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Sep 4

Economists: Immigration is great for the U.S.

by Scott McLeod

If you pay attention only to politics, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the current debate about immigration in America is limited to how severely it should be restricted—whether we need only to seal the border or actually change the birthright citizenship clause in the Constitution.

But among economic pundits, the discussion is heading in exactly the opposite direction. Pro-immigration arguments are booming, and reached a zenith this week with the publication of a paper by the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, arguing among other things that immigrants, despite popular misconception, do not displace American workers. This has led a number of economic bloggers to make the very rational argument that one of the best things America could do now to fix our sagging economy is to encourage more people to come here and work.

via http://www.slate.com/id/2265974

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Filed under  //  economy   politics   workforce  

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Aug 4

A river of nickels

by Scott McLeod
WMG is on the verge of cracking the media world's most pressing business riddle: how to successfully replace analog dollars with what Goldman Sachs analyst Ingrid Chung calls a "river of nickels."
via http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/147/take-us-to-the-river.html

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Filed under  //  economy   music  

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Aug 3

Are you replaceable?

by Scott McLeod
The internet has dramatically widened the number of available substitutes. You don't have to like it, but it's true. That means you have to work far harder to create work that can't easily be replaced.
Seth Godin via http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/08/accept-all-substitutes.html

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Filed under  //  economy   marketing   Seth Godin  

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Jun 24

The 11 jobs most likely to be outsourced

by Scott McLeod
via http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/06/11-jobs-most-likely-to-be-outsourced/58388/

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Filed under  //  economy  

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Apr 23

Looking for Jobs?: Look to IT

by Scott McLeod
there were 688,000 new IT jobs created from 1999-2008, an increase of 26 percent – four times faster than U.S. employment as a whole
via http://www.itif.org/publications/looking-jobs-look-it

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Filed under  //  economy   technology  

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Feb 18

Job losses in post-World War II recessions

by Scott McLeod
via http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/post-wwii-recession-job-recoveries-months/

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Filed under  //  economy  

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Jan 20

Do our schools today teach the ability to rethink one’s assumptions and try again?

by Scott McLeod
[W]e have not begun to rethink our core institutions nor the core standards by which measure the success of those institutions for a new century.  Our emphasis on specialization, on rote memorization, on multiple choice answers to a prescribed curriculum, and even on individual achievement are all products of the late nineteenth century Industrial Age when it was imperative to train an unskilled workforce for the factories.  Whether immigrants coming to the U.S. from many different countries or farmers moving into the cities for work, many of the institutions of what were called “graded schools” were designed to teach the regularity of factory life to those who might do the chore at hand, when the sun was up, on a schedule dictated by what needed to be done.   As many have noted, there is a reason that the school bell became the symbol of public education.  We’ve had over a century to hone the institutions and the forms of assessments that educate children for the workplace of the twentieth century.

What are we doing, on a national level, to educate our kids for a new digital age?  In a world where any knowledge is at your finger tips, is multiple choice really the way to be teaching kids about how to search and how to evaluate what you find?  Is extreme field specialization, so crucial for a segregated and hierarchical workforce, the right way to train kids for a future that might include three to seven career changes? 

Futurist Alvin Toffler has said that, in addition to reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic, the most important “'literacy' for the twenty-first century is the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn.”  Do our schools today teach that ability to rethink one’s assumptions and try again?

via http://dmlcentral.net/blog/cathy-davidson/educating-future-not-past

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Filed under  //  economy   education   workforce  

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Jan 19

Worldwide exports: China's astounding rise over the past two decades

by Scott McLeod
via http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15213305

"China might grab around one-quarter of world exports within ten years. That would beat America’s 18% share of world exports in the early 1950s, a figure that has since dropped to 8%."

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Filed under  //  China   economy   globalization  

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Dec 22

We're not showing and teaching kids the magic of computing

by Scott McLeod

Dr. Halamka is the chief information officer at the Harvard Medical School, a practicing emergency-ward physician and an adviser to the Obama administration on electronic health records.

Hybrid careers like Dr. Halamka’s that combine computing with other fields will increasingly be the new American jobs of the future, labor experts say. In other words, the nation’s economy is going to need more cool nerds. But not enough young people are embracing computing — often because they are leery of being branded nerds.

Educators and technologists say two things need to change: the image of computing work, and computer science education in high schools. Teacher groups, professional organizations like the Association for Computing Machinery and the National Science Foundation are pushing for these changes, but so are major technology companies including Google, Microsoft and Intel. One step in their campaign came the week of Dec. 7, National Computer Science Education Week, which was celebrated with events in schools and online.

Today, introductory courses in computer science are too often focused merely on teaching students to use software like word processing and spreadsheet programs, said Janice C. Cuny, a program director at the National Science Foundation. The Advanced Placement curriculum, she added, concentrates narrowly on programming. “We’re not showing and teaching kids the magic of computing,” Ms. Cuny said.

via http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/technology/21nerds.html

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Filed under  //  economy   jobs   technology   workforce  

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Nov 8

The world passed Washington by and Olympia didn't notice

by Scott McLeod
The world passed Washington by and Olympia didn't notice. The legislature is shocked that South Carolina will get some Boeing jobs and oblivious to the flat free-trade China-is-going-to-kick-our-ass education-is-everything global economy.
Tom Vander Ark, www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-vander-ark/the-chamber-of-commerce-p_b_349968.html

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Filed under  //  economy   international   law   policy  

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