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A 2004 book, The Jobs Revolution: Changing How America Works, notes that as recently as 1991, fewer than 50 percent of U.S. jobs required skilled workers. By 2015, 76 percent of American jobs will demand highly skilled employees. If that talent isn’t here, companies will be forced to turn to better-educated workers in other countries.
Regardless of outsourcing, the book notes that the emerging work force must be flexible, ready to spend a lifetime learning new skills because new kinds of work will continually be created and old ones will vanish.
“None of the top 10 jobs that will exist in 2010 exist today,” the book says, quoting former U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley. Those jobs will require technology that’s still being developed. The most important thing a student can do today is learn to learn. The book adds, however: “Rather than focusing on specific technologies or specific problems, we need to equip students with those concepts that are common to all problems, all technologies, all skills, ranging from workplace engineering to ethics to entrepreneurship.”
The article in Fortune concurs: “No one is saying that Americans can’t adapt and win once more. The No. 1 policy prescription, almost regardless of whom you ask, comes down to one word: education.”
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