In this 3rd article of a set of 4 I am going to discuss the labor market and education opportunities a child born in 2015 could have when they are 16–20 by looking at how technology will disrupt the majority of jobs young people can only perform. I also show the unequal opportunity and discrimination a child of a certain race and/or gender currently faces. Finally I predict how a disenfranchised group of young men may develop as they are less likely to gain the higher skills vital to participate in the future job marker and some of the issues this could cause on a local and global scale.

A College Education Will Be Vital

It’s normally the youth who find it hardest to find work, more than one in eight (13.8 percent) of young Americans ages 16 to 24 are neither working nor in school, according to a new report from the Social Science Research Council’s Measure of America project. They may find their limited skills even more marginalized in the future.

Many young people could fail to get a foot onto the skills ladder for that first bit of experience if there are severely reduced retail, fast food jobs and other low skilled entry level opportunities.

They will face competition from middle skilled and low skilled adults whose jobs have been disrupted too.

We can predict from trends discussed previously in article 1: Exponential Job Disruption that many low skilled jobs, which are normally teenagers first job, will be highly reduced, competitive and have less job security and employment benefits.

In article 2: The Growth, Quality And Polarization Of New Jobs I discussed the growth and quality of new jobs and the increase in job complexity required for the jobs immune from automation and outsourcing. I also explained how the new models of employment and the decrease in collective bargaining power from workers is causing stagnant wages.

Young people who are not working or in school between the ages of 16 and 24 are nearly twice as likely to live in poverty, three times as likely to have left high school prior to obtaining a diploma, and half as likely to hold a bachelor’s degree than their connected counterparts. More than one in five (21.6 percent) of black youths are disconnected compared to just 11.3 percent of nation’s white youths are disconnected.

Measure America — “When young people miss out on these opportunities, they suffer short- and long-term harm. The blows to one’s self-confidence and sense of self-efficacy at this critical juncture are painful and damaging, as is the social isolation that often accompanies youth disconnection. In addition, disconnection in late adolescence and early adulthood has deleterious effects — some researchers call it “scarring” — across the life course. Failure to find work is distressing for anyone, but unemployment in youth increases the risks of unemployment in later life, both by limiting the ability of young adults to accumulate work experience and skills and by signaling to potential future employers a lack of productivity. These scarring effects can manifest themselves in other areas as well. Possible romantic partners can interpret unemployment and lack of educational credentials as a sign of limited earning potential or evidence of poor motivation, affecting one’s personal life. Researchers have also found that disconnection has scarring effects on health, happiness, and job satisfaction — effects that endure years later. By one calculation, young Americans aged 20 to 24 will lose about $21.4 billion in earnings over the next 10 years. That’s roughly $22,000 less per person than they could have expected had they not suffered through the recession.”

The best evidence warns that lack of work experience now will lead to dismal consequences for these jobless young people down the road in the form of repressed wages, decreased employment, and reduced productivity. But even getting that first bit of experience may prove more difficult in the future according to a recent report looking at the future job opportunities for young Australians. It found that;

“Economic changes are transforming work through automation, globalisation and more flexible work.

This could bring opportunity. But it could also further disadvantage young people in labour markets.

For example, the report shows currently around 70% of young Australians are getting their first job in roles that will either look very different or be completely lost in the next 10 to 15 years due to automation. Nearly 60% of Australian students (70% in VET) are currently studying or training for occupations where at least two thirds of jobs will be automated.”

Foundation for Young Australians: The New Work Order — Young people are likely to be disproportionately hurt by automation. Young people tend to get their break into the labour market, or their first few jobs, in occupations that are forecast to be highly affected by automation. Around 70% of young people (15–24 years) in Australia get their foothold in occupations that will be highly affected by automation in the next 10–15 years. Young people tend to get their first jobs in fields like retail, admin, and laboring. These fields are highly exposed to the impact of technology. Economists have forecast that jobs like checkout operators, receptions, personal assistants and fast food workers will either be lost or radically changed by technology. By contrast, young people tend not to get their foothold in the workforce in occupations that are less exposed to automation, such as managers and professionals. Less than 20% of young people are employed in these more secure occupations. These early work experiences and junior roles often help young people ‘learn to work’. Tomorrow’s young people risk losing the opportunity to gain crucial work experience, employability skills and entry-level roles in the labour force.

Putting even more pressure on young people without academic ability is the the entry-level wages for high school-educated men and women. In 2011 they were far below their 1979 or 1973 levels. For instance, the entry-level hourly wage of a young high school-educated man in 2011 was 25.3 percent less than that for the equivalent worker in 1979, a drop of nearly $4.00 per hour (in 2011 dollars). People with just a high school education will face decreasingly lower human capital in the future as unskilled labour becomes a global commodity.

A study by Georgetown University found that 65 percent of jobs will require some sort of postsecondary degree by 2020. “This includes vocational degrees and post-secondary certificates, not just degrees from two-year and four-year institutions. More students are enrolling in post-secondary education than ever before, but the numbers are still falling short, and even fewer are completing those degrees.”

Yet the Center for College Affordability and Productivity found that increasing numbers of recent college graduates are ending up in relatively low-skilled jobs that, historically, have gone to those with lower levels of educational attainment. The study found 48 percent of employed U.S. college graduates are in jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) suggests requires less than a four-year college education. “Past and projected future growth in college enrollments and the number of graduates exceeds the actual or projected growth in high-skilled jobs, explaining the development of the underemployment problem and its probable worsening in future years.”

If the first case is true many low skilled people will struggle to work in new jobs, if the latter is the case then many people with a college education who can’t find high skilled work but have expensive loans to payback will take low/medium skilled work. It’s not just outsourcing, and automation which is much more likely to affect low skilled roles, it’s now also high skilled workers that low skilled people have to compete with for low skilled jobs. Low skilled people need not apply in the future job market.

Whichever the case, most jobs requiring skilled workers, or skilled workers unable to find high skilled work, both decrease the value of what low skilled people can offer in the future job market and their incomes are likely to continue to diverge.

McKinsey Institute: The world at work — In the wake of the “Great Recession,” the deteriorating position of low- and medium-skill workers has raised concerns about income inequality across advanced economies. However, the growing polarization of income that is so apparent today reflects a long decline in the role of low- and medium-skill labor(workers with just high school education or some post secondary schooling at most). Such workers were once essential to the growth of advanced economies. But since the last 1970s, companies have come to rely on increasing on investments in labor-saving machinery and information technology to raise productivity. They have also invested in R&D and knowledge workers to help drive innovation. As a result, the demand for the kinds of workers who make up three quarters of the labor force has fallen-and, along with it, the share of national income that goes to workers. After rising steadily from 1950–1975, labor’s share of national income in advance economise fell from the 1980s onward, and now stands below the 1950 level.

High skill workers(those with college degrees) remained in high demand and saw their wages rise-by about 1.1 percent a year in real terms in the US while wages declined slightly in real terms for workers who did not complete high school. Over 30 years, this has led to a widening gap between incomes of college educated workers and workers with lower skills: the average college graduate earned 2.8 times the wage of an average high school dropout in 2008, up from a premium of 1.7 times in 1980. For advanced economies, such imbalance would likely lead to more long term and permanent joblessness. More young people without post secondary training would fail to get a start in the job market and older workers would drop out because they don’t qualify for the jobs that are being created. The polarization incomes between high- and low-skill workers could become even more pronounced, slowing the advance in national living standards and increasing public sector burdens and social tensions. In some advanced economies, less skilled workers could very well grow up poorer than their parents, in real terms.

Young Invincibles — “Rapid changes in technology mean that the jobs of the future may be vastly different than what we see today.The future workplace will require an increasingly educated and skilled workforce with a level of comfort with technology vastly different than previous decades, and capable of adapting to technologies radically different than those which exist today. In some ways, Millennial workers are ready and waiting for these changes. However, those two demands — skills and technological savvy — could also threaten to widen existing disparities even more in the decades to come”

Of the 2.9 million “good jobs” created during the recovery from 2010 to 2014, 2.8 million — or 97 percent — have gone to workers with at least a bachelor’s degree, according to Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Good jobs were defined as those with median annual earnings of more than $42,700 (in 2013 dollars), placing them in the top of three tiers according to wages of the occupations in which they’re classified. The future job market will, in general, not provide good paying jobs for low skilled/uneducated people.

Most jobs in the future that are not immune to outsourcing or automation will be complex and require some type of post-secondary education, and individuals that only possess a high school diploma will have fewer employment options. This means opportunity for the educated and disadvantage for those without.

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee — “Rapid and accelerating digitization is likely to bring economic rather than environmental disruption, stemming from the fact that as computers get more powerful, companies have less need for some kinds of workers. Technological progress is going to leave behind some people, perhaps even a lot of people, as it races ahead. As we’ll demonstrate, there’s never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology to create and capture value. However, there’s never been a worse time to be a worker with only ‘ordinary’ skills and abilities to offer, because computers, robots, and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate”

Opportunities for young people born in a poor neighborhood could be worse if there are less job opportunities available or if poor public transport infrastructure makes it difficult for you to travel to jobs or college easily. It may be difficult for poorer parents to pay for a car, inusurance, fuel and driving lessons for their child, making it even harder and disadvantaged for that young person to get on the job ladder and develop skills, decreasing social mobility.

If parents lose jobs and can’t offer financial support this could affect peoples opportunity to pursue higher education, the average savings account balance in the U.S. was $5,923 in 2011, according to a 2012 report by Pitney Bowes.

A college degree looks like the best way to get a good paying job and to avoid unemployment, poverty and to perform the new complex jobs that will arise to replace disrupted low skilled jobs, that's why it is vital.

But if current trends continue college will be hard to financially save up for for many people, especially if less full time work is available. It will also be a struggle to find part time work to support your studies if less/no low skilled part time work is available or if families are struggling too as parents jobs are disrupted and can no longer offer financial support.

Many young people from poorer backgrounds may be excluded from the opportunity to gain higher skills in the future, through no fault of their own. This doesn't even factor in if you have the academic ability or motivation to graduate from college, high skills are not easy for everyone to attain.

It’s much less likely you will get into a good college if you are poor. In a Crimson survey of the Harvard Class of 2017, about 14 percent of incoming freshmen said they come from families with reported incomes above $500,000 a year, putting them among the top roughly 1 percent of earners in the United States. More than half of Harvard freshmen reported coming from households that make more than $125,000 a year. In comparison, the median household income in America is just over $50,000, according to recent U.S. Census data.

The barriers to gain a degree and graduate job are even more difficult for certain types of people due to discrimination in society which is denying equal opportunity for many people.

When men and women negotiated a job offer by reading identical scripts for a Harvard and CMU study, women who asked for a higher salary were rated as being more difficult to work with and less nice, but men were not perceived negatively for negotiating. According to one survey, more than a third of African Americans reportedly experienced racial discrimination during a hiring process.

In a randomized, double-blind study by Yale researchers, science faculty at 6 major institutions evaluated applications for a lab manager position. Applications randomly assigned a male name were rated as significantly more competent and hirable and offered a higher starting salary and more career mentoring, compared to identical applications assigned female names. One well-publicized study found that fictitious resumes with white-sounding names received 50 percent more callbacks for interviews than those with African American-sounding names, despite the rest of the resumes being identical.