ISSUE 15:
The meaning of work, unemployment, leisure, and underemployment is changing.
Automation, globalization of business, regional trade agreements, the shifting locus of low labor costs, improved productivity, the aging of the population, and the drive for improved corporate efficiency are causing changes in the labor forces of almost all nations. The changes include: increasing percent of service sector employment while manufacturing percentage is falling; the ratio of retired relative to active workers is growing almost anywhere, placing an economic burden on workers in the future; the displacement of many low-skilled, well-paid workers in the developed world occurring simultaneously with a shortage of people with adequate skills; the inability of some developing countries to use developed technologies effectively. Underemployment and isolation of women from the cash economy remains an important issue in developing countries. The fundamental shift in how the "world's work gets done" is creating a truly global labor force, yet lack of training and access divides labor into those capable of performing high paying work, and those who are not. If world demand for a workforce is significantly less than the supply, will there then be more creative uses of leisure, or will chronic, turbulent, destabilizing under- and unemployment result?
    Actions to address this issue that were rated the most effective and practical:

  1. Apply information/communication technologies in developing countries in ways that improve productivity in small low level popular communities - led by governments with some leadership from NGOs, corporations, and UN organizations.

  2. Promote public/private funding of research and development in distance learning technologies - led by governments and NGOs.

  3. Build incentives into the system to promote education. For example, Japan improves the technological literacy of its populace by offering incentives (such as overnight electronic transfer of tax refunds to those citizens who file their income tax statements electronically) - led by governments.
    Other suggested actions by order of effectiveness:

  4. Fund programs that use the emerging information technologies and implications of cognitive science for designing learning environments, and achieving educational/training goals - led by governments.

  5. Government funding and marketing of low cost computer communications in schools, libraries, businesses, hospitals, etc. - led by governments.

  6. Initiate programs everywhere that use constructive uses for leisure - like Habitat for Humanity and the Peace Corps - led by NGOs.

  7. Establish international programs of retraining to help avoid technological obsolescence - led by UN organizations with some leadership by governments.

  8. Initiate some major projects in the social sciences to understand the meaning and purpose of work as a desire and source of meaning in various parts of the world - led by NGOs, individuals, groups, and UN organizations.

  9. Create toll-free telephone numbers and computer networks to match demand and supply of labor between the developing, newly developed, and developed nations - led by corporations, government, and NGOs.
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