Many of my clients constantly complain that this administration seems preoccupied with job loosing strategies such as upping the minimum wage to $10 and the Affordable Healthcare Act. That is why most seem to focus on hiring temps instead of full time workers despite desiring to grow their operations. Instead, our government should concentrate on high technology, job-creating efforts like leading the world in 5G research and development. In fact, our competitors South Korea and the EU are doing that now!
History proves that the best, new and high paying jobs are created in novel industries that may not exist today. In fact, 5G may be one of those industries. Many of my engineering recruiter, scientific recruiter, technical recruiter, R&D recruiter, IT recruiter, manufacturing recruiter and executive recruiter brethren salivate at the possibilities of 5G. They say that such a desired technology and industry will create endless streams of high paying, state-of-the art engineering, scientific, IT, R&D, technical and manufacturing jobs.
Look no further than consumer appetites for proof that 5G will take off as a desired technology and industry. Market research shows that consumers crave faster and faster connection speeds so that they can more quickly download their latest videos and live stream their favorite TV programs. Unfortunately, current offerings such as 3G and 4G do not offer seamless connections. Viewing is often interrupted by the technology limitations of 3G and 4G.
One major impediment to progressing to 5G is our educational system. As I reported in past articles “Educational Reform May Fuel Better Prepared Technical Workers“ and “Will Robots Steal Future Jobs?“ we need to significantly ramp up our K-12 math, science and reading education to be able to generate the necessary future engineers, scientists, IT, R&D, technical and manufacturing experts to accomplish this! PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) recently reported that our teenagers rank 31st in the world in math and 24th in the world in science! This is unacceptable and will impede any efforts to create robust technologies like 5G because we will not be able to produce enough bright and talented engineers, scientists, IT, R&D, technical and manufacturing talent to service the demand of 5G companies looking to push the envelop of the technology.
Maybe starting a Manhattan Project to simultaneously ramp up our education and push the envelop of 5G is in order. Develop an executive recruitment team to uncover the brightest minds and technologies necessary to accomplish this. Then focus all scarce government efforts on both: a) making our children number one in the world in math, science and reading and b) becoming the leader in 5G. The future of U.S. education and jobs depends upon this!
