Future of Work

Companies rethink the need to even have offices, or how to redesign places of work. The traditional work shift - 9-5, 5 days a week – is losing relevance. Many companies are adopting the remote work models, spawned by the pandemic, as their new normal. Does the nation need new policies of Guaranteed Basic Income, (UBI) or a drastic rethinking of the social safety nets?

Frontline and service workers have borne the health consequences of the pandemic, increasing racial and economic disparities. Certain robotic and AI applications are accelerating as the value of human workers is further questioned. Determining the likely areas of job growth and training needs is difficult. Post-secondary education has become more virtual and its costs, more controversial.

Since early 2020, the world has been rocked by triple crises: the global pandemic, the ensuing economic disruptions, and the acknowledgement of long-existing racial inequities. With U.S. unemployment sky-high, a majority of Americans are concerned about the future. The usual ladders to security - education, hard work, life-long employment - appear to have broken down.

A.I. Technologist and Entrepreneur, Kai-Fu Lee believes routine jobs will be displaced faster than new jobs will be created in the next 10-15 years. Though we’ll see a net loss of jobs, there will be many jobs invented and created. But how do workers future-proof themselves for jobs that don’t yet exist? What skills will be needed, and is college really worth it?

Technology has completely changed the way that farmers do things today, from the seeds that they plant to the way they drive their equipment. Sarah Lovas’s family has been farming in North Dakota for four generations. Today a farm labor shortage has forced farmers like Sarah to embrace the latest technologies, and agriculture is being digitized.

Each year Americans work longer and take fewer vacation days than others in the developed world. American ‘Workism’, logging long hours with little time off, might inspire people to make amazing things, but at what cost? While the COVID pandemic appears to have accelerated this work drive, and many are working more hours, women have been leaving the labor force in disproportionate numbers.

Tiffany Spraggins decided to go back to college after working jobs with no opportunity for growth. Knowing she wanted to make a livable wage, she started by looking at jobs that paid the salary she wanted. At college, she learned about an apprenticeship program to become a software functions tester, and she’s now on a path to being a full professional in a white-collar job.

Robots are already replacing human jobs. Advocates say they are the jobs people don’t want, but nonetheless, they are paying jobs, and the advent of human-like robots is getting closer as technology advances. AI systems have the capacity to replace humans on a scale never seen before. Should we embrace the future of robots, because it will create jobs that are more meaningful?

From 1977 to 1987, automation and outsourcing rapidly disrupted steel and manufacturing industries in places like Youngstown, Ohio. The result: mass unemployment, and an exodus of people going elsewhere for work. The effect wasn’t just economic; depression, alcoholism, drug use, and suicides rose in Youngstown, foreshadowing the consequences of technology and globalization everywhere.

Chris Francis lost his white collar career in the 2008 recession, and has been piecing together a livelihood ever since. He’s part of a growing movement of nomadic workers, living in their RV’s, and travelling the country from job to job. Today, with retirement less of a guarantee, and younger Americans being the first generation to be worse off than their parents, the American dream is at risk.

15 years ago, Bryant Hospital in Lincoln, NE was one of several hospitals pioneering the use of ‘surgical cobots’. Now they are an accepted part of surgical practices across America. In this video, for example, Dr. Michael Jobst brings new levels of precision, control, and safety to his surgical procedures, by using multi-arm robotic surgery. But does this current generation of robots cost jobs?

When local growers in Yuma, AZ reached out to University of AZ Engineering and Business programs for help modernizing the date industry, inventors and entrepreneurs Madeline Melichar and Evan Westman took up the challenge. Forming a tech start up, they have designed a drone to dispense pollen to the hard-to-reach Medjool date trees. They hope to attract new work and higher paying jobs to the area.