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(via USDA ERS - Natural Amenities Scale)

West Texas is over-performing, the Cape is hard to see, and Great Lakes seem to be under-performing.

Anil Rupasingha from the ATL Fed suggests that natural amenities may be among relevant factors for rates of self employment.

(via Buttonwood: On their own | The Economist)

Opportunity Space draft 0.6

Amid all of the upheaval and change of 1968, one aspect of American life was being quietly and politely mythologized with the publication of Richard Scarry’s wildly successful ‘What Do People Do All Day’. Farmer Alfalfa, Baker Charlie, Zip the letter carrier, and the many other characters of the book each hold specialized jobs, together forming a prosperous and static industrial society.

The simplicity of Busy Town is now foreign to us. We work in a global market, with technology seeping into every aspect of what we do, and we bring to our occupations a more diverse set of needs and desires. The twin recessions of the 1990s and late 2000s amplified these changes, but the transition we’re living through does not appear to be temporary. There’s a shift happening regardless of our readiness for it.

What work we do, where we do it, who we do it for, how much of our time we spend on it, and why we work are all in flux. To understand where all of this is going, we have to look beyond the boundaries of traditional employment. From homesteading pioneers, to rags-to-riches industrialists, to the innovator in a garage, pulling oneself up by the bootstraps has long been a recurring theme in the American narrative. Today such self-reliance often happens despite our institutions. What further potential might we unlock if our institutions were designed to enable change and renewal?

Self-employment as a share of total jobs has more than doubled since 1970. Today there is more than one self-employed person for every five who work for someone else [XYZ]. America also has a growing number of contingent workers and individuals who patch together an income from a variety of sources. In a previous time this would have been an apt description of low-skilled workers doing so out of necessity, but today it is also applicable to highly skilled individuals who explicitly choose that path. What can we learn from the self-employed to reduce the precariousness of Americans who find themselves outside of traditional, full-time employment?

Substantial amounts of capital are available in today’s economy for high-risk investments in technology and finance, but the same aggressive support for innovation and experimentation is hard to find in sectors where growth is slower and success more modest. Widening income disparity exacerbates this by pooling capital in the hands of people who need high-risk, high-return investments to move the needle and fewer Americans who have spare wealth to make safer bets with smaller amounts of cash. Putting aside issues of equity, there are simple questions of taste. Not everyone is able to or wants to work in one of those sectors, and it’s silly for every city to aspire to be the next Silicon Valley. What can we learn by looking at today’s successes with a critical eye, and how might that translate to new opportunities for growth in other sectors?

We want to understand how American society will change when these changes to how we work become more mainstream, and in turn what effect that will have on main street. The opportunity for this studio is to invent the programs, platforms and policies needed to harness talent and expand opportunity in an economy with a workforce that is increasingly fluid and independent.

The Atlantic is far from the only publication to withhold wages, nor is journalism the only field. In academia, adjunct professors live in poverty doing the same work as the average professor paid $73,207 per year. In many industries - including policy, entertainment, and business - interns do the same jobs as salaried employees and are paid nothing or next to nothing. "We need to hire a 22-22-22," said one new media manager quoted in the New York Times, meaning a 22-year-old willing to work 22-hour days for $22,000 a year.

Managed expectations in the post-employment economy - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Draft 0.5

Opportunity Space

The simplicity of Busy Town is now foreign to us. We work in a global market, with technology seeping into every aspect of what we do, and we bring to our occupations a more diverse set of needs and desires. The twin recessions of the 1990s and late 2000s amplified these changes, but the transition that we’re living through does not appear to be temporary.

What work we do, where we do it, who we do it for, how much of our time we spend on it, and why we work are all in flux. To understand where work is going, we have to look beyond the boundaries of traditional employment. From homesteading pioneers, to rags-to-riches industrialists, to the innovator in a garage, pulling oneself up by the bootstraps has long been a recurring theme in the American narrative. Today such self-reliance often happens despite our institutions. What further potential might we unlock if we redesigned our institutions to support innovation?

Self-employment as a share of total jobs has more than doubled since 1970. Today there is more than one self-employed person for every five who work for someone else [XYZ]. America also has a growing number of contingent workers and individuals who patch together an income from a variety of sources. In a previous time this may have read as a description of low-income workers, but today the description above is applicable to many high-income individuals too.

We want to understand how American society will change when this fringe activity becomes more mainstream, and in turn what effect that will have on main street.

What are the programs, platforms and policies needed to harness talent and expand opportunity in an economy with a workforce that is increasingly fluid and independent?

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The new workforce

Independent workers are sometimes depicted as rebellious non-conformists who are escaping the confines of corporate employment. The reality is less seditious and far more interesting. When we look at the motivations behind the decisions of independents, we find that they’re aligning their work lives to enable their own ideal lifestyle. Understanding the new workforce therefore helps us discover ways to support this cohort, but it also gives us a lens to reimagine the role and behavior of employers. Independents are not an isolated branch of the workforce, they are its leading edge.

They value agency

In the traditional conception of the American Dream, success in one’s career leads to increased wealth and security, and eventually the freedom to enjoy a retirement doing “whatever I want.” Today a growing number of people question this formula. In the words of Dom, age 22, “time is the most valuable currency, hands down. You can make up income but you can never get time back." For people like Dom, freedom is success, not the other way around. The freedom to weave work into one’s ideal lifestyle is of central importance to the independent workforce.

Many independents “know themselves” and seek out work arrangements that fit their needs precisely because they believe this is what it takes for them to do their best work. The desire to avoid tasks that are uninteresting or dissatisfying is a common theme, but not all of the desires are so lofty. Many of the reasons independents cite for avoiding staff positions are small annoyances that together add up to a general ‘friction’ preventing them from focusing on the work they are so emotionally committed to. The ability to control one’s own schedule, to work from home, or to avoid organizational politics may not be make-or-break factors in and of themselves. But together they add up to an overall sense of agency that allows the independent worker to optimize their work/life balance, achieving a lifestyle that is meaningful to them.

These freedoms are not without cost, however. John, a management consultant in Charlotte, cites the ability to “work on something [satisfying] for the rest of [my] life” as the reason that drew him to independent work, but at 61 years old he is concerned about financing “some facsimile of retirement” and finds himself without the broader resources of an employer to assist in that.

They value their work

After 18 years of successful freelance work and nearly the same number of years before that as a full-time employee, Carol decided to wind down her freelance practice and take a staff position with one of her clients. Throughout her career Carol followed her passion for thinking about and working on a specific set of issues. For her, the question was not “should I work for a company” but “what arrangement will let me focus on the topics that matter to me?” Carol’s deep attachment to her vocation and the non-linear way that she chose to pursue it is emblematic of the way that careers in America are evolving.

In the past, the word “career” has implied a linear progression from job to job. If one had a successful career they could expect that their salary, duties, and title would ratchet upward as they advanced. For Carol, progress is more fluid and is likely to be defined as much by personal criteria as it is by the desire for increased levels of comfort and security. Whereas a linear career can often be boiled down to the highest rank achieved, the value of a non-linear career emerges, like a portfolio, from the composition of the various roles and projects one has undertaken.

The nonlinear career also allows independents an easier transition when making time for training and education or pursuing a completely new kind of work. If one looked only at his frequent social media postings, Albert would appear to be a man of leisure. On the contrary, he is a sought after creative director who has done stints both inside companies and as a freelancer. Like Carol, he is driven by a desire to do what he describes as “good work” but ultimately Albert would prefer to do that work as full-time staff if he could find the right position. Rather than settle for a job that may blossom into the position he dreams of, Albert uses his successful freelancer career to obtain a high quality of life while he searches for the perfect job. Over the years this has allowed him to steadily shift his work from advertising towards design. Through his independent work, Albert has given himself the freedom to search for satisfaction.

As non-linear careers become more common, moments of transition multiply – into and out of education, projects, jobs, etc. Supporting non-linear careers means easing these moments of transition (for both individuals and organizations) as well as expanding the culturally acceptable definitions of “a successful career” to include more diverse pathways.

They take calculated risks

Risk is a constant calculation for independents, who are likely to describe themselves as somewhere between “only slightly risk averse” and “calculated risk takers.” Because they lack the same safety nets that are available to employees working under someone else, independents are creative in the ways that they seek to mitigate the necessary risks of working on their own. They are resourceful in vetting potential clients through social networks, seek out communities of support, and make careful decisions about what projects they take on and how many they juggle at any one time.

Independents experience life between two worlds. As ‘early adopters’ of a new way of working they often receive the envy of their peers, yet they also suffer from not being able to take full advantage of a system built on the assumption of more traditional employment. For instance, although the Affordable Care Act has given individuals more freedom to work on their own, the variable income of an independent and lack of an employer can make it more difficult for them to secure a mortgage.

The risks that independents take on are also professional, which is especially present in the minds of independents with less experience. As described by an independent lawyer we spoke with who prefers to remain anonymous:

All of the risk is on you. When you don't have experience this can be frightening... If you work in a firm, the senior attorneys make the critical decisions, so a young lawyer has the “safe harbor” of “I was just following orders.” But if you're on your own, you are the senior attorney, even if you don't have the experience.

This elevated level of risk makes independent work more daunting for younger individuals but simultaneously highlights an opportunity for older workers who are more likely to have amassed some financial security, strong networks, and experience.

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The new work

Work of all kinds is being done by independents. For this study we met with designers, management consultants, accountants, sales people, researchers, and more. Independents today are finding opportunity as businesses consolidate activities around their core value proposition, seeking reduced overhead and increased flexibility. As strategic partnerships and other forms of networked collaborations proliferate, opportunities multiply for independents and firms who offer specialized service.

Projects

Many independents think of their work as ‘contained’ in individual projects that combine to form an overall portfolio of what they’re up to. A project serves as the basis for independents to attach themselves to organizational ‘hosts’, forming a kind of interface that allows the independent to be fully invested in the task at hand without having to engage in the full extent of the organization’s plans or internal politics. Projects have clear beginning and ending points and are staffed by a collaborative team who each have clear roles and accountability, and expect to disband at completion or recombine for the next project. This modality of work is common in design and technology firms, and is growing in popularity inside other kinds of organizations as well.

Workplaces

Even when working only for one client, independents are a more mobile workforce than traditional employees. They change their workspace as needed to balance personal needs and duties. Many cite the loneliness of working by themselves and look for opportunities to interact with other humans, which may mean working from a client’s location for part of the week, spending time in a café, or renting a desk in a coworking space. This, too, is consonant with larger changes afoot in workplaces around the country as organizations find that their physical locations do not support the way that they their employees and contractors work (or want to work), and significant numbers of people are regularly out of the office for work-related travel or meetings.

Technology

Underpinning the enhanced flexibility in where work happens and how collaborative projects form is the general infrastructure provided by contemporary technology. Powerful, mobile, connected devices and software have become so cheap that individuals are able to enjoy largely the same level of quality as companies do, but independents’ have fewer resources to fall back on when technology has hiccups. The impact of small snags such as a café whose WIFI is down for the afternoon or a stolen laptop are amplified by the centrality of technology.

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The content below is an outline.

Flipping the question

If we want to know how to harness talent, let’s start by understanding why talent may not be harnessed to its fullest extent currently…

- No jobs (need job creation, entrepreneurship, etc.)

- No talent (need education, development, discovery etc)

- Right talent, wrong job (an engineer in an engineering company that is not maximizing their use of talent)

- Wrong job for the talent (and engineer in a marketing company)

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Problems of fit

The two areas of greatest leverage are the latter two… they are problems of fit.

- Circumstantial labor: taking a suboptimal job because you moved somewhere to be with your spouse, after a health event, etc.

- Market changes: your skills are no longer of value

- Firm changes: you no longer like the firm culture

- You change: you decide you want to do something else

All of these are exacerbated by the ‘lock-in’ that comes with employment in America (and the current institutional framework which favors fulltime, single employer employment). The effect of this lock-in is enhanced with regards to childcare.

If we find ways to enhance the flexibility in worker:job couplings, we’re more likely to find an optimal distribution across the population that maximizes happiness and productivity.

The focus of independents on project-based work is another way of enhancing flexibility. Effectively every project is a chance to re-evaluate all of the above.

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The role of organizations

To imagine new platforms, programs, and policies, let’s hold the needs of individuals constant and look at the ways that companies have satisfied those needs. Then we can find new ways to meet those needs without resorting to the same organizational frameworks.

http://harnessingtalent.tumblr.com/post/80715506041/posted-without-comment-for-now

- income

- duties

- identity

- peers/community/network

- scale

- development

- security

Employers offer compensation (income + security) in exchange for duties performed by employees. This basic exchange produces identity, peers, development opportunities, and scale as byproducts.

Revised framing

The simplicity of Busy Town is now foreign to us. We work in a global market, with technology seeping into every aspect of what we do, and we bring to our occupations a more diverse set of needs and desires. The twin recessions of the 1990s and late 2000s amplified these changes, but the transition that we’re living through does not appear to be temporary.

What work we do, where we do it, who we do it for, how much of our time we spend on it, and why we work are all in flux. To understand where work is going, we have to look beyond the boundaries of traditional employment. From homesteading pioneers, to rags-to-riches industrialists, to the mythical innovator in a garage, pulling oneself up by the bootstraps has long been a recurring theme in the American narrative. Today such self-reliance often happens despite our institutions, but what further potential might we unlock if our institutions were designed to support innovation?

Self-employment as a share of total jobs has more than doubled since 1970. Today there is more than one self-employed person for every five who work for someone else [XYZ]. America also has a growing number of contingent workers and individuals who patch together an income from a variety of sources. In a previous time this may have read as a description of low-income workers, but today the description above is applicable to many highly educated individuals too.

We want to understand how American society will change when this fringe activity becomes more mainstream, and in turn what effect that will have on main street. What are the programs, platforms and policies needed to harness talent and expand opportunity in an economy with a workforce that is increasingly fluid and independent?

Some 150,000 badges were issued of 1,000 different available types. About 600 kids got city-level badges, and about 300 unlocked higher levels. Slightly more female students earned badges and 56 percent of earners were African-American students.

Connected Learning: Chicago Tests ‘Digital Badges’ to Track Education

In order to foster innovators such as Graslie and Flanagan, however, STEM industries will need to make room for and support innovation that defies easy categorization. The challenge for anyone seeking to forge a brave new path through STEM careers, particularly ones that involve interdisciplinary study and practice, is the challenge of job stability. Kendall Hoyt, professor of technology and biosecurity at Thayer School of Engineering explained, “Interdisciplinary career paths are easier to create than they are to sustain, because there is not an established career trajectory and evaluation system.”

This Is Not Your Father's STEM Job - Jessica Lahey - The Atlantic

Welcome to the slope of enlightenment.

Posted without comment -- for now!

Work has become much more insecure, much more precarious. So everybody is a temporary in one sense, because their levels of job security have really decreased in recent years.

Arne Kalleberg in Freelancers Piece Together a Living in the Temp Economy

Charlotte, NC

Bubbling issues (a growing list)

Pressure to make the right choice: The quality of information and opinions about freelancing, entrepreneurship, etc. is overwhelming. Inaction stems, especially in the younger respondents, from an inability to decide what’s right for them and a fear that making the wrong decision has consequences that they cannot afford to risk.

Prompt: How do we pull/attract people to resources that can help them navigate a successful path into independent work?

—

Port cities: Cities used to be judged by how easily goods could flow into and out of their ports. With a move from an economy of industry to one of information, however, a more significant metric is now the ease with which newcomers are able to tap into and become part of the networks of a city.

Prompt: How can we measure the ease of access for newcomers to a city? After Steven Johnson, is it a function of anything more than the sheer number of connections that a given city can spur?

—

Social networks have costs: In our ethnographic research, each of the 16 respondents cited “word of mouth” as their most significant (and in most cases only) source of new work. What this tells us is that if they did not have their networks, they would not survive. As a parallel, respondents from Charlotte and Detroit spoke of being deeply connected to their local community, and acquiring work because because of those deep roots. (See also: The Institutional Revolution.)

Prompt: How can newcomers to a community of practice quickly tie into existing networks? Are people making the best use of existing networks (such as Chamber of Commerce)? If not, why?

—

Platform accountability: Platforms such as Task Rabbit, oDesk, Hourly Nerd and others promise flexible work that’s driven by the worker, not the employer. At the core of these platforms is a rating system which functions as a local form of accreditation. What happens when the platform decides to close up shop or shift to a new line of business?

Prompt: How can we ensure that accreditation is owned by individuals or more stable institutions, basically anything other than corporations funded by risk capital? How can we enhance the social acceptability of alternative accreditation systems? (See also: Open Badges)

—

Safety nets: The ACA has already addressed healthcare, which was previously one of the largest barriers to flexible employment. Still, other questions such as liability insurance, retirement savings are issues that most of our respondents simply replied to with a blank stare of exasperation.

Prompt: Is there a financial product or service that would encourage or facilitate independent workers to save for retirement in a more structured way? Is there a manner that cities can facilitate this — the freelance pension of Phoenix?

—

David + Goliath: Our respondents have a love/hate relationship with large companies. These orgs offer a wealth of projects, often at a good rate, but working with them also has costs that are hard to account for: more meetings, more bureaucracy, longer payment timelines. At its worst, this can appear to be an abuse of independent labor by organizations that are so large they know someone will tolerate it.

Prompt: Is there a way to provide a model for large organizations to work with freelancers that is equally protective of David and Goliath?

—

Continuity: If our starting assumption is correct and a larger % of Americans are working freelance, that means a smaller number of people will be full-time within firms, so what happens to the institutional memory within those organizations?

Prompt: With a more flexible workforce, how do firms maintain continuity of knowledge and operations without suffering high costs of documentation and knowledge transfer?

—

Micro Niches: Specialization is nothing new, but many of our respondents felt as though their work was so specific that they are the only person who has their unique blend of qualifications. This is positive if the niche is defendable and lasting, but a strong disadvantage if their niche fades in importance.

Prompt: …

—

New chitchat: Talking about independent work is still cumbersome. When you do multiple things, how do you answer the basic question of “what do you do?” Increasingly freelancers describe themselves with bios that include numerous attributions (“designer, curator, author, lecturer”).

Prompt: …

Common drivers

These are the things we heard from every respondent:

- “Freelance allows me to work on the things I find interesting” - “Freelance means I’m in control.” - “I survive because of my network”

Spectra

Based on 16 interviews these are the spectra that I'm finding.

Income: doing well <——> struggling Freelance experience: 0 years freelance <——> 18 years freelance Focus: Micro niche <——> generalist Working experience before freelance: 0 <——> ~20 years Advertising: Proactive <——> None Reason: Independence <——> Shifting gears

I'm still bashing on this to find a way to zero in on a subset that would be most opportune to focus on as KF moves towards pilots. At this time a clean 2x2 is elusive.

Based on the full set of interviews, the experiences of the most experienced and the least experiences are more overlapping than anticipated. The single piece of overwhelming feedback is that the strength of one's network is what makes independent work possible. The more experienced you are when you strike out on your own, the easier it will be to do well from the start, but even the two respondents who started freelance after school because they could not find a job said that ultimately their ability to survive was thanks to personal connections to mentors.

What this tells me is that independent workers as a cohort are more alike than they are different, which is useful because that means we can focus on freelancers as "lead users" of a future economy. The pains and joys that they feel are premonitions of more Americans will feel as well, so how can we use their experiences to help us see the need and opportunity to redesign our core institutions: income (née employment); accreditation and credentialing (née degrees, resumes); knowledge transfer and capability building (née education); etc.

More specifically it has been argued, as early as 1953 by Louise Ilse and as recently as 1988 by Jill Quadagno and by Beth Stevens, that particular wartime federal policies provided the decisive push to employment-related health and pension insurance. The wartime rise in fringe benefits is thought to be the result of the confluence of three policies: the excess-profits tax, the wage freeze, and the tax-exempt status of pension and health insurance payments. That is, the wartime excess- profits tax spurred firms to increase their before-tax expenditures, and increased labor turnover encouraged them to do so by raising wages. However, the wage freeze stymied them. Caught in a bind between the excess-profits tax and the wage freeze, employers gained relief in the form of federal rulings that employer payments for pension and health insurance were not covered by the wage freeze and were tax-deductible (Munts 1967; Macaulay 1959). The huge increases in health and pension insurance during the early forties are attributed by many to this set of circumstances, which purportedly caused employers to install or expand fringe-benefit packages in lieu of increasing wages.

The Origins of Private Social Insurance: Public Policy and Fringe Benefits in America, 1920-1950

In other words, if there was never a wage ceiling impost in 1942 it's entirely possible that American firms would not have resorted to competing based on their fringe benefits and the country. And if that were the case, it's possible that we would have found other (perhaps governmental) mechanisms to provide a safety net for our citizens.

I’m starting to look at… it won’t be retirement, but ramping down… A slow down leading to some facsimile of retirement that I have to design myself.

JM, business consultant in Charlotte

#interviews

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