging Careers:New Occupations For The Year 2000 and Beyond, by Norman Feingold andNorma Miller, and the Science Resource Studies of the National ScienceFoundation. In other works, information about the future job market ispresented along with discussions of other social, political, andeconomic topics. Some examples are Naisbitt’s Megatrends, AlvinToffler’s The Third Wave, and Encounters With The Future by MarvinCetron and Thomas O’Toole.
Some works, however, are so speculativeand broad in scope that their application to career planning ismarginal. Even eliminating these leaves a wealth of information–someof it conflicting–about the job market. When using this information,counselors and jobseekers should remember that all information about thefuture contains elements of uncertainty and subjectivity. Limits of Forecasting The future is not predetermined; rather, it is largely, though notcompletely, a matter of the choices we all make in the present. Becauseforecasters cannot accurately account for all the economic, technical,political, and other changes that our choices bring about, it is notpossible for them to describe the future with certainty.
There are differing degrees of uncertainty, however. Generaltrends can be described more confidently than specific changes. It canbe stated with a relatively high degree of certainty, for example, thatcomputers will become increasingly important in many businesses.Predictions about the number of jobs that will be available incomputer-related occupations are much less likely to be accurate. Suchpredictions require the author–unless he or she simply pulls a numberout of the air–to define the relationship between the use of computersand the level of employment in each computer occupation, the growthexpected in the use of computers, the effects of changes in technology,and many other factors. Because many of these factors are difficult topredict, any specific forecast based on them is of course uncertain.
Both specific and general information can be useful in evaluatingfuture job markets. Consider, for example, the information inNaisbitt’s Megatrends and in BLS publications. Naisbitt writes about 10 trends that he believes are shaping thefuture.
Two of these ‘megatrends’ are that most people willproduce information rather than goods and that many American firms willcompete with foreign firms. Although Naisbitt makes no numericalprojections, he does point out some of the implications of these two’megatrends,’ such as a shift in the occupational compositionof the work force and a decline in employment in certain manufacturingindustries. The Bureau, on the other hand, produces a set of numericalprojections for 260 industries and 675 occupations. These projectionsare intended to describe in detail future job market conditions for theentire economy. The projections are based on assumptions about broadtrends in the economy that could be viewed as BLS’s’megatrends’. BLS projections are developed primarily for the use of young peoplewho will have to implement their plans within 10 to 15 years. Manyother authors such as Naisbitt do not have this specific purpose as theprimary objective of their work; rather, they are interested in broaderand longer term directions of society and the economy.
Students shouldbe cautious in using information developed primarily for other purposesin planning their careers, as they must be cautious in using allinformation about the future. Authors use many methods to determine the “range of realpossibilities” for the future. However, virtually all methodsdepend on jugments and assumptions.
Companies such as ChaseEconometrics use complex mathematical models to project economicindicators. Naisbitt analyzes the content of newspapers to identifymajor concerns of the country. Marvin Cetron has stated that events inSweden often point the direction that America will follow. BLSprojections of employment are developed from a model of the economy thatis based on many assumptions about the structure and level of economicactivity. The BLS projections also rely on the judgment of economistsabout changes in trends. The necessity of using judgment andassumptions means that all forecasts will be somewhat subjective. AsClarke says in Patterns, “.
. . as belief or temperament inclinedsome writers to describe the worst of all possible futures, differentideas or a more sanguine frame of mind caused others to imagine the farhappier condition of life in coming centuries.
” Views on the Future of Manufacturing Several authors have stated that they expect the manufacturingsector of the economy to decline in importance. Increased factoryautomation, competition from foreign firms, and the movement of Americanmanufacturing facilities overseas are the key factors expected tocontribute to this decline. But this proposition is put forth inseveral forms. In Megatrends, Naisbitt states that we have become an informationsociety instead of an industrial one. He dates this change to themid-1950’s, when white-collar employment began to exceedblue-collar employment.
Since white-collar workers create and processinformation instead of goods, information, according to Naisbitt, willbe the driving force in the future economy, the force creating new jobs.In The Third Wave, Toffler contends that smokestack industries such asiron and steel, automobile, and textile manufacturing–the backbone ofthe ‘second wave’ economy–are declining in importance, butthat the ‘third wave’ industries such as electronics, lasers,optics, genetics, and ocean science are becoming more important. In anarticle in The Futurist, Marvin Cetron predicts that manufacturingemployment will account for only 11 percent of total employment by 2000,down from 28 percent in 1980. It is important to note that most authors do not expectmanufacturing to disappear from the economy. Naisbitt says,”finally, the transition from an industrial to an informationsociety does not mean manufacturing will cease to exist or becomeunimportant.” And Toffler states that some second wave industrieswill survive in the third wave economy by taking advantage of third wavetechnology such as robots. Other authors are more optimistic about the future ofmanufacturing. Keith McKee, Director of the Manufacturing ProductivityCenter, says that increases in output resulting from the use ofautomation could offset productivity gains and keep employment fromdeclining drastically.
BLS has for some time stated that manufacturingemployment will decline relative to that of service-producing industriesand that certain manufacturing industries will experience declines inemployment. However, BLS does project manufacturing employment to growas a whole and some manufacturing industries such as computermanufacturing to grow rapidly. Part of the difference can be explainedby the time frame of the forecasts.
BLS’s latest projections arefor 1995. Some of the new industries discussed by other authors willonly be in their fledgling stage by then. Space manufacturing cannotbecome a significant business until there is a permanent space stationand it is cost effective for businesses to establish manufacturingplants in space. This will not occur by the mid-1990’s. But muchof the difference between the BLS views and those of others results froman honest disagreement over the shape of the future economy. Views on Emerging Occupations Most forecasters recognize that changes in technology will alterthe types of occupations in the future economy, and they have identifiedmany emerging fields.
In Emergin Careers: New Occupations for the Year2000 and Beyond, S. Norman Feingold and Norma Miller point to careers incomputer-aided design and manufacturing, robotics, space manufacturing,ocean development, and energy sources. Cetron and O’Toole, inEncounters with the Future, also list a number of emerging occupations,including robotics technician, laster technician, housing rehabilitation technician, and others. Caroline Bird, in The Good Years, suggests thatteaching will reemerge as an important career in the years ahead aspeople have more leisure time to spend studying. While few forecasters question the necessity of identifying newoccupations or the employment potential in some new fields, several havequestioned the emphasis put on emerging occupations in career guidance.In an address to the National Center for Research in VocationalEducation, Herbert Bienstock, a former BLS Regional Commissioner, statedthat we have spent a great deal of time looking for the new and emergingoccupations although our real challenge is to improve the skills ofpeople for the great array of jobs that already exist.
He also contendsthat, while it is important for the researchers to keep an eye on thenew occupations and activities, it should not be the major focus ofcareer planning. There are several reasons for not focusing too much attention onemerging occupations. Many traditional occupations will offersubstantial employment opportunities in the future. According to BLSprojections, for example, there will be about 700,000 new jobs forsecretaries between 1982 and 1995. Because emerging occupations aresmall, none are likely to offer that many jobs during the time period.BLS is not alone in projecting ood opportunities in existingoccupations. Cetron and O’Toole indicate that several existingoccupations are expected to have bright futures. These includeoperating engineer, heating/air-conditioning mechanic, and applianceservicer.
In other articles, Cetron also states that no occupation willbe in greater demand in the future than computer programmer–anoccupation that has existed for 20 years. Even Toffler, who foresees amassive shift in the nature of the economy, has stated that there willbe demand for many kinds of skills in the future. Another reason for not focusing exclusively on emerging occupationsis the risk of planning to enter a field that will not in fact emerge asexpected or as soon as expected. During the energy crises of the1970’s, for example, many forecasters predicted substantial growthin industries and occupations involved in developing alternative energysources. In an article in the Occupational Outlook Quarterly in theSpring of 1977, Russell Flanders stated: “In addition, expandedefforts to utilize new sources of energy, such as solar or geothermal,may create new industries and occupations or special ties withinexisting occupations.
” Such predictions created a great deal ofinterest in occupations such as solar technician. However, limitationsof solar power kept the occupation from growing as rapidly asanticipated. The unexpected oil glut of the early 1980’s furtherdampened the growth of this occupation, at least for the time being.Industries and occupations concerned with developing alternative energysources probably will grow over time, but it would be folly for too manyyoung people to focus on them now when the demand is low. A final consideration about emerging occupations is that manyevolve as specialties within existing occupations. In Encounters, theauthors contend that tool and die makers will become the lasertechnicians of the future as more metalworking is done with lasers. Byrecognizing that the skills of today’s traditional occupations canoften be applied to tomorrow’s emerging fields, individuals canprepare for work in both today’s and tomorrow’s job market.The necessity and advantage of being adaptable to a changing job markethave been recognized by many writers.
In Megatrends, Naisbitt says,”We are moving from the specialist who is soon obsolete to thegeneralist who can adapt.” And, in Education for Tomorrow’sJobs, the authors state, “Given the uncertainty regarding the skillrequirements of the economy, it is essential that the education ofAmerica’s young people is designed to enhance their abilities toadapt as necessary to these changing requirements.” Which views of the future will prove to be correct? Perhaps none.We will only know in the future; until then counselors and students mustmake the best use they can of the information available to them. AsNaisbitt says in Megatrends, “Trends tell you the direction thecountry is moving in. The decisions are up to you.”