Jobs for Life are Obsolete
What kind of career can satisfy an individual until they retire from working? When in second or third grade, school children are asked what they want to be when they grow up. Most have honorable answers to that question, and generally those answers also satisfy the first question. Doctors, lawyers, astronauts, firemen, nurses, actors and actresses, soldiers - all are careers to satisfy an individual until retirement. These are lofty choices for jobs for life. Though these careers a child would choose rarely produce a job chameleon.
Sadly most children never attain those careers and are thrown into the job market with little or no idea of what they want to pursue as adults. As individuals we have a perception of what a lifelong career should encompass. Most would like a job that offers stability, health benefits, dental and vision, yearly vacation time and a stimulating occupation. Lately employers offer little or none of these perks and incentives to their workers. This may be a reason employees feel less allegiance to their jobs and feel less compelled to stay with a company until retirement age. Some employees feel that working for an employer in the same position for life is to put all of their eggs in one basket. When an employee loses a job due to corporate demands the employee has no other skills to fall back on. Employees realize that a job for life is a rarity in this day and age. By career jumping, an employee can create a backup plan in the form of alternate skills in different roles and environments.
Some of the pros of switching careers include: an ability to adapt to new environments which allows the employee to accrue skills to better facilitate employers demands. Indeed as we become job chameleons we adapt and carry on what we have learned in different environments. As employers cross train employees in different areas of expertise the employee becomes job ambidextrous, this keeps the employer happy. So when Suzie Noshow calls in for the umpteenth time she can be replaced in her position by Johnny Skillset who has learned the job as a way for the company to not rely on any single individual.
Corporations restructure based on supply and demand and the ups and downs of the economy. This forces long time employees out of comfortable positions and into unknown fields of work, graphic designers become retail salesmen, factory employees become fast-food workers, and they fill employment voids in order to survive and pay their bills. The government recognizes that when the economy fails as it did in 2009 that some factory towns suffer. Employees who had worked at a single place of employment were now thrown into a world which didn't need their particular skills. This is where the Trade Readjustment Act (TRA) comes into play. Under the TRA the newly unemployed are offered choices to help re-train them for new careers no matter what their age. They can take courses to learn a new occupation . The courses may vary from a few months to learn a new skill and earn a license, or a few years to earn a college degree. These unemployed can also choose to get a job with a company through their local job service agency and receive on the job training (OJT) if they prefer to not go to school and want to get back into the workforce faster.
Some of the cons facing these job jumpers (many of whom never know a single career path) can be directly tied to a corporations profit over people motives. Corporate restructuring may save a company from collapse but it also places more work on fewer shoulders at the same pay they received prior to the restructuring. This also sets up the remaining employees for burnout due to picking up the extra responsibility and being held accountable for more.
Layoffs are common these days, and unemployment steady, the laid off employee has no choice other than take a job unfamiliar to them or let their unemployment run out and not make ends meet. Often the jobs they accept are not within their field of expertise, but to survive they take what they can. This makes job chameleons more prominent, and career jobs a mystical creature. Plant closures force many to re-evaluate their needs and expectations in order to survive. Plants move to other countries for cheap labor and higher profit margins, and employees look for ways to expand their worth to a potential employer.
What kind of career can satisfy an individual until retirement? No one knows any more, because stability and the long term career are virtually non-existent in most markets. Job chameleons, job jumpers, career switchers are everywhere. They learn something new every day and this is their backup plan for a volatile job market. Jobs for life have been eradicated by corporate welfare, economic stress, CEO greed, and an employees need to survive. As more people become career jumpers we become jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none. This may be a downfall for quality, as experts are reduced to fill in help and short term cures for an ever-changing corporate culture. A job for life is just another one of those dinosaurs from the old days.
