The Future of Work

Watching the world go by Executive jets faster than the speed of sound are ready to fly off the drawing board Watching the world go by Executive jets faster than the speed of sound are ready to fly off the drawing board SUPERSONIC travel for airline passengers came to an end on October 24th 2003 when a British Airways Concorde completed the last scheduled flight from New York to London. With the ability to cruise at 2,160kph the fastest a Concorde made it across the Atlantic was a shade under three hours The Economist With the ability to cruise at 2,160kph (1,350mph, or around Mach 2—twice the speed of sound) the fastest a Concorde made it across the Atlantic was a shade under three hours, compared with the seven or eight hours it takes in a subsonic airliner. A number of things did for Concorde, including heavy fuel consumption, its sonic boom restricting speed over land and a fall in passengers after an Air France Concorde crashed in Paris in 2000, killing all 109 people on board. No replacement aircraft has ever emerged. But a supersonic executive jet may be a different matter. "Instead of windows it will have a "multiplex digital cabin"" One contender is the S-512, which is being developed by Spike Aerospace, a Boston company. Instead of windows it will have a “multiplex digital cabin”—a thin-screen video display either side of the passenger compartment that would be fed with a live view taken by six exterior cameras (a pair of conventional windows would be retained). The interior effect would be dramatic although, as the company points out, for much of the time there might be little to see apart from clouds or the stars in a night-time sky. On those occasions films could be shown instead—or even a PowerPoint presentation for workaholics. Using video windows would make the jet lighter, quieter and less expensive to build The Economist Using video windows would make the jet lighter, quieter inside and less expensive to build, says Vik Kachoria, Spike’s chief executive. The S-512 could carry 12-18 passengers at Mach 1.6 and, unlike Concorde, would have the range to fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo in just six hours. Although at an early stage in its development, Mr Kachoria says the company has received $5m deposits for several of the roughly $100m jets, which it hopes to start delivering in 2020. Advanced aerodynamics and its relatively small size should reduce the sonic boom of an executive jet. Aerion, a company based in Nevada, is hoping to make a Mach 1.6 executive jet called the AS2. Throttled back to around Mach 1.2, the company reckons it could fly over land without the boom ever reaching the ground. In 2014 Airbus agreed to collaborate with Aerion on the project, which aims to have a prototype ready for test flights in 2019. If supersonic travel does return, it looks like being more exclusive than Concorde ever was.

Hacking your brain Will electric brain stimulation make people more efficient? Hacking your brain Can electronic brain stimulation make people more efficient? “IT’S like coffee times ten,” raves one enthusiast. “I use it a couple of times a week and problems solve themselves. At the end of the day, I haven’t wasted hours on frivolous websites. At the end of the week, my apartment is clean.” This marvel of productivity is not a new energy drink or an experimental wonder drug but a simple electrical device that he built at home for less than $10. Whenever this physicist feels like an extra burst of motivation, he places electrodes on his skull and sends a jolt of electricity into his brain. The currents are hundreds of times smaller than the seizure-inducing shocks used in electroconvulsive therapy The Economist The currents, which are typically applied for ten to 20 minutes, are hundreds of times smaller than the seizure-inducing shocks used in electroconvulsive therapy. Plans to make such transcranial direction current stimulation (tDCS) machines are freely available online and their components can be bought at hobbyist stores. Kits cater to those lacking soldering skills, and now companies are emerging offering nicely designed and packaged brain zappers for mainstream consumers. Not everyone using tDCS is seeking to become more efficient in their daily life. Some hope to enhance their concentration for study or video gaming; others want to boost their memory, speed up learning or induce meditative calm. Yet more are trying to self-medicate for conditions such as depression, chronic pain and motor, sensory or neurological disorders. The benefits might sound implausible, but there is some science to support them. The idea goes back a long way. Scribonius Largus, a first-century Roman physician, prescribed the shock of an electric ray for headaches, and in the 19th century electrical pioneers such as Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta toyed with crude bioelectric experiments. It was not until the 1960s, however, that the first rigorous studies of electrical brain stimulation took place. Directing the flow The theory behind tDCS is that a weak direct current alters the electric potential of nerve membranes within the brain. Depending on the direction of the current, it is said to make it easier or more difficult for neurons in a brain circuit to fire. Position the electrodes correctly and choose the right current, so the idea goes, and you can boost or suppress all kinds of things. Some researchers have reported that tDCS can reduce pain, ease depression, treat autism and Parkinson’s disease, control cravings for alcohol and drugs, repair stroke damage, and accelerate recovery from brain injuries, to say nothing of improving memory, reasoning and fluency. Remarkably, some effects seem to persist for days or even months. And the closer that scientists look at tDCS, the more they seem to find. Scientific papers about the technology appear at an ever-faster rate. "More still claim to have gained coginitive enhancements that give them an edge at work or play" Hardly surprising, then, that DIY brain hackers want in on the action. Christopher Zobrist, a 36-year-old entrepreneur based in Vietnam, is one of them. With little vision he has been registered as blind since birth due to an hereditary condition of his optic nerve that has no established medical treatment. Mr Zobrist read a study of a different kind of transcranial stimulation (using alternating current) that had helped some glaucoma patients in Germany recover part of their vision. Despite neither the condition nor the treatment matching his own situation, Mr Zobrist decided to try tDCS in combination with a visual training app on his tablet computer. He quickly noticed improvements in his distance vision and perception of contrast. “After six months, I can see oncoming traffic two to three times farther away than before, which is very helpful when crossing busy streets,” he says. Online communities dedicated to tDCS are full of similar stories. More still claim to have gained cognitive enhancements that give them an edge at work or play. Users follow the latest scientific papers avidly and attempt to replicate the results at home, discussing the merits of different currents, waveforms and “montages” (arrangements of the electrodes on the skull). Dissenting voices are rare. Here and there are tales of people who experienced headaches, nausea, confusion or sleeplessness after tDCS, while temporary visual effects and mild skin burns are fairly common. There have been no reports of seizures, serious injuries or deaths. But that does not mean it is without risk, says Peter Reiner, co-founder of the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia. He says DIY users may place electrodes incorrectly, thus stimulating the wrong part of their brain, or reverse the polarity of current, potentially impairing the very things they are trying to improve. No one really knows how tDCS interacts with chemical stimulants or recreational drugs like marijuana, or with pre-existing conditions like epilepsy. Even something as fundamental as being left-handed can alter the functional organisation of the brain. And if the benefits of tDCS can persist for weeks, perhaps its side-effects can linger, too. Many neuroscientists are particularly worried that the use of tDCS by children and young adults could affect their long-term neural development. There is no guarantee that slick products are any safer than a pocket-money brain stimulator assembled at home from a 9-volt battery The Economist Some of these concerns can be addressed by manufacturing tDCS devices to make it difficult, or impossible, to exceed recommended currents or to apply the electrodes incorrectly. One such product already exists. The Foc.us V2, made by Transcranial, a London company, is advertised as a $199 pocket-sized controller that pairs with a $99 headset intended to help with concentration and reaction speed while videogaming. Donning the headset automatically positions the electrodes on the left and right temples, and both the duration and maximum current are capped. A second headset provides a different montage aimed at improving performance and motivation while exercising. In reality, however, there is no guarantee that even slick products are any safer than a pocket-money brain stimulator assembled at home from a 9-volt battery, electrodes, a few wires and other components. Unlike the tDCS machines used for medical trials and clinical research, consumer versions may not have been assessed by any official body for safety or effectiveness. If the maker insists they are for use only by healthy adults to enhance cognition or leisure activities and make no diagnostic or therapeutic claims, such “wellness” devices have slipped under the regulatory radar of both the Medical Devices Directive in Europe and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in America. That worries some experts. A recent paper from the Institute for Science and Ethics at the University of Oxford points out that consumer tDCS products are mechanically and functionally equivalent to medical neurostimulation devices that require licensing. Why regulate the version that is likely to be operated responsibly by health professionals, and not the one freely available to unskilled and inexperienced users? The Nuffield Council on Bioethics agrees, recommending in 2013 that the European Commission should consider regulating all such gadgets under its medical devices regime, regardless of the purposes for which they are marketed. The Institute for Science and Ethics proposes a graded regulation system that errs on the side of consumer choice for tDCS devices, requiring comprehensive, objective information about risks and benefits to allow users to make informed decisions. But it wants supplying brain zappers to children to be made illegal. Last year the FDA allowed transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator (TENS) machines for headache relief as it rated them as low-to moderate-risk devices. TENS devices use a different waveform to tDCS and target cranial nerves rather than the brain itself, but they rely on a similar controller and head-mounted electrodes. Before allowing new TENS products to be sold, the FDA now wants to see evidence that the components are not likely to cause injury, that the controller can reliably provide the correct output, that there are no thermal or mechanical hazards, and that clinical data demonstrate the device is safe and effective as a headache treatment. Recent draft FDA guidelines for wellness devices suggest tDCS machines may eventually be regulated in a similar way. Going underground The University of British Columbia’s Dr Reiner doubts that any manufacturer today can provide such information for tDCS. Even if they could, the cost of gathering it would make consumer devices more expensive. “When you can make a tDCS device yourself for less than $20, we would advise strongly against heavy regulation because it will only drive the technology underground,” he says. "As the hype around tDCS grows, some neuroscientists are starting to question whether the technology really is the panacea it appears to be" Proving the effectiveness of brain stimulation will be difficult. Although it may well do something, exactly what is open to question. As the hype around tDCS grows, some neuroscientists are starting to question whether the technology really is the panacea it appears to be. In 2013 Teresa Iuculano and Roi Cohen Kadosh of the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford split volunteers up into three groups and asked them to learn a made-up mathematical notation system. The first two groups received tDCS to different parts of the brain previously associated with numerical understanding and learning, while a non-functional “sham” device was used on the third group as a control. After a week, all three groups were tested on how well they had learned the new notation system, and whether they could use it in practice. The first group showed an improvement in learning compared with the control group, but a decrease in their ability to apply their knowledge, while the second group experienced the opposite result. This suggests that the brain is actually rather well balanced: boost performance in one cognitive realm through stimulation, and aptitude in another will naturally diminish. There is also the possibility that a variation in individual responses to tDCS will overshadow any general effects. In a study published last year, Dr Cohen Kadosh set up two groups: one of people who were anxious when presented with mathematical problems, and another who had confidence in their ability to breeze through numerical quizzes. When treated with tDCS to their prefrontal cortices, the nervous individuals improved their reaction time on simple arithmetical problems and showed reduced levels of stress. Given the same treatment, the confident group had longer reaction times and no less stress. “If you can get exactly the opposite results with a different population, that shows DIY brain hackers and companies marketing stimulation to improve gaming or other abilities are not on the right track,” says Dr Cohen Kadosh. “We need to understand how the brain works in different people.” Felipe Fregni, director of the Laboratory of Neuromodulation at Harvard Medical School, says tDCS has been shown to accelerate the learning of new skills. But he agrees that individual variation is important, noting that younger people sometimes do not improve as much as older subjects, and that people at later stages of learning may even experience detrimental effects. “The more science you know, the more confused you can become of what really is the effect of tDCS,” says Dr Fregni. One advantage of the deluge of scientific papers is that they can be subjected to meta-analysis, whereby studies can be statistically combined to tease out new discoveries. Last year, Jared Horvath, a neuroscientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, published a meta-analysis of 30 measurements taken during tDCS studies, including neural responses, oxygen levels and electrical activity in the brain. Surprisingly, he found that tDCS had a reliable effect on only one: the electrical response of muscles to stimulus, and even that has steadily declined in studies over the last 14 years. Mr Horvath believes this indicates that the response has historically been measured poorly and that it too will eventually disappear as techniques mature. Equally troublesome is a meta-analysis of the cognitive and behavioural effects on healthy adults that Mr Horvath subsequently carried out. As before, he included only the most reliable studies: those with a sham control group and replicated by other researchers. It left 200 studies claiming to have discovered beneficial effects on over 100 activities such as problem solving, learning, mental arithmetic, working memory and motor tasks. After his meta-analysis, however, tDCS was found to have had no significant effect on any of them. If tDCS alters neither the physiology of the brain nor how it performs, thinks Mr Horvath, then evidence suggests it is not doing anything at all. Marom Bikson, a professor of biomedical engineering at City University of New York, disagrees. “I can literally make you fall on your butt using the ‘wrong’ type of tDCS,” he says. Dr Bikson thinks the biggest challenge for tDCS is optimising techniques, such as the dose. Mr Horvath notes that many papers measure 20 or more outcomes, with brain stimulation showing a weak effect on one or two. “But in the title and abstract, that’s all they talk about,” he says. “No one mentions the tons of effects that tDCS didn’t have an impact on but that technically it should have if it is doing what the researcher thinks it is.” Another problem might be the small sample size, sometimes as few as ten or 15 people. Mr Horvath says future studies should use at least 150 subjects. There is, of course, the possibility that Mr Horvath’s analyses are flawed. His paper included only one-off sessions, while many scientists believe the effects of tDCS accumulate with repetition. However, too few multiple-session studies exist for a valid meta-analysis. Dr Cohen Kadosh points out that individual variations could make the technology look as though it is doing nothing when in fact it has real but opposing effects in different people. Mr Horvath insists that his analysis allows for this possibility. Critics might also wonder why Mr Horvath omitted tests where tDCS seems to have been most effective, in alleviating, for instance, clinical conditions such as depression. He admits that would be useful but says, “If something doesn’t demonstrate any type of effect in healthy people, it becomes incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to argue why it would work within a clinical population.” Not all neuroscientists are defending the status quo. “I’m not surprised that he found no effect from conventionally applied tDCS,” says Jamie Tyler, a professor at Arizona State University and one of the founders of Thync, a Silicon Valley startup that recently unveiled a smartphone-controlled tDCS device. Thync tried to replicate some basic tDCS findings on cognition but could not do so. Dr Tyler now believes that tDCS may not directly stimulate the brain at all but instead modulates cranial nerves in the skull, like the headache-busting TENS technology. He designed the Thync device, a pocket-sized unit with disposable pre-shaped electrodes, to target these nerves with the aim of generating either relaxed or energetic mental states. A shot of caffeine Dr Tyler recently published a study of 82 people with a control. Its results suggest that Thync’s device can reduce psychophysiological stress by altering skin conductivity (a measure used in pseudoscientific lie detectors), stress enzymes and heart rate variability. He likens Thync’s “modified tDCS” programs to ingesting either a third of a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and says no effect has been found on cognitive processes like working memory. While Thync’s stimulator is not yet available to the public, the firm was willing to give your correspondent a pre-launch trial. The cognitive enhancements of a strong cup of tea or a glass of vintage Burgundy are well established The Economist The Thync device attaches with one sticky electrode on the right temple and one behind the right ear. The unit is controlled via a smartphone app, with the user able to adjust the intensity but not the duration of the session. At first, the unit generated a barely perceptible crawling feeling on the skin near the electrodes, building gradually to a pronounced tingling sensation. Over the 20-minute session, the strength of the signal varied up and down according to a preset routine. It felt itchy at times and, at its most powerful, caused muscles in the forehead to spasm alarmingly. Although the experience was not altogether unpleasant, any extra energy or focus proved, alas, elusive. Dr Tyler acknowledged that perhaps one in four people do not perceive any immediate benefit from the device. Even for those who find themselves susceptible to its charms, the challenges for a product like Thync are formidable. The cognitive enhancements of a strong cup of tea or a glass of vintage Burgundy are well established. And partaking of them can be socially acceptable, deliciously enjoyable and rapidly achieved. None of these can be said of a disconcerting gizmo that needs half an hour to work and causes eyebrows to raise, both literally and socially. Regardless of their questionable utility and effectiveness, tDCS gadgets are too novel, cheap and alluring to simply dismiss. Consumer-wellness devices like Thync may appeal to those who cannot use caffeine or alcohol for medical or religious reasons, and there will always be healthy overachievers seeking to supercharge their cognition for study or work. More importantly, tDCS presents the tantalising promise of relief from some medical conditions for which traditional therapies are either ineffective or unaffordable. As the University of Melbourne’s Mr Horvath says, “If there are ten percent of people who are feeling a huge effect, even if that’s placebo, who are we to say no to them?” If people want to experiment with tDCS, there seems to be no reason to prevent them, provided it is done in the safest way possible. Devices could be regulated lightly with a view to safety rather than effectiveness, and neuroscientists encouraged to design future studies with more rigour. Happiness and health may always be more than just a 9-volt battery away, but brain hacking looks like it is here to stay.

Generation uphill Are millennials being given enough of a chance to reach their full potential? Generation uphill Millennials are the brainiest, best-educated generation ever. Yet their elders often stop them from reaching their full potential, argues Robert Guest SHEN XIANG LIVES in a shipping crate on a construction site in Shanghai which he shares with at least seven other young workers. He sleeps in a bunk and uses a bucket to wash in. “It’s uncomfortable,” he says. Still, he pays no rent and the walk to work is only a few paces. Mr Shen, who was born in 1989, hails from a village of “mountains, rivers and trees”. He is a migrant worker and the son of two migrants, so he has always been a second-class citizen in his own country. Mr Shen doubts that he will ever be able to buy a flat in Shanghai..."It's unfair," he says The Economist In China, many public services in cities are reserved for those with a hukou (residence permit). Despite recent reforms, it is still hard for a rural migrant to obtain a big-city hukou. Mr Shen was shut out of government schools in Shanghai even though his parents worked there. Instead he had to make do with a worse one back in his village Now he paints hotels. The pay is good—300 yuan ($47) for an 11-hour day—and jobs are more plentiful in Shanghai than back in the countryside. His ambition is “to get married as fast as I can”. But he cannot afford to. There are more young men than young women in China because so many girl babies were aborted in previous decades. So the women today can afford to be picky. Mr Shen had a girlfriend once, but her family demanded that he buy her a house. “I didn’t have enough money, so we broke up,” he recalls. Mr Shen doubts that he will ever be able to buy a flat in Shanghai. In any case, without the right hukou his children would not get subsidised education or health care there. “It’s unfair,” he says. There are 1.8 billion young people in the world, roughly a quarter of the total population. (This report defines “young” as between about 15 and 30.) All generalisations about such a vast group should be taken with a bucket of salt. What is true of young Chinese may not apply to young Americans or Burundians. But the young do have some things in common: they grew up in the age of smartphones and in the shadow of a global financial disaster. They fret that it is hard to get a good education, a steady job, a home and—eventually—a mate with whom to start a family. There are 1.8 billion young people in the world, roughly a quarter of the population The Economist Companies are obsessed with understanding how “millennials” think, the better to recruit them or sell them stuff. Consultants churn out endless reports explaining that they like to share, require constant praise and so forth. Pundits fret that millennials in rich countries never seem to grow out of adolescence, with their constant posting of selfies on social media and their desire for “safe spaces” at university, shielded from discomforting ideas. This report takes a global view, since 85% of young people live in developing countries, and focuses on practical matters, such as education and jobs. And it will argue that the young are an oppressed minority, held back by their elders. They are unlike other oppressed minorities, of course. Their “oppressors” do not set out to harm them. On the contrary, they often love and nurture them. Many would gladly swap places with them, too. In some respects the young have never had it so good. They are richer and likely to live longer than any previous generation. On their smartphones they can find all the information in the world. If they are female or gay, in most countries they enjoy freedoms that their predecessors could barely have imagined. They are also brainier than any previous generation. Average scores on intelligence tests have been rising for decades in many countries, thanks to better nutrition and mass education. "Over 25% of youngsters in middle-income nations and 15% in rich ones are NEETs" Yet much of their talent is being squandered. In most regions they are at least twice as likely as their elders to be unemployed. Over 25% of youngsters in middle-income nations and 15% in rich ones are NEETs: not in education, employment or training. The job market they are entering is more competitive than ever, and in many countries the rules are rigged to favour those who already have a job. Education has become so expensive that many students rack up heavy debts. Housing has grown costlier, too, especially in the globally connected megacities where the best jobs are. Young people yearn to move to such cities: beside higher pay, they offer excitement and a wide selection of other young people to date or marry. Yet constraints on the supply of housing make that hard. For both sexes the path to adulthood—from school to work, marriage and children—has become longer and more complicated. Mostly, this is a good thing. Many young people now study until their mid-20s and put off having children until their late 30s. They form families later partly because they want to and partly because it is taking them longer to become established in their careers and feel financially secure. Alas, despite improvements in fertility treatment the biological clock has not been reset to accommodate modern working lives. Throughout human history, the old have subsidised the young. In rich countries, however, that flow has recently started to reverse. Ronald Lee of the University of California, Berkeley, and Andrew Mason at the University of Hawaii measured how much people earn at different ages in 23 countries, and how much they consume. Within families, intergenerational transfers still flow almost entirely from older to younger. However, in rich countries public spending favours pensions and health care for the old over education for the young. Much of this is paid for by borrowing, and the bill will one day land on the young. In five of 23 countries in Messrs Lee and Mason’s sample (Germany, Austria, Japan, Slovenia and Hungary), the net flow of resources (public plus private) is now heading from young to old, who tend to be richer. As societies age, many more will join them. Politicians in democracies listen to the people who vote—which young people seldom do. Only 23% of Americans aged 18-34 cast a ballot in the 2014 mid-term elections, compared with 59% of the over-65s. In Britain’s 2015 general election only 43% of the 18-24s but 78% of the over-65s voted. In both countries the party favoured by older voters won a thumping victory. “My generation has a huge interest in political causes but a lack of faith in political parties,” says Aditi Shorewal, the editor of a student paper at King’s College, London. In autocracies the young are even more disillusioned. In one survey, only 10% of Chinese respondents thought that young people’s career prospects depended more on hard work or ability than on family connections. All countries need to work harder to give the young a fair shot. If they do not, a whole generation’s talents could be wasted. That would not only be immoral; it would also be dangerous. Angry young people sometimes start revolutions, as the despots overthrown in the Arab Spring can attest. Do you think millennials the world over are being given a fair shot? No, the challenges stacked against millennials are far too great

Yes, no previous generation has had it so good

Millennials and work Why youth unemployment is a massive waste of resources Millennials and work Why youth unemployment is a massive waste of resources CRISTINA FONSECA CAUGHT pneumonia a week before her final exams. “I thought I would die,” she recalls. When she recovered, she reassessed her priorities. As a star computer scientist, she had lots of job offers, but she turned them all down. “I realised that I didn’t want to spend my life doing anything that was not really worthwhile.” She decided to start her own business. After a year of false starts she co-founded a company called Talkdesk, which helps other firms set up call centres. By using its software, clients can have one up and running in five minutes, she claims. "Elite youth today are multilingual, global-minded and digitally native" Ms Fonseca’s success helps explain why some people are optimistic about the millennial generation in the workplace. At 28, she is providing a completely new service in support of another service that did not exist until quite recently. She lives in Portugal but does business all over the globe. She sounds very much like several other young entrepreneurs your correspondent met while researching this report, such as a Russian who set up a virtual talent agency for models (castweek.ru); an Asian-American electric cellist who teaches people how to make new sounds using a laptop (danaleong.com); and a Nigerian starting a new publishing house for African romantic novelists (ankarapress.com). Elite youth today are multilingual, global-minded and digitally native; few can remember life before the internet or imagine how anyone coped without it. The best-known of them changed the world before they turned 30, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and Instagram’s Kevin Systrom. The global economy works well for such people. Digital startups require far less capital than, say, building a factory, and a brilliant piece of software can be distributed to millions at minimal cost. So today’s whippersnappers of great wealth have made their money much faster than the Rockefellers and Carnegies of old. Youth unemployment in France is 25% and has been scandalously high for three decades The Economist But the world of work has been less kind to other young folk. Florence Moreau, a young architect in Paris, had the double misfortune to leave university in 2009, when the world economy was on its knees; and to be French. “I really need a full-time, permanent job,” she says. Under France’s 3,800-page labour code, workers on permanent contracts receive generous benefits and are extremely hard to get rid of. So French firms have all but stopped hiring permanent staff: four-fifths of new employees are on short-term contracts. Ms Moreau has had eight jobs, none lasting for longer than 16 months. With a small child at home, she has to keep looking for the next one. “It’s tiring,” she sighs. One employer suggested that she should become an “entrepreneur”, doing the same job as before but as a contractor, so that the firm could keep her on indefinitely without incurring heavy ancillary costs. She refused. Insiders v outsiders Youth unemployment in France (using the ILO definition of youth as 15-24-year-olds) is 25% and has been scandalously high for three decades. Occasionally the government tinkers with labour rules, but voters have little appetite for serious reform. Ms Moreau rejects the idea that insiders enjoy too many legal protections, and that this is why outsiders find it so hard to break in. She blames exploitative employers, and doubts that any government, left or right, will fix the problem. Rigid labour rules are tougher on young workers than older ones. People without much experience find it harder to demonstrate that they are worth employing. And when companies know they cannot easily get rid of duds, they become reluctant to hire anyone at all. This is especially true when the economy is not growing fast and they have to bear the huge fixed cost of all the older permanent employees they took on in easier times. France is not alone in having such problems. In the euro area, Greece, Spain and Italy all have rules that coddle insiders and discourage outsiders. Their youth unemployment rates are, respectively, 48%, 48% and 40%. Developing countries, too, often have rigid labour markets. Brazilian employees typically cost their employers their salary all over again in legally mandated benefits and taxes. South Africa mixes European-style labour protections with extreme racial preferences. Firms must favour black job applicants even if they are unqualified, so long as they have the “capacity to acquire, within a reasonable time, the ability to do the job”. Some 16% of young Brazilians and a stunning 63% of young South Africans are unemployed. Globally, average youth unemployment is 13% compared with the adult rate of 4.5%. Young people are also more likely than older ones to be in temporary, ill-paid or insecure jobs. Joblessness matters for several reasons. First, it is miserable for those concerned. Second, it is a waste of human potential. Time spent e-mailing CVs or lying dejected on the sofa is time not spent fixing boilers, laying cables or building a business. Third, it is fiscally ruinous. If the young cannot get a foot on the career ladder, it is hard to see how in time they will be able to support the swelling number of pensioners. Fourth, joblessness can become self-perpetuating. The longer people are out of work, the more their skills and their self-confidence atrophy, the less appealing they look to potential employers and the more likely they are to give up and subsist on the dole. This “scarring” effect is worse if you are jobless when young, perhaps because that is when work habits become ingrained. Thomas Mroz of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Tim Savage of Welch Consulting found that someone who is jobless for a mere six months at the age of 22 will earn 8% less at 23 than he otherwise would have done. Paul Gregg and Emma Tominey of the University of Bristol found that men who were jobless in their youth earn 13–21% less at age 42. And David Bell of the University of Stirling and David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College found that people who were unemployed in their early 20s are less happy than expected even at the age of 50. Over the next decade more than 1 billion young people will enter the global labour market, and only 40% will be working in jobs that currently exist The Economist “The first ten years are essential. They shape careers in the long term,” says Stefano Scarpetta of the OECD, a think-tank for mostly rich countries. This is when people develop the soft skills that they do not pick up at school, such as conscientiousness, punctuality and teamwork. Over the next decade more than 1 billion young people will enter the global labour market, and only 40% will be working in jobs that currently exist, estimates the World Bank. Some 90% of new jobs are created by the private sector. The best thing for job creation is economic growth, so policies that promote growth are particularly good for the young. Removing regulatory barriers can also boost job creation. Mr Scarpetta applauds recent attempts in Spain, Italy and Portugal to make labour rules a bit more flexible, but argues that such laws should generally be much simpler. For example, it would be better to scrap the stark distinction between temporary and permanent contracts and have only one basic type of contract in which benefits and job security accumulate gradually. Denmark shows how a labour market can be flexible and still give workers a sense of security. Under its “flexicurity” system companies can hire and fire easily. Unemployed workers are supported by the state, which helps them with retraining and finding new jobs. What type of role do you see yourself working in in 10 years time? In a job/career path that currently exists

A role that hasn't been invented yet Trade unions often favour a minimum wage. This can help those who already have jobs, but if it is set too high it can crowd out those with the fewest skills and the least experience, who tend to be young. It makes more sense to subsidise wages through a negative income tax, thus swelling take-home pay for the lowliest workers without making them more expensive for the employer. But this costs taxpayers money, so many governments prefer to raise the legal minimum wage, passing the cost on to others. America’s Democratic Party is pushing to double the federal minimum wage, to $15 an hour—a certain job-killer. Putting the tyke into tycoon Making it easier for young people to start their own business is essential, too. They may be full of energy and open to new ideas, but the firms they create are typically less successful than those launched by older entrepreneurs. The young find it harder to raise capital because they generally have a weaker credit history and less collateral. They usually also know less about the industry they are seeking to enter and have fewer contacts than their older peers. A survey by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor found that businesses run by entrepreneurs over the age of 35 were 1.7 times as likely to have survived for more than 42 months as those run by 25-34-year-olds. "As economies grow more sophisticated, demand for cognitive skills will keep rising" Young sub-Saharan Africans show the greatest enthusiasm for starting their own business: 52% say they would like to, compared with only 19% in rich Western countries. This is partly because many have little choice. There are fewer good jobs available in poor countries, and in the absence of a welfare state few people can afford to do nothing. Bamaiyi Guche, a Nigerian 17-year-old, is a typical example of a poor-country entrepreneur. He goes to school from 8 to 12 every morning, then spends the afternoon in the blazing sun selling small water sachets to other poor people without running water in their homes. He makes $1 a day, half of which goes on his school fees. He wants to be a doctor one day. Some youngsters from well-off families forge careers as “social entrepreneurs”, seeking new ways to do good. Keren Wong, for example, recognises that she was “born into privilege”. (Her parents were prosperous enough to support her at Cornell University.) A Chinese-American, she now runs a non-profit called BEAM which connects teachers in rural Chinese schools so they can swap ideas for teaching more effectively. Alas, there is a huge mismatch everywhere between the skills that many young people can offer and the ones that employers need. Ms Fonseca says she cannot find the right talent for Talkdesk. “I need very good engineers, very good designers and people who speak very good English. But there aren’t enough of them,” she says. As economies grow more sophisticated, demand for cognitive skills will keep rising. The world’s schools are not even close to meeting it.

Liquid lunch How a startup wants to change the way people consume calories Liquid lunch A startup called Soylent wants to change the way people consume calories “ONE should eat to live, not live to eat,” wrote Molière, the French comedic playwright. Some workaholic entrepreneurs have taken him at his word. Soylent, a two-year-old startup, is trying to save consumers time and money by selling them a healthy, cheap “meal” that they can drink. Each vegetarian portion has only around 400 calories, costs around $3 and boasts of being as nutritious as, and more environmentally-friendly than, processed food and meat. Each vegetarian portion has only around 400 calories and costs around $3 The Economist Soylent has found a place among American workaholics who resent the cost and hassle of preparing regular meals. This is especially true in Silicon Valley, home of many “early-adopter” engineers too consumed with coding the future to break from work. Their bad diets can damage their health. Several years ago Sam Altman, an entrepreneur who is now president of Y Combinator, a startup boot camp, was so cost-conscious and focused on building his first company, Loopt, that for weeks he ate only ramen noodles and coffee ice cream, until he developed scurvy. He later became an investor in Soylent. At first the product was sold as a powder, but even that was a hassle for some consumers, so on September 9th it started shipping version 2.0, which comes already mixed and bottled. "Yucky-sounding ingredients like algal oil will put many off, as well as reviews from early users that Soylent makes them gassy" The name Soylent is a tribute to a 1966 science-fiction novel, “Make Room! Make Room!”, set in an overpopulated world where everyone eats a mixture of lentils and soy (and, in the film version, human flesh). Rob Rhinehart, the drink’s 27-year-old creator, came up with the idea when he was working on a different startup, focused on wireless internet. He was so poor that he started mixing his own food, and later dropped the other project to focus on food technology. He is, by any measure, extreme. He considers shopping at grocery stores, in the presence of “rotting” produce, a “multisensory living nightmare”, and no longer owns a fridge. Soylent has proved that it can appeal to a niche, as well as to a handful of financiers: in January the firm raised $20m from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, a well-regarded venture-capital firm. But it has plenty of obstacles to overcome. Yucky-sounding ingredients like algal oil (yes, derived from algae) will put many off, as well as reviews from early users that Soylent makes them gassy. “I prefer my food with both flavour and texture,” says one young, vegetarian entrepreneur who has tried it. Mr Rhinehart insists that Soylent’s “neutral” taste is the best way to appeal to the broadest group of people. Just how big that group really is, however, remains to be seen.

Nothing special Why MBAs may no longer be prized by employers Nothing special Why MBAs are no longer prized by employers FINDING a competitive edge is an obsession for those looking to take an MBA. Prospective students spend hours researching the minute details that will take their application from the middle of the pile to the top, and land them a place at a business school that promises plentiful rewards. But what if they were wasting their time? Only 7% of graduates from India's 5,500 business schools are employable upon graduation according to one study The Economist Naysayers claim that the preponderance of institutions around the world that offer an MBA, or something approximating it, has resulted in a decline in teaching standards. Only 7% of graduates from India’s 5,500 business schools are employable upon graduation, according to one study. Others disagree. It is not that the MBA has become any less rigorous. Rather, easier access to an MBA programmes has changed what the MBA means to employers.



Debbie Goodman-Bhyat, the boss of Jack Hammer, a South African headhunter, says she is all for jobseekers trying to become better qualified. However, she goes on, firms no longer see an MBA as a differentiating factor, unless it was obtained at one of the world’s best business schools. Not only are more business schools now offering MBAs, but there are also a multitude of different ways to study. Online MBAs are increasing in popularity, and the number of part-time courses helps those who would not be able to devote time to a full-time programme, due to family or work commitments, to undertake their qualifications. Simply put, MBAs are no longer rare, and as such are no longer a guarantee for employment. "MBA programmes are marketed as a shortcut to higher earnings. Often they are"

MBA programmes are marketed as a shortcut to higher earnings. Often they are. According to data from the last ranking by The Economist, recent MBA graduates can expect to increase their salary by 79%. Yet that requires locating a job in the first place. And appending “MBA” to the name at the top of a CV no longer guarantees employment. In America, the number of MBAs awarded by business schools has increased sevenfold from 1970. Nearly 200,000 students from American institutions have been awarded Master’s degrees in business every year since 2010. The employment market has a job to keep up.



“The MBA shouldn’t be the obvious choice” for jobseekers in business, Mrs Goodman-Bhyat says, because the three letters no longer hold the prestige they once did. Other Master’s-level qualifications may better serve some people in their search for an executive-level job, she adds. Indeed, although 45% of South Africa’s top 40 chief executives have a Master’s-level qualification, according to a Jack Hammer survey, less than half of those hold an MBA. MBAs are particularly useful for liberal arts graduates looking for a business degree at Master’s level, but Mrs Goodman-Bhyat believes that any other high-quality post-graduate business degree can do the same job. In a world where it seems everyone holds an MBA, being the lone person without one may make you stand out The Economist

This seems to be borne out by statistics elsewhere. Fully 20% of business-school graduates told the Graduate Management Admission Council, a business-school body, that their course did not improve their earning power. With MBA programmes costing $100,000 or more at the best schools, careful consideration must be given to whether possessing the degree will really make a candidate stand out in the cut-throat job market. Perhaps, in a world where it seems practically everyone holds an MBA, being the lone person without one may make you stand out.

The future of personal transport How will your future self get to work? The future of personal transport How will your future self get to work? THE whizzy gadgets for geeks to goggle at during CES, an annual consumer-electronics show in Las Vegas, have typically been small enough to pick up. But they have been joined in recent years by an increasing number of cars. The Detroit motor show, America’s biggest and glitziest, starts later this month, but many in the car industry now regard CES, which opened on January 5th, as a more important event. Mary Barra, GM’s boss, unveiled a new production version of its Bolt electric car at Las Vegas this week. "Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, said the motor industry was being disrupted "far sooner, faster and more powerfully than one might expect"" Incumbent manufacturers are recognising the double threat posed by technology, as car-sharing takes off and driverless vehicles come closer. First, some people who might hitherto have wanted to own a car may no longer do so, cancelling out the growth the motor industry might otherwise have expected from the rising middle classes in developing countries. Second, technology firms may be better placed than carmakers to develop and profit from the software that will underpin both automated driving and vehicle-sharing. Some of these firms may even manufacture cars of their own. In a report ahead of the Las Vegas and Detroit shows, Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, said the motor industry was being disrupted “far sooner, faster and more powerfully than one might expect.” It predicted that conventional carmakers would scramble in the coming year to reinvent themselves. As if to demonstrate this, shortly before CES opened, GM announced a $500m investment in Lyft, a ride-sharing service. A rumoured tie-up between Ford and Google to produce driverless cars failed to materialise at the show, but even the rumours underlined the disruption that tech firms are bringing to the motor industry. And other partnerships were announced: Ford is teaming up with Amazon to connect its cars to sensor-laden smart homes. It was also revealed at CES that Toyota would adopt Ford’s in-car technology, which is a competitor to Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto, to access smartphone apps and other features. Carmakers are teaming up with tech firms because each has something the other needs The Economist That is not the only example of carmakers joining forces to avoid being beholden to the tech giants. In August BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen’s Audi division jointly bought Here, a mapping service, from Nokia, to ensure that carmakers have an independent provider rather than having to depend on Google Maps. Nevertheless, carmakers are also teaming up with tech firms because each has something the other needs. Building and marketing cars, and dealing with safety and emissions regulators, is tricky. Tech firms could copy Tesla, which has built its own electric cars for more than a decade. Apple, which is said to be planning an electric car, may try to have them made in the same way as it does its iPhones, outsourcing to a contract manufacturer. But a more obvious route is to ally with an established carmaker. Carmakers also have lots to learn. Most are working on making their vehicles either fully or partly self-piloting, and a number are running their own car-sharing experiments. But Google remains the leading exponent of autonomous driving. Its robotics, drones and search engine all contribute expertise that helps to guide a driverless car down the road avoiding pedestrians, obstacles and other vehicles, using computing power and sophisticated software to interpret masses of data received both from the car’s on-board sensors and from external sources through wireless connections. "If tech firms have much to gain as they muscle in to the motor business, the carmakers are wary of what they have to lose" Yet if the tech firms have much to gain as they muscle in to the motor business, the carmakers are wary of what they have to lose. Profits may seep away towards the producers of the software and the owners of the data, and away from the makers of the hardware. Hitherto, new cars—even quite modest ones—have tended to be bought as status symbols and expressions of personal style, but if consumers become more interested in what software and entertainment systems a car can run, rather than what it looks like, the industry’s whole business model may come apart. Ride-sharing, car clubs and other alternatives to ownership are already growing fast. Young city-dwellers are turning their backs on owning a costly asset that sits largely unused and loses value the moment it is first driven. Carmakers insist that such consumers are merely deferring buying a vehicle, pointing to the fact that people continue to drive at an older age than they used to. But the pronouncements of motor-industry bosses suggest that doubts are creeping in. At CES Mark Fields, Ford’s CEO, said that it would in future be “both a product and mobility company”. Membership of car clubs, which let people book by app for periods as short as 15 minutes, is growing by over 30% a year, according to Alix Partners, a consulting firm, and should hit 26m members worldwide by 2020. Competition is intense. ZipCar, owned by Avis Budget, a conventional car-hire firm, is thriving. More carmakers are copying Daimler’s Car2Go and BMW’s Drive Now apps. Earlier this year Ford began testing both a car-sharing service in America and a car club in Britain. Daimler reckons its scheme is profitable. But such services are unlikely ever to match the returns, especially for premium makers, from selling vehicles. At the same time, app-based taxi services such as Uber and its Chinese counterpart Didi Dache, which are often cheaper and more efficient than conventional cabs, are also growing quickly. Once these are able to dispense with drivers for their vehicles, the taxi, car-club and car-sharing businesses will in effect merge into one big, convenient and affordable alternative to owning a car. So when will the fully autonomous car hit the showrooms? Google, whose cars have done 1.3m test miles (2.1m km) on public roads, once promised 2018, whereas most analysts reckoned the 2030s more plausible as carmakers introduced automated-driving features in stages. Now, Mr Fields is talking about autonomous cars being ready to roll by 2020. More conservative car bosses add five years. Fully driverless vehicles could result in the average US household cutting its car ownership from 2.1 vehicles to 1.2 by 2040 The Economist Barclays, another bank, forecasts that the fully driverless vehicle will result in the average American household cutting its car ownership from 2.1 vehicles now to 1.2 by 2040. A self-piloting car may drop off a family’s breadwinner at work, then scuttle back to pick up the kids and take them to school. The 11m or so annual sales of mass-market cars for personal ownership in America may be replaced by 3.8m sales of self-driving cars, either personally owned or part of taxi fleets, Barclays thinks. Driverless cars still have problems in bad weather. They may struggle to recognise that light shining off a puddle is harmless or guess that a pedestrian is about to step into the traffic without looking. But sophisticated systems for hands-free driving on motorways, and for automated parking, are already available on a number of manufacturers’ models. Fully driverless cars will ferry workers round GM’s technical centre in Detroit in late 2016. Convincing regulators to allow fully driverless cars onto the streets is the next hurdle. Insurers and consumers also need to be won round. If self-driving cars can be introduced first on private roads or designated areas of cities to prove their worth in avoiding accidents and reducing congestion, that might help. Within the industry, the big question is not whether this future will arrive, but whether tech firms or carmakers will grab the spoils. Will the sign on the dashboard say Ford (powered by Google) or Google (powered by Ford)?