Video of Marty Nemko's UC Berkeley Talk, "Eight Career Truths That May Not Be So True"

I'm flattered that UC Berkeley Extension has posted both the complete video and a 3-minute highlight video of my recent talk there: Eight Career Truths That May Not Be So True. Both are below. And HERE is an augmented print transcript of the talk.

The full talk (It's an hour long.)


A 3 1/2-minute excerpt.  

Six Tips for Managing Your Time Without Going Nuts

My USNews.com article this week: Six Tips for Managing Your Time Without Going Nuts.

Converting Part-Time, Temp, Internship, or Contract Work into a Full-Time Job

My AOL article today: How to Convert a Part-Time Job into a Full-Time One.  The content is also relevant to people in internships and in contract work who'd like a full-time, more permanent position.

Also today, I discussed, live, in an AOL.com "Lunchtime Live" video how America might best address the fact that an ever larger percentage of jobs are part-time, temp, etc.

How to Choose a College. I'll Discuss That on KQED's Forum with Michael Krasny

Today, I was on Forum with Michael Krasny to discuss how to choose and make the most of college. You can hear it HERE. It's an hour-long but if you want to hear my contribution, I'm on from the 9:12 mark to the 23:10 mark.

Come to My Talk Tonight: What Every Career-Minded Person Must Know and Probably Doesn't

Tonight, Thurs, July 25 at 7:40 PM, I give a talk in San Francisco: What Every Career-Minded Person Must Know and Probably Doesn't. For info and $10 tickets, click HERE.

A Blueprint for Increasing the Number of Good Jobs in America

THE PROBLEM
Perhaps 50 to 100 million Americans can't or won't be able to sustainably make a living. The unemployment rate of 7.4% doesn't count the millions who are earning at or near minimum wage or who have given up trying to find work

Most of the fastest-growing jobs require high-level skills (like software developer) or often don't pay a living wage (janitor, retail clerk, caregiver, etc.) And ever more full-time benefited, stable jobs are being replaced by part-time contract gigs, automation, or offshored workers.

The disappearance of full-time good jobs has been accelerating for decades, in part because of the growing gap between the cost of hiring an American full-time compared with getting the work done using the approaches listed in the previous paragraph. When an employer hires an American full-time, s/he must pay, for example, Social Security, family leave (paid leave in CA, planned in others), and growing worker-compensation and wrongful-termination claims. Such claims are likely to accelerate further as people get more desperate. And when ObamaCare kicks in, employers will be required to pay thousands of dollars per 30+ hour-per-week employee every year. A likely result will be that many employers will replace yet more full-time workers with part-timers.

The percentage of people unable to earn a stably sustainable living will likely increase further because, on average, the low-skilled poor have more children and because "comprehensive immigration reform" will legalize 11 million people, many whose skills, education, and English language are insufficient to, ongoing, earn a living wage.

INADEQUATE SOLUTIONS
Education. The most politically palatable and, in theory, sensible solution is education. Alas, at least a half century of concerted, expensive efforts to close the achievement gap have been far from successful. Yes, school achievement has risen slightly among the poor but the abilities and skills required to consistently earn a middle-class income have increased far more. Low-skill agricultural and manufacturing jobs have declined while high-tech and knowledge work have burgeoned.

I believe our best shot at making education the magic pill we wish it would be is to create Dream Homework: a complete set of dream-team-taught online, interactive, lessons, K-12, available online and used by teachers to replace the reviled standard homework. That way, every child, rich or poor, would be taught daily by some of our most transformational teachers. Thus the school day could be devoted mainly to providing the one-on-one support that only a live teacher can provide.

Job retraining. Job retraining is also an inadequate solution. That too has been tried for decades, with staggering costs and staggering lack of success.

Raising the minimum wage. Instinctively, it feels appropriate to raise the minimum wage to a level at which people can live decently. Unfortunately, many people don't add even minimum-wage value to employers. For example, many people learn slowly, are unreliable, alienate coworkers and customers, steal, and/or have serious physical or mental disabilities. Many employers would pay to not hire such people, so their net value to the employer is less than $0! So if the minimum wage were raised to, for example, $15, many more low-skill workers would be unemployed. Employers would think about many employees, "This person doesn't add enough value to my workplace to justify $15 an hour plus all those benefits and risk of employee lawsuit." True, raising the minimum wage to $15 would improve the lives of millions of Americans who are paid less than $15 an hour plus benefits but who are worth at least that. But a "living wage" would also render unemployed millions of would-be workers who add less than $15 an hour of value.

A SET OF APPROACHES MORE LIKELY TO HELP
No one approach will solve this problem. Candidly, I'm not convinced that even implementing all of the following would make those 50-100 million people consistently earning at least $15 an hour plus benefits. But these are my best shots at what would help.

K-16 entrepreneurship education. New businesses create jobs, so teaching students the art and science of entrepreneurship should create jobs while abetting society. Of course, the school curriculum is already packed. So what could entrepreneurship education replace? Replacing one or two days a week of physical education with entrepreneurship education might offer the best tradeoff. 

That said,, unlike entrepreneurs of previous generations, those who create websites, software, etc, create few jobs: A few geniuses are needed to create the first product. Then unlike traditional manufacturing, it's reproduced and distributed electronically, no people required. Yeah, a few marketers etc. are needed but no major increase in employment, especially for those with intellectual, social, and emotional capability below the 90th percentile.

Three-year easing of regulations for new businesses. (suggested to me by Robert Neuwirth.) Many people contemplating starting a business are daunted by the government-imposed costs and regulations. A temporary easing could create more businesses and, in-turn, jobs. 

Taxpayer-funded jobs.  I envision a WPA-like program, in which taxpayers fund an Assistance Army that would, for example, build infrastructure, bring more tutors to K-12 classrooms, provide better in-home support for shut-in seniors, beautify riven inner cities, and fund visual and performing artists to enrich their community. 

Reducing taxes on small business. The public is not aware that America's 30 million non-corporate businesses pay taxes at individual rates. The average top marginal rate for the 23 million sole proprietorships is 47.5 percent, higher even that the rate for the 7.3 million S-corporations of 44.5 percent. That kind of tax rate on top of other employer mandates from Workers Comp to Social Security to ObamaCare provides a major disincentive to hire more workers. 

Nanopayments. Jaron Lanier, in his new book, Who Owns the Future?, argues that much work goes unpaid and could become so. For example, millions of bloggers, tweeters, digital photographers, Amazon review writers, YouTube video uploaders, etc. might be able to make at least sideline income by charging pennies per view, automatically charged to a user's credit card. It's difficult to envision enough of the public being willing to pay even a penny for what they currently get for free but the benefit of such a system would be so great that I believe it's worth a societal effort to try to make nanopayments the norm. A smaller version of this already exists on Amazon's Mechanical Turk, and for $50-100 projects on taskrabbit.com, and for $100 to $1000 projects on standard freelancer sites such as freelancer.com, odesk.com, 99designs.com, and elance.com.

Encourage the share economy. Websites are helping people make money by sharing what they already own: their home (AirBnB, car (RelayRides, getaround, zipcar, Uber) and money, for example, Kickstarter.

Get the public to embrace patchwork careers. Of course, full-time, stable jobs offer advantages: Many people like having a routine, a regular place to go to work, a job they can grow comfortable in, coworkers that become friends, whom they pass the years with. Alas, such stability may be impossible for many of those 50 to 100 million people and perhaps for many others. 

Many people so dislike the idea of earning their living from multiple part-time, low-pay, often temporary jobs that they'd rather be unemployed. Other people are daunted at having to look for multiple jobs, perhaps frequently. Those are legitimate concerns but patchwork careers do have advantages, for example, variety, flexible schedule, and more learning opportunities. Perhaps a campaign of public-service announcements, a la the anti-smoking and anti-drug-abuse initiatives, might convince more people to pursue a patchwork career.

Get the public to learn to live on less. As said earlier, I fear that all of the above will only partially address the problem. So I believe the public needs to realize that The American Way--trying to spend your way to happiness--may be not only unrealistic but unwise if not a downright fool's game. Beyond the basics, most people find contentment through rewarding work, relationships, and creative outlets, not buying that brand-new car or 20th pair of shoes. 

Dear reader, I welcome your ideas and your reactions to mine.I plan to send a revised version of this to Jaron Lanier in advance of his appearance on my radio program, where we will, on-the-air, brainstorm a plan for increasing the number of good jobs in America.

Career Advice for Students Starting Their Last Year of School

My USNews.com article today: career advice for students in their last year of school.

It presents ideas on how to choose courses and extracurriculars with an eye to career and how to make the most of each.