The Opportunity of Job Insecurity

How we deal with stress can have a greater impact on our day to day than how the direct cause of that stress can actually do to us.

Does that mean that we shouldn’t worry about anything? Probably not.

What I think it means is that we shouldn’t worry about those things that are outside of our influence.

Let me give you one of many topics that on the surface should create stress, but upon taking a closer look, it ends up being a really good reading topic or a source of incredible opportunity.

Job insecurity – When it comes to this topic, we truly live in interesting times, but we also live in “exponential times“  The latest unemployment figures I bumped into were at almost 10%  in this country and I don’t think that number is going to be coming down anytime soon. I don’t want to get into the reasons why, I’m more interested in the impact that is actually having in our psyche.

Let’s think about that for a second. Our need to consume have not waned and population trends are on the increase. Globalization has catalyzed the birth of emerging markets and though not perfect, the globe is slowly coming to its very own Darwinian balance. It’s still very early but we are better off today than we were yesterday in this respect.

We have some real wicked problems, and the need for ideas, brilliant minds and yes ditch diggers to solve them will always be there as well.

Why should we be fearful of job insecurity?

I think there is security in change. Commerce has evolved and social technologies will drive the new opportunities for all of us. In the same way we shifted from an agrarian economy to and industrial based one, we are now in the midst of a  new change. If we’ve learned anything in the past few years, is that job security was a mirage, a hologram being produced and maintained by what seemed to be an infinite power source. But no power is infinite and no source is 100% renewable.

In 2005 which was relatively a strong economic year, the U.S gained approximately 31 million jobs, but in that same year it also lost 29 million jobs, it was a plus net of 2 million but the fact remains that over 60 million Americans had some sort job status change.

What can we do?

• Stay hungry for opportunity.
• Find a better way to help others.
• Work on our craft.
• Reinvent our particular set of skills and transfer to the current trends and technologies, and let everyone know about it.
• Make ourselves valuable in unique ways and we’ll always be needed.

If you sell widgets, is because someone is buying widgets, and that’s as complicated as its going to get. What do you think?