The Bifurcated Job Market In Demand Skills Required - Career Pivot

The Bifurcated Job Market In Demand Skills Required - Career Pivot Bifurcated Job Market? The definition of bifurcated according to Dictionary.com is as follows: verb (used with or without object), bifurcated, bifurcating. to divide or fork into two branches. The bifurcated job market is one where employers are looking for highly skilled (or in-demand) individuals or, on the opposite end, people with limited skills. Think Java programmer versus McDonald’s cashier. A new termâ€"at least to meâ€"has been created by the bifurcated job market: income inequality. We can also see this as the haves and have-nots. Income Inequality This term is coming up in the news more frequently. Sometimes it is referred to the 1% rule. 1% of the population makes significantly more than the rest. The top 1% have the highest proportion of total income since the great depression. Another way to look at this issue is to compare the median versus the average wage in the US. In 2014, the average wage earner made $44,569, but the median wage was only $28,851. For those of you who are not statisticians, half of working Americans made less the $28,851. The gap between average wages and median wages has exploded over the last 25 years. Skills and the Bifurcated Job Market I live in Austin Texas, which is the most economicallyeconomically segregated city in the country. It is a truly bifurcated job market. Here, we have a lot of high-end jobs in the tech sector and many low-end jobs in the service industry. Fortunately, Austin is home to the Texas state government and the University of Texas, which are the top two employers in the city. This is all about skills. I am briefed at least once a year by the Texas Workforce Commission on the state of the job market in central Texas. Just about every time, 5-7 of the top job categories require skills that did not exist 5-10 years ago. It is all about having the right skills at the right time. The only exception to this appears to be healthcare. As boomers age, there will always be demand for healthcare workers. However, that does not mean that those positions will pay well. One of the largest groups to fight for $15 an hour minimum wage are healthcare workers. It is about acquiringrelevant, in-demand skills and being vigilant when those skills are no longerin demand. Have Your Skills Been SMACed Previously, I wrote about how jobs and skills are being affected by SMAC (Social Mobile Analytics Cloud). Listen to the most recent episode I am currently working with a 65+-year-old gentleman who has been a Microsoft IT specialist for the last 10+ years. Demand for his skills have fallen off a cliff as server virtualization and later cloud technologies have automated much of what he used to do. This shift happened very fast. He is now retooling himself as a data analytics expert, which is currently a hot market. We just don’t know if it is hot for a 65+-year-old guy! Contingent Labor Force Growing Fast While I was writing this post, I received an article from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College titled Contingent Labor Force Growing Fast. The opening couple of paragraphs say it all: Most workers quickly realize that the best solution to low earnings in a job with scant or non-existent benefits is to move on to something better. But this is increasingly difficult to pull off because technology and other powerful forces are reshaping the 21st-century economy â€" and degrading the quality of the jobs that are available. As companies seek to cut labor costs, technologies like scheduling software for retail and fast-food workers and platforms like Uber and Task Rabbit are making it easier to do. This is also referred to as the gig, sharing, or on-demand economy. It provides workers with the freedom to work when and for whom they want. The downside is that this is suppressing wages. What Does the Future Hold I believe we are headed for greater and greater specialization in our jobs and skills. For those of us who entered the job market in the 60s and 70s, we were expected to become generalists. Starting in the 1990s, there was a major shift to the specialization of skills. I wrote about this previously in the post, Are You a Generalist or Specialist. I predict this trend will continue. What will change is that the demand for new skills will continue to accelerate. We all need to stay vigilant or be sucked to the bottom of the bifurcated job market. Is your localjob market bifurcated? Which side are you on? Are you on the in-demand side? If not, what are you going to do about it? Marc Miller Like what you just read? Share it with your friends using the buttons above. Like What You Read? Get Career Pivot Insights! Check out the Repurpose Your Career Podcast Do You Need Help With ...