Q-What will the unemployment rate look like in 1995?
A-I expect that the market is going to improve. Unemployment has been dropping and the market has moved very painfully. Almost on a month-to-month basis you look at it to see whether it is going to be down another tenth or two-tenths (of a point). But it really is heading in the right direction. And this is going to be good, I think, for college graduates. Also, for the 6 or 7 percent (of the work force) that have been out of positions and looking for them, it indicates that the market is making a nice turn.
I think it’s going to be rather painful, though, and not move as rapidly as you would like. Corporations are reluctant to add staff. Labor today has become much more of a commodity. If you, as a person, cannot make a contribution, or, the classic term is, “add value to what you’re doing in our organization,” then it’s best that you find a situation where you can make that kind of contribution.
I do anticipate-the market already shows some signs-that recruiting will increase and that the number of jobs available for the Class of ’95 will be above what it was for ’94, and there was a slight improvement that year.
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There is an indication that some corporations are returning to campus (to recruit) that have been absent. It’s a little bit early to tell, but I’m optimistic.
Q-Do you see discrepancies in the job market’s improvement nationwide? Is the Chicago area in better or worse shape than the rest of the U.S.?
A-I think Chicago is going to be in relatively good shape, simply because of the diversification in its market. We’ve got a number of really high-tech organizations, Motorola probably being one of the best known internationally. But you’ve got any number of very small organizations that are part of that market and are going to be adding to staff.
And then you’ve got the financial-services group, which is rather extensive. You can talk about Kemper, First Chicago, the Merc (Chicago Mercantile Exchange), the CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade), the CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange)-there’s just a wide range of organizations. These firms have spinoffs, there are the firms supporting them, and then there are the specialists in terms of software. This thing kind of ripples out.
Q-Will the downsizing, the restructuring and the mass layoffs continue at the same pace?
A-No. I think that the worst of that is behind us. It is going to occur, but it is going to be far more selective. And it is going to be particular to companies rather than industries. I think the United States has heard the clarion call and has become much more competitive.
One can look with a great deal of pride, for instance, at what has happened at Ford Motor Co. The kind of product that they’re putting out, the price that’s attached to it-it’s based on quality. All of the Big Three have recognized what they’ve had to do.
Big Blue: There was an organization that had over 400,000 employees and is probably going to be down to 225,000, 230,000 people. There’s a tragedy. IBM wasn’t paying wages like you’ve got in fast-food restaurants. If you had a job with IBM, secretaries were starting at $18,000, $20,000, $22,000 a year, having a great benefits package, an opportunity to participate in the stock-purchase plan, and the company just kept on going and going and going, but missed it-now there’s a turnaround.
So I find there are reasons to be optimistic about what’s happening with large corporations, but the greatest growth is going to occur with the smaller and midsize corporations.
The average person today who comes out of college is probably going to have to look at three to five careers and 7 to 10 jobs. When I came out of school-and we’re talking about the ’50s and ’60s, and it really carried over into the ’70s-the expectation was that if I went to work with an employer with a baccalaureate or graduate degree, there was a pretty good chance that I was going to be retiring with that employer.
No product, no service, no company-is going to, as it exists today, last in that configuration forever.
Q-In terms of job creation, which sectors will be hit the hardest, and which will see the most new jobs?
A-It’s going to be a disaster for people who don’t complete high school and move on and acquire some kind of skill. Because the number of positions where you lift, push, shove and pull, where you just need a strong back and a willing spirit, those kinds of positions are going to begin disappearing, and they have already.
But for the college student, I think the opportunities are going to be better than ever. But it’s going to be a different process. We’re not going to have an IBM coming to campus and recruiting as it did back in the ’60s and ’70s, where there would be 5,000, 6,000 or 7,000 going to work for one corporation.
So, what will occur today is that rather than a limited number of recruiters visiting the college placement offices, there will be more recruiters-many of the big names, the Dows and the General Electrics, will still be visiting campus-but you can go into any placement office, and there are going to be names that you or I, or the students, are not going to recognize.
Q-What specific careers are going to be hot?
A-The engineering field, I think, will continue to grow, in almost every sector. It’s my full expectation that probably the hottest area is going to be electrical engineering and computer science.
Another area that I anticipate growing, and it’s purely related to the demographics, is the aging of America. The demand for services, in nursing, in therapy, in nursing homes or convenient-care facilities, or in hospitals-there are going to be exceptional opportunities.
A surprising area, and most people are not aware of it, is going to be the need for teachers. And that’s going to begin fairly quickly. We went through a period in the ’80s and even in the ’70s when we were closing schools; there just weren’t enough kids to fill them. There was a great demand for teachers in the ’60s, and it extended to some degree up until the early ’70s, and then it kind of flattened out. Now we’ve got an increase in how many people are going to be in school five years from now, because those kids have already been born. But teachers have gotten older.
Q-What can workers expect in terms of salary increases for 1995?
A-The consumer price index is a pretty good predictor of what is happening with salaries overall. There was last year a divergence in that experienced people-those on the payroll-were getting real increases in the money that they were being paid. This was somewhat different than what we had seen in the previous four or five years.
But salaries for the new graduate coming out will be increased within a quarter to half a percent of the CPI (which is about 2.6 percent).
Q-What sorts of training will be most useful to job seekers?
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A-I think students need to become computer-literate. The invasion of the PC in our lives, as extensive as it is today, is going to become far more intrusive. If you are not computer-literate, you are illiterate, and if you are illiterate, you are dependent and you will not be competitive. And I do mean by “literacy” something more than knowing how to use WordPerfect to write a theme paper.
I think that some understanding of economics becomes terribly important-especially macro and micro theory-and of how business and government function and interrelate. And, along the way, everyone in a profession sooner or later is going to be confronted with a budget, an accounting statement.
Q-Job instability is a major concern of many workers. What advice can you offer them that will help them ride out the waves of change in the economy?
A-There’s got to be a commitment to your own professional development. And this is a lifelong commitment of continuous learning, whether it be on the job or whether it’s done at seminars, workshops, conferences or more formal education.