{"id":303,"date":"2006-01-24T01:00:55","date_gmt":"2006-01-24T09:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=303"},"modified":"2006-01-18T22:28:58","modified_gmt":"2006-01-19T06:28:58","slug":"shrinking-workforce-is-good-for-technology-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=303","title":{"rendered":"Shrinking Workforce is Good for Technology Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I posted Shrinking Workforce is Good for Technology<\/a> and got a couple interesting comments. I thought this interesting enough to bring back to the foreground. First off, the post was really not about the HR effects of the decline in the workforce as baby boomers retire, but around the Economist’s<\/a> social commentary that perhaps some population decline isn’t such a bad thing for the globe as an environment.<\/p>\n

Colin’s<\/a> comment:<\/p>\n

Though I agree with the article\u2019s central point about the promise of technology, one thing it elides is that the declining population trend is not uniform across the EU\/Russia\/Japan and the US. While it has declined steadily, fertility here is still right around replacement level and immigration (legal and otherwise) is comparatively high.<\/p>\n

The end result of this is that by 2050-ish, the EU will be under 300 million population, with a median age in the 50s, while the US will be third behind China and India with a population over 400 million and a median age not much higher than today\u2019s (upper 30s). For those who see economic destiny in demographics, this is a pretty interesting data point. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

does seems to argue that there might not be a serious decline in population. In fact, if you look at the global population trends, the U.S. may not be so badly off. In fact, if you go run some numbers from the U.N. website, you’ll see that Colin is correct with his numbers.<\/p>\n

Donald from Sourcing Analytics Inc<\/a> had this to say:<\/p>\n

You bring up, Kingsbury, the all important topic of immigration. So much has been talked about how immigration is undermining our economy. Of course, a very different position could be taking that it is helping fuel expansion.<\/p>\n

The demographics tell us two very important things:<\/p>\n

1. With employment a near full during the 90s and right now increasing after a slow down, immigration (both legal and illegal), has helped us avoid a very serious labor shortage in this country.<\/p>\n

2. Without the offshoring of a significant number of jobs, there would not be enough of a labor pool to supply the job market.<\/p>\n

Now the composition of the job market can be analyzed of course and it may very well show that Walmart-type jobs are replacing higher paid\/higher skill jobs, but certainly productivity gains through technology has also picked up the slack of a more slowly expanding labor pool. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My reaction is that both of the above are correct. However, there is the underlying driver of thise “crisis.” In a global competition for talent, the U.S. seems to be losing the overall battle. In 10-15 years when the baby boomer population is in full retirement and the U.S. looses it’s senior talent, there are currently insufficient numbers of mid level professionals to fill their ranks. Add to this the fact that countries like China, South Korea, and India are doing a much better job nurturing the next generation of workers, and you have a global environment where offshoring is no longer an option. In fact, offshoring is no longer a valid term since we are not actually owning the product and moving the production. The future scenario is actually where “foreign” entities increasingly dominate the market. Is this bad? Definitely not from a global perspective. Certainly if you are an American.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I posted Shrinking Workforce is Good for Technology and got a couple interesting comments. I thought this interesting enough to bring back to the foreground. First off, the post was really not about the HR effects of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-outsourcing","category-workforce-planning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}