Discussion leaders at the seminar included the following distinguished members of the Task Force: Paul Almeida, President of the AFL-CIO's Department of Professional Employees; Gregory Junemann, President of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers; Saul Rubinstein, Associate Professor of Rutgers University's Labor Program; and Stephanie Powers, Chief Executive Office of the National Association of Workforce Boards. Dr. Lynn A. Karoly, Senior Economist, Rand Corporation delivered the keynote address, which is summarized below.

DR. LYNN A. KAROLY:
“Demographic, Technological and Productivity Changes and the Workplace of Tomorrow”

Dr. Lynn A. Karoly, Senior Economist, Rand Corporation delivered the keynote address to the conference. Her presentation centered around her recent book, The 21st Century at Work: Forces Shaping the Future Workforce and Workplace in the United States, which she co-authored with Constantinjn W.A. Panis.

Dr. Karoly emphasized three key trends, 1) shifting demographics, 2) the growing impact of technological change, and 3) economic globalization, that will shape the labor force and employment relationships in the 21st century and have important implications for the future workplace and workforce and for the U.S. economy. These trends will affect the size, makeup, and skills of the labor force, the kinds of work and its settings, and worker compensation.

Demographics
The annual growth rate of the nation's workforce is expected to slow to a nearly static 0.4 percent by 2010. This is a precipitous decline from the 1.1 percent annual increases of the 1990s and the 2.6 percent annual increases during the 1970s. This slowing workforce growth rate is caused primarily by a 25 percent decline in the birthrate at the end of the baby boom in the mid 1960s and with increasing earlier retirement by men, even though there has been an increase of immigrant workers and women into the workforce.

Technological Change
Technology will continue to shape the economy in ever more increasing ways, while the pace of those impacts will accelerate. With advances in technology and an increasingly global economy, employees will be more mobile and be able to work in more decentralized, specialized firms with less formal and more individualized employer-employee relationships. While technology has many benefits for the workforce, such as increased productivity, it also forces workers to maintain their skills through lifelong learning. Workers with fewer skills will command much lower salaries and risk job loss to their better-trained counterparts — domestically and globally. At the same time, technology-mediated learning offers promise for worker training and retraining.

Globalization
Economic globalization will increasingly affect industries and segments of the workforce that in had been relatively isolated from outside competition, which will boost trade, increase capital flows, encourage people to become more mobile, and increase the almost instantaneous transfer of knowledge and technologies. While some sectors might experience a net loss in jobs and market share, those consequences should be counterbalanced by gains in other sectors. A more mobile workforce and shifts to nonstandard employment relationships highlight the importance of the portability of benefits and more individually tailored benefit packages. As the workforce shifts to a more balanced distribution by age, sex and ethnicity there may be demands for alternate benefit plans, compensation and working arrangements.

As the labor force growth rate slows, a tightening work force also encourages employers to accommodate families, older people and people with disabilities, in an effort to find and keep needed employees, and technological advances will help make this possible. As data is transferred at higher speeds, more employees will be able to participate in non-standard work arrangements such as telecommuting and flexible scheduling.

A full copy of Dr. Karoly's book is available here.