Understanding the Blue-Collar Boom: Opportunities and Challenges for Business Leaders

Over the next two years we are going to see major shift in the workforce. Let's talk about it. Hey everyone, this is Anthony Ernesto and this is my burn the box drop for this week. This week, the blue collar boom. I am predicting a blue collar boom in job over the next couple of years. Let's dive into some of the numbers here. Early in the 20th century, predominantly manual labor blue collar jobs primarily focused in manufacturing, mining, construction. It was actually 31% of total non farm employment by 1970s. Then what we saw from 2000 2010.com boom, technology boom, a sharp decline. We also saw globalization in a lot of those manufacturing and manual labor jobs being shipped overseas. And we saw a huge decline and it was because of globalization. Automation had a big piece of this. And the Great Recession in 2008, recent trends, we're starting to see a rebound of these roles. In fact, if you look at the ADP employment numbers every month you see that construction, manufacturing, retail, these jobs are actually increasing while more of the white collar jobs are decreasing. White collar jobs. In the same century we saw a rise of white collar jobs, particularly in the clerical and administrative roles. And they outnumbered actually blue collar jobs by 1950. In the mid to late 20th century we saw the shift from manufacturing to service orientation. And then of course course during the dot com boom and bust to technology type jobs. But recently we've seen notable layoffs in technology and finance that is actually reducing the amount of white collar jobs and a lot of reasons why the blue collar jobs are starting to surge. So how do we think about these things? Well, globalization obviously had a huge impact and it's actually having an impact again. If you're a fan of Peter Zion, his book the World the End of the World is just the beginning. What he talks about is the demographic collapse and you're starting to see hints of this in China. You see Apple moving some of their manufacturing and production to India. You see the Biden administration actually putting together what they call the Chips act to bring manufacturing back into the United States. If you read Peter's book, you'd understand that US has incredible resources to bring these jobs back into the United States, which were outsourced in the early 2000s. A lot of these jobs actually were pushed overseas and these, these employees were not retrained in any way. And you're going to start to see a for a lot of companies and government institutions to provide some sort of training to bring these jobs back. Demographics. The US Even though it is demographically challenged, but it's not like Other countries. We're also going to need some responsible and smart immigration policies because these jobs are going to boom. We're seeing unprecedented unemployment, even though we are seeing a downtick in technology and finance jobs. Also automation. You see Elon Musk is putting out a lot around robots and he's been tweeting a lot around around jobs and the fact that AI is going to take a lot of jobs. I think he's absolutely right. We're starting to see some drone activity in China. The collapse in China that Peter is predicting is not only a labor issue, which it is, it's also a consumption issue. A lot of folks are becoming older, they're consuming less, they're saving more. And I also think remote work has had an impact on all of that. So what do we see and what can you do as an employer, as a leader within a company? Well, first is invest in training and upskilling. You have to start prioritizing these things to equip workers with skills, skills to adapt to all these new technologies in these industry demands. If you're in an investment group or a private equity group, you really need to think about how, if you are putting your bets into manufacturing, how are we going to get the resources into these companies? Embrace automation. You have to start thinking about what can be automated. And a lot has been told about Amazon's automation. Spatial recognition is going to be a really huge impact around robotics here. So really embracing that automation. Provide vocational education. That was recently posted that Prof. G. Professor Galloway had donated 12 million, I think it was, to his alma mater, UC Berkeley, for vocational type training. And what we've seen, I was in high school, we had auto shop, we had wood shop. That doesn't exist anymore because there's been a push to more stem. There's nothing wrong with that. But the problem is when you get out of high school, you only have two choices or three choices. You go to college. And there's evidence that show more women are going to college than men. There's really no vocational outlet or training or the military. So providing that vocational education is going to be important. Foster a culture of continuous learning. You know, think about how to move your employees around within your organizations. And then of course, the manufacturing reshoring, we're seeing this already with the CHIPS Act. There's going to be a flood of manufacturing jobs, some of them going to be regular manufacturing jobs, some of them are going to be more sophisticated around chip manufacturing and we're going to start seeing that. So I predict in the next one to two years years, a boom in this sector. And so if you're an investor, you're a leader, you're looking for employment. This is a really interesting sector that was once sector that you wouldn't touch because a lot of these roles, a lot of the jobs were being outsourced. But a lot of that is coming back into the United States. We really need to think about, you know, this shift from a people perspective. What do we need to do, what do leaders need to do, and how can we get government involved in this next boom? That's my quick drop for this week. We'll see you next time.