The 2010 Meltdown

Ed Gordon marshals a vast amount of data to illustrate how various trends are converging to create a labor vacuumwith potentially disastrous consequences for economic competitiveness and individual opportunity. He sounds a wake-up call to business leaders policymakers educators and concerned citizens employees and parentsanyone with a stake in our economic future. Moreover he highlights innovative initiatives in training education and community development in the United States and around the world that can serve as models for positive action. Ultimately The 2010 Meltdown is an optimistic book about social change setting an agenda for reforms in education policy and business investment that will promote economic freedom renewal and prosperity.It''s the economy stupid is a refrain the United States will never live down and not without reason. The relentless march of technological development and globalization continues to put pressure on all national economies providing opportunity for some and marginalization for others. Around the world nations will need to overcome twin economic shocks: a wave of baby boomers will retire and leave the workforce while too few young well-educated people will be available to fill a rising tide of high-skill technology-related jobs. Ed Gordon marshals vast amounts of data to illustrate how these trends are quickly converging creating a labor vacuumwith potentially disastrous consequences for economic competitiveness and individual opportunity. In the United States for example major studies agree that the majority of the jobs now being created require skills possessed by only 20 percent of the current workforce; meanwhile a large pool of under-trained workers are seeing their jobs exported to developing countries automated or outsourced while millions of high-paying jobs in such fields as engineering computing and health care are going unfilled The 2010 Meltdown Gordon sounds a wake-up call to business leaders policymakers educators and concerned citizens employees and parentsanyone with a stake in our economic future. Beyond the demographic issues he notes that such cultural factors as Wall Street''s obsession with short-term results (which favors cost-cutting over long-term training) and neglect of math and science skills at school are contributing to a fundamental mismatch between labor supply and demand. But the news is not all grim. Gordon highlights innovative initiatives in training education and community development in the United States and around the world that can serve as models for positive action and he outlines a plan for reversing the destructive trends before we reach a crucial crossroad by the year 2010. Ultimately The 2010 Meltdown is an optimistic book about social change setting an agenda for reforms in education policy and business investment that will promote economic freedom renewal and prosperity.