America's Most Miserable Cities, 2011

Kurt Badenhausen, Forbes.com
Feb 2, 2011
Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in as the governor of California at the end of 2003 amid a wave of optimism that his independent thinking and fresh ideas would revive a state stumbling after the recall of Gov. Gray Davis.

The good vibes are a distant memory: The Governator exited office last month with the state facing a crippling checklist of problems including massive budget deficits, high unemployment, plunging home prices, rampant crime and sky-high taxes. Schwarzenegger's approval ratings hit 22% last year, a record low for any sitting California governor.

California's troubles helped it land eight of the 20 spots on our annual list of America's Most Miserable Cities, with Stockton ranking first for the second time in three years.

Located in the state's Central Valley, Stockton has been ravaged by the housing bust. Median home prices in the city tripled between 1998 and 2005, when they peaked at $431,000. Now they are back to where they started, as the median price is forecast to be $142,000 this year, according to research firm Economy.com, a decline of 67% from 2005. Foreclosure filings affected 6.9% of homes last year in the Stockton area, the seventh-highest rate in the nation, according to online foreclosure marketplace RealtyTrac.

Stockton's violent crime and unemployment rates also rank among the 10 worst in the country, although violent crime was down 10% in the latest figures from the FBI. Jobless rates are expected to decline or stay flat in most U.S. metro areas in 2011, but in Stockton, unemployment is projected to rise to 18.1% in 2011 after averaging 17.2% in 2010, according to Economy.com.

"Stockton has issues that it needs to address, but an article like this is the equivalent of bayoneting the wounded," says Bob Deis, Stockton city manager. "I find it unfair, and it does everybody a disservice. The people of Stockton are warm. The sense of community is fantastic. You have to come here and talk to leaders. The data is the data, but there is a richer story here."

There are many ways to gauge misery. The most famous is the Misery Index developed by economist Arthur Okun, which adds unemployment and inflation rates together. Okun's index shows the U.S. is still is in the dumps despite the recent gains in the economy: It averaged 11.3 in 2010 (blame a 9.6% unemployment rate and not inflation), the highest annual rate since 1984.

Our list of America's Most Miserable Cities goes a step further: We consider a total of 10 factors, things that people gripe about around the water cooler every day. Most are serious issues, including unemployment, crime and taxes. A few we factor in are not as critical, but still elevate people's blood pressure, like the weather, commute times and how the local sports team is doing.
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One of the biggest issues causing Americans angst the past four years is the value of their homes. To account for that we tweaked the methodology for this year's list and considered foreclosure rates and the change in home prices over the past three years. Click here for a more detailed rundown of our methodology.

Florida and California have ample sunshine in common, but also massive housing problems that have millions of residents stuck with underwater mortgages. The two states are home to 16 of the top 20 metros in terms of home foreclosure rates in 2010. The metro area with the most foreclosure filings (171,704) and fifth-highest rate (7.1%) last year is Miami, which ranks No. 2 on our list of Most Miserable Cities.

The good weather and lack of a state income tax are the only things that kept Miami out of the top spot. In addition to housing problems (prices are down 50% over three years), corruption is off the charts, with 404 government officials convicted of crimes this decade in South Florida. Factor in violent crime rates among the worst in the country and long commutes, and it's easy to understand why Miami has steadily moved up our list, from No. 9 in 2009 to No. 6 last year to the runner-up spot this year.

California cities take the next three spots: Merced (No. 3), Modesto (No. 4) and Sacramento (No. 5). Each has struggled with declining home prices, high unemployment and high crime rates, in addition to the problems all Californians face, like high sales and income taxes and service cuts to help close massive budget shortfalls.

The Golden State has never looked less golden. "If I even mention California, they throw me out of the office," says Ron Pollina, president of site selection firm Pollina Corporate Real Estate. "Every company hates California."

Last year's most miserable city, Cleveland, fell back to No. 10 this year despite the stomach punch delivered by LeBron James when he announced his exit from Cleveland on national television last summer. Cleveland's unemployment rate rose slightly in 2010 to an average of 9.3%, but the city's unemployment rank improved relative to other cities, thanks to soaring job losses across the U.S. Cleveland benefited from a housing market that never overheated and therefore hasn't crashed as much as many other metros. Yet Cleveland was the only city to rank in the bottom half of each of the 10 categories we considered.

Two of the 10 largest metro areas make the list. Chicago ranks seventh on the strength of its long commutes (30.7 minutes on average--eighth-worst in the U.S.) and high sales tax (9.75%---tied for the highest). The Windy City also ranks in the bottom quartile on weather, crime, foreclosures and home price trends.

President Obama's (relatively) new home also makes the cut at No. 16. Washington, D.C., has one of the healthiest economies, but problems abound. Traffic is a nightmare, with commute times averaging 33.4 minutes--only New York is worse. Income tax rates are among the highest in the country and home prices are down 27% over three years.

And it does not get much more miserable than the sports scene in Washington. Beltway fans should be grateful for the NHL's Capitals, their only major pro team to finish out of the basement in the last two seasons. The Nationals (MLB), Redskins (NFL) and Wizards (NBA) have all finished in last place in their respective divisions the past two years.

America's Five Most Miserable Cities

No. 5: Sacramento, Calif.
No state taxes $50,000 of income like California, with a rate of 9.55% for that middle-class tax bracket. Sacramento is a one-team sports town, and that team has been awful in recent years. The NBA's Kings have won just 26% of their games the past two-plus seasons.


No. 4: Modesto, Calif.
The median home was valued at $275,000 in 2006; today it is $95,000. And don't leave your car on the street in Modesto, where 3,712 vehicles were stolen in 2009, making for the second-highest auto theft rate in the country. It ranked first in four of the previous five years.


No. 3: Merced, Calif.
The economic downturn and busted housing market hit Merced harder than any other area in the country. Average unemployment of 16.2% since 2008 is the highest in the U.S., as is the city's 64% drop in median home prices.

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No. 2: Miami, Fla.
The sun and lack of a state income tax are the only things keeping Miami out of the top spot. Foreclosures hit one in 14 homes last year. Corruption is also off the charts, with 404 government officials convicted of crimes this decade in South Florida.

No. 1: Stockton, Calif.
Unemployment has averaged 14.3% the past three years, which is third worst in the country among the 200 largest metro areas. The housing market collapsed as well, with home prices down 58% over the same time. All the California cities on the list are struggling with the inherent problems the state is facing, including high sales and income taxes and service cuts to help close massive budget shortfalls.

World's newest country

Juba as next world capital: Southern Sudan prepares as results show huge vote for independence
By Jason Straziuso,Maggie Fick, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press
Mon, 7 Feb 2011
JUBA, Sudan - The mud-hut town of Juba has earned a promotion to world capital later this year. Only Southern Sudan needs far more than its own currency and a national anthem: Most of the roads here are dirt and even aid workers live in shipping containers.
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In a little more than five months, Southern Sudan is slated to become the world's newest country. Final results from last month's independence referendum announced on Monday show that 98.8 per cent of the ballots cast were for secession from Sudan's north.

Juba is oil-rich but lacks the embassies and skyscrapers of other world capitals. There was only a mile or two of pavement here just a year ago, and the local archives are stored in a tent. Many, though, see great potential, and are excitedly looking forward to controlling their own destiny.

Entrepreneur Soloman Chaplain Lui, 42, is overseeing the construction of 160 apartments and hotel rooms on a rocky bluff overlooking Juba. The country's largest swimming pool sits here, though its water is murky. His arm points toward empty fields where he hopes to one day build a mall and a golf course.

"As I talk to you now there are many people flowing here," he said. "A new country is being born."

Two decades of war between the predominantly Muslim north and rebels in the Christian-animist south killed at least 2 million people before a 2005 peace agreement was reached. Residents are jubilant to have their own country at last, though much work remains.

Decades of war and poverty have kept Southern Sudan in a decrepit state, and its 8.7 million people live in one of the least developed regions in the world. The U.N. says a 15-year-old girl here has a higher chance of dying in childbirth than finishing school. An estimated 85 per cent of the population is illiterate.

Adding to the challenges, the prices of some everyday goods like sugar, soap and cooking oil have increased by more than 50 per cent in recent weeks.

"The list is long," said Athai Peter, 25, as he stood at a job advertisement board outside a U.N. agency on Monday. "The roads are so poor in many places that we have very high food prices."

A new currency must be established. Diplomatic missions need to be opened. And a country name must be chosen.

Critical negotiations still must be held with the north to decide on citizenship rights, oil rights and even the final border demarcation.

The U.S. national intelligence director warned last year of a possible new mass killing or genocide in Sudan over the referendum. That no longer looks likely.

Sudan President Omar al-Bashir backed the final results Monday and said he wanted to be the first to congratulate the south on their new state. His remarks seemed designed to help ensure a continuous flow of southern oil through the pipelines in the north. About 98 per cent of Southern Sudan's budget comes from oil revenue.

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U.S. President Barack Obama also congratulated the people of Southern Sudan for "a successful and inspiring" referendum, and said he intended to formally recognize the country as a sovereign, independent state in July 2011

Obama said in a statement that after decades of conflict the image of millions of southern Sudanese voters deciding their own future was an inspiration to the world. He also said it is another step forward in Africa's long journey toward justice and democracy.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the U.S. is reviewing its designation of Sudan as a sponsor of terrorism.

She said in a statement that the designation will be lifted, if Sudan does not support terrorism for the preceding six months, promises to continue doing that in the future, and fully implements the 2005 peace agreement.

No one is quite sure how many residents Juba even has. After the 2005 peace accord, people began flooding into the town. Ad hoc settlements sprung up around the city, then expanded as the city ballooned. The settlements have no roads, electricity, or sewage.

Jemma Nunu Kumba, Southern Sudan's minister of housing and physical planning, concedes that the government is playing catch-up. But she notes that foreign investors are knocking on the government's door, hoping to get in on a building boom.

"It is a big challenge that the government has to face. The priorities are competing with the resources we have. But of course it's not something to neglect so we will have to knock at the doors of the international community, of our develop partners, to help us."

Juba has been attracting international investors for years. In 2007, a group of business people from England, South Africa and Kenya spent $1.5 million to renovate a family home into a 16-room hotel known as the Logali House, where the walk-in rate is $275 a night.

General manager Laurie Meiring calls it a "courageous" investment, given that the independence vote was years away and the threat of war lingered.

"I think it's five stars for Juba, even if it would be two to three stars if you were going by the book in Europe or America," Meiring said.

Most Sudanese are unemployed or live hand to mouth on small sales of tea and other goods. Small, Sudanese-run business growth is hard to achieve, said Melody Atil, the founder and managing director of Peace Dividend, an organization that loans money at affordable rates in Sudan. Banks rarely give loans, and she estimates that only 10 per cent of the region's work force is employed.

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Zach Vertin, a Southern Sudan analyst with the International Crisis Group, said it is essential that the outstanding issues on oil rights and border demarcation get resolved.

"This is critical not only for a peaceful transition between now and July but in order to lay the foundations for a constructive post-referendum relationship," Vertin said. "It's absolutely critical that support continue for this process or we'll end up in July with a whole host of issues outstanding and then you risk potential conflict."

Should you do online banking or divulge your personal info over your cell phone just yet ?

Cellphone security threats rise sharply: McAfee
By Georgina Prodhan | Reuters – Tue, 8 Feb 2011
LONDON (Reuters) - Cellphone security threats rose sharply last year as a proliferation of Internet-enabled mobile devices like smartphones and tablets provided new opportunities for cybercriminals, security software maker McAfee said.

In its fourth-quarter threat report, released on Tuesday, McAfee said the number of pieces of new cellphone malware it found in 2010 rose 46 percent over 2009's level.

"As more users access the Internet from an ever-expanding pool of devices -- computer, tablet, smartphone or Internet TV -- web-based threats will continue to grow in size and sophistication," it said.

McAfee, which is being bought by Intel for $7.68 billion, said it expected PDF and Flash maker Adobe to remain a favorite of cybercriminals this year, after it overtook Microsoft in popularity as a target in 2010.

It attributed the trend to Adobe's greater popularity in mobile devices and non-Microsoft environments, coupled with the ongoing widespread use of PDF document files to convey malware.

McAfee said Google's Android, which last quarter overtook Nokia as the maker of the world's most popular smartphone software, had been targeted by a trojan horse that buried itself in Android applications and games.

And politically motivated hacking was on the rise, it said, with the highest-profile protagonist being the "Anonymous" activist group that targeted the websites of organizations it perceived to be hostile to controversial site WikiLeaks.

Confirming a trend that other software security companies have reported, McAfee said spam levels had decreased sharply, especially in the second half of the fourth quarter, with 62 percent less by the end of the year than at the beginning.

The company said, however, that spam's hitting its lowest level for years simply represented a transition period with several botnets -- collections of computers harnessed to act in concert -- going dormant at an usually busy time of year.

Flexibility, realism and change acceptance instead of career goals can increase productivity

Want to Be More Productive? Kill Your Career Goals
By Jessica Stillman | February 8, 2011
Source: bnet
When you phone up a productivity guru (especially one with a catchy nickname like ‘Get-It-Done Guy‘) for an interview, you expect tips on to-do lists, helpful priority-setting strategies, and the like. What’s less expected is a fired-up speech on the need to create a meaningful life for yourself. But that’s just what Stever Robbins, author of the new book Get It Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More, delivered.
For Robbins, productivity is first and foremost about deciding what’s worth spending your time on. The fine tuning of procedural and time-saving techniques comes second. So when he talked to Entry-Level Revel, his answers sometime verged on the philosophical, as he explained why career goals are a myth and a coin toss is sometimes the best way to choose your career path:
The first step in your book is “live and work on purpose,” but what about young people who are still unsure about their career goals. Is it essential that you have firm, concrete goals to get something out of your book?
I‘m in my late 40s and I lived with goals for the first 43 years of my life, and then I actually stopped to ask the question, did it work? I called up all of my friends from undergrad and I said, where are you in your life? Where did you think you would be by now and what strategies did you use to get here? Across the board anyone who had an even remotely interesting life, they were there because of a series of coincidences and random encounters that they happened to jump on.

So at this point I’ve completely repudiated the concept of career goals. I think they’re an exercise in futility. Instead, I think about it in terms of developmental experiences that I want to have. So the questions I’m constantly asking are, by the time I die, what are the things I will regret not having done? What are the things that I want to make sure that I do? And then set about figuring out ways to do that. 
Are you one of those people then who say follow your passion and the rest will sort itself out?

I do not believe the business about live your passion and the money will follow. Not necessarily. You might follow you’re passion and you’ll be broke. I’m advocating do what you love first and look for ways to make money second. It’s a subtle difference.

If you’re a musician and you just come home every night, get stoned and watch TV, it’s not going to lead anywhere. But if you’re a musician and you come home and you think,, oh cool, I wonder if I could get church groups to pay me to do my music? That’s different. The making money part is not a passive activity, but I would say subordinate that to the passion part.

So rather than focus on career goals you’re saying to focus first on life goals and what makes you happy, and then pursue the career opportunities that fit within that?

The conventional wisdom is make your money first and then search for meaning. And all I’m saying is reverse those two. I’m saying search for meaning and do stuff that is deeply engaging to you and then look for ways to make money within that.

And it’s possible to have both. It just may be harder because our society isn’t set up that way. There are plenty of jobs boards for ‘how do I find a job that pays this much money?’ We don’t have job boards that will tell us ‘I want to do something fundamentally helps poverty in the world and I want to get paid a bunch of money for it.’

You have to be a little bit more inventive, but when you ask me, what is more work, having an easy job search and landing a job that makes my life an interchangeable cog in a nameless machine for 40 years, or spending ten years following my passion, having lots of ups and downs and figuring out how to make a living at it — having a life that at any moment I could be hit by a truck and I would think that I had just had the most fabulous life ever — I can’t image why anyone would take the first choice.

What makes your book different from all the many other productivity books out there?

Most people say ‘don’t waste your time on things that don’t make money.’ As far as I am concerned, money is just a proxy currency for life. I say go for the life directly.

My book is about making sure that if you’re going to be productive, what you’re productive at is creating a life for yourself, not being just being productive at grinding out work for your employer. Again, that’s a key difference because most productivity books start with the assumption that what you want to be most productive with is grinding out work. I start with the assumption that what you want to be most productive at is having a fabulous life and, by the way, one piece of that is going to be getting stuff done at work.

The absolute most important part of being productive is being sure you’re being productive at something you enjoy. If you get really efficient at doing something you don’t enjoy, that means you will get more of it faster. One of the most tragic situations is getting really, really good at something you hate. Then that’s the thing you’re known for and that’s the thing that everyone wants you to do.

How can you find out what are the right things to be productive at — what your passions are — because I don’t think that’s always obvious for a lot of young people?

I would say self-reflection and learning. If you are 25 years old, unless you are a relatively unusual person with a lot of means, chances are really good that you’ve been exposed to an extraordinarily small fraction of the things there are to be exposed to.

Think of your early career, if not your early life, as a succession of experiments. Get out there and explore and, trust me, you will converge on some set of stuff simply from the fact that human beings have predispositions to like certain things and not other things. The question then is, how do I take my love for those things are turn it into a succession of different businesses and/or money making opportunities.

How would you answer those people who worry all that experimenting will be a huge waste of time, that without direction they’ll lose opportunities and income?

I would have thought it was a waste of time too until I did a retrospective analysis at age 40. In retrospect you always have a story to tell about how everything fell together. But your theories about the plans that will unfold are, frankly, just wrong.

I was a volunteer alumni career coach at Harvard Business School for several years and I would just marvel at these 25-year-olds coming into my office, telling me about their career plans. Literally their plans were mythological stories that I can’t imagine ever having worked for any human being ever. Yet all of them had these stories about how they were going to get to point B by going through points X,Y,Z. I would just look at them and say, go find me one human being who has actually followed that path. I understand that’s how everyone says the path works, but find me examples.

But if you’re not aiming for a particular career path, how do you choose what to do – which job to take? What things to study?

Flip a coin. Literally. You can’t go wrong. You don’t know what the right answer is so any answer is equally not your passion. Or, at least, as far as you know yet.

But here’s the critical part. Sure, do a crap shoot. Just take whatever job you can get and try it out and see if you like it, but remember that it’s a crap shoot. And that’s the problem that most people have. They do what’s easier or the job they can get, but then they forget that they just did that because they were trying it out. They stay in the job way too long and let themselves get stuck in this career path that may or may not be something they actually consider a life well lived.

If you’re going to go out and explore options, remember you’re exploring and set a re-evaluation time for yourself. If your job has a 12-month review, you should have an 11-month review with yourself. Spend a weekend away and make a list of all the things you learned about yourself — what you like and what you don’t, what you’re good at and what you’re not. And also everything you learned about the job –- what are the characteristics of this job that you like, of this company? And then say, I’m now almost at the end of a one-year experiment. Do I wish to continue or not?

If you don’t do that last part you risk getting caught there for a long time. Frame it as an experiment, decide what you’re going to do if the experiment fails, and go on and try something else.

And as you experiment, is the idea to settle on a set path?

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There seems to be two types of people in the world. One type of person eventually shifts from data collecting mode into a mode of, ‘OK, I know what I want, I’ve built a career for myself and this is where I am going to happily be for the rest of my life.’ I envy those people because I am not one of them.

The other type of person learns stuff, find things they enjoy and then after a certain number of years, they get everything out of it that they are going to get. Then they feel compelled to go and do something different. It lends itself to a very interesting life, but it doesn’t lend itself to a “secure” life.

But, on the other hand, the notion that there is any path in life that can lead you to security… I hate to break it to you, there is no secure path. There are just paths of more or less security and, as far as I’m concerned, the most secure thing you can do is develop a skill set, a self-awareness, so that you can be tossed into any situation and can contribute and add value to it. Because that means even if you get fired or your industry collapses, you’ll be able to land on your feet.

Does font matter on your resume ?

The Proper Use Of Fonts In Your Resume
Source: Monster
By Mark Swartz
Monster Senior Contributing Writer

The content of your resume—all those carefully chosen action verbs and achievement statements—is what convinces an employer to invite you in for a job interview. That’s why you spend so much time on writing and re-writing the words.

Your choice of fonts is also important. Select the proper type and your resume will be easily read by anyone who needs to view it (or by any scanning system the employer might use to capture your information electronically). But if you try to get overly fancy in order to attract attention, you may instead make your resume practically unreadable.

Font Basics

A font is a specific type of lettering and numbering design that you use in composing a written document. The words you are reading in this article are set in a particular font style used extensively by Monster.ca.

Fonts come in distinct families. They differ in terms of their look and other qualities, such as size, weight and spacing.

Font Readability

When you submit your resume in response to a job posting, your document will either be read directly by people, or will get scanned first into an electronic applicant tracking system. In either case it’s vital that the fonts you use make your words easy to interpret.

Simple, clean fonts like Arial or Verdana guarantee the readability of your text. More ornate fonts, such as those named Informal, Roman, or Chiller, may give your document more personality. They will certainly stand out from ordinary typefaces. However they may also make the reader strain their eyes, or the letters may not be correctly interpreted by scanners. This can drop your resume to the bottom of the pile.

Clean And Sleek Versus Fancy And Memorable

There are two main categories of typefaces. One is called Serif, the other is Sans Serif.

Serif fonts tend to be more stylized. They all have little markings, curves or hooks as part of their design. Here are some examples of Serif font families:

• Times New Roman
• Bookman Old Style
• Century

Because Serif fonts are not as sleek as Sans Serif typefaces, you should consider avoiding their use in job applications. They can cause scanning software to make errors and reject your resume.

As for Sans Serifs (which literally means “without serifs”), Arial is the most common family of fonts. It appears often in resumes. Arial is sleek and clean. It does not cause eye strain or scanning hiccups. The following type examples are from the Sans Serif category:

• Arial
• Segoe UI Semibold
• Verdana

Size Matters

Don’t make the mistake of picking a crisp, clean font that you then shrink down in size, just so you can jam as many words as possible into your resume. That’s a bit like cheating. Better you should edit your content thoroughly to eliminate excess wording.

The more you reduce the size of your font, the less legible it becomes. Thus scanning systems are more likely to misread small print. And the people who must review your application manually may not want to squint. They could skip your submission for others that aren’t so visually challenging.

For a font family such as Arial, using a font size of 10.5 to 12 points gives the best results. When in doubt, go with 11 points. It gives you excellent readability and allows you to fit a good amount of content into your application.

Font Styles

One you decide on which font to go with, you’ll need to consider which style elements to add. This could include the use of bolding, italics, colour, etc.

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For the sake of simplicity, opt for standard characters. Minimize the use of bolding except for section headers. Resist the urge to italicize words or phrases for effect: scanning systems might have problems reading such characters.

You can use all capital letters in headers, but don’t write entire sentences in capitals or IT WILL LOOK LIKE YOU ARE SHOUTING AT THE READER.

The default colour for your fonts ought to be black. Unless you’re a graphics professional or in the visual arts fields, you are more likely to make a mess by using colour than to produce an attractive end product.

Be Consistent

There’s no need to be fancy when it comes to resume fonts. Stick with one choice (such as Arial) and a couple of styles for variety (e.g. bold, all capitals). This way you won’t overwhelm your reader with a document that looks like it was stitched together by Dr. Frankenstein.

Ultimately you want your resume to be read easily by people and electronic scanners alike. So give them something they can digest effortlessly. Count on your fonts to make your words visually crisp. Count on your words for content that puts you atop the list of interview prospects.

9 -5 jobs are becoming more and more a thing of the past

Source: nzherald.co.nz
Normal 9-5 jobs dying off
By Diana Clement
Wednesday Feb 9, 2011
Jobs are a dying breed. That is to say fewer people are going to have a single employer in the future, says Craig Rispin, a business futurologist.

Instead workers will be like the freelance event co-ordinator, freelance journalist or change management contractor - contracted for specific tasks rather than given a 9-5 salaried job.

Rispin goes as far to say that all jobs will be freelance in the future. It's probably a scary thought for people who need the security of one employer, one salary and the accompanying benefits such as holidays, sick pay, bereavement leave and so on.

"Jobs are disappearing and work is becoming transactional," said Rispin.

"You offer your services for the period of time that a company needs them in return for set payment."

The jobs that won't be lost in the future are those that require critical or creative thinking.

"You can't outsource writing a symphony, or innovations because you're creating new ideas, which is something that only humans can do," said Rispin.

Business futurologists such as Rispin work for large corporations. They analyse trends, anticipate significant changes and identify potential threats and opportunities for the business.

The future of work is concerning the Government as well. The Workforce 2020 study by the Department of Labour attempts to understand future labour market forces.

The report found that four of the factors that will shape the labour market in 2020 are:

* Demographic shifts
* Globalisation
* Pressure on natural resources
* Technology

In Rispin's future world, innovation will be the key to survival. Conversely, the big threat is jobs that can be automated or moved abroad.

It's not pie in the sky. It has happened to many occupations over the years. Once upon a time people were employed in accounts departments to do little more than add up lines of figures by hand. Those jobs disappeared with the invention of adding machines and calculators.

The 2020 report tracks this trend. If the report is right, personal assistants are on the way out, physicists are in serious decline, and malt workers are extinct. On the other hand microbiologists are in demand.

Such changes affect workers. They are also of grave concern to those who have their whole working life still ahead. One of the big problems for young people, says Rispin, is that they get advice from their parents or career advisers who "trot off all the old stuff".

The classic example of this is Microsoft founder Bill Gates' father, who admonished him for dropping out of university to follow his passion in IT instead of getting a real job.

According to Career Services, parents can best help their children cope in the new world of work by helping them understand that their career is a lifelong journey, rather than a destination.

It is no longer enough to ask, "What should I do?" Instead, the questions should be:

* Where do I ultimately want to be in my life?
* How should I do it?
* How does this fit with my life values and goals?
* What could be my next step?
* How can I prepare for the next change as I do my current work?

Those people already in the workforce need to ask themselves how technology could change their job or do away with it, says Rispin.

In some cases it is blindingly obvious. It's only a matter of time before ticket collectors on Auckland ferries are replaced by machines.

Even the humble rubbish collector is affected - with rubbish trucks able to lift and empty bins.

That's just today's technology, not the yet-to-be-invented technology. Accounts clerks who were replaced with calculators probably had no idea that a machine could be invented that did their job.

"You need to look at whether you add any value [to the organisation]," said Rispin. If you don't, a machine can probably do the job.

He cites the example of visiting a pharmacy, asking for information about a product, and being read the information on the box. A touch screen informational computer or even a robot could be more helpful.

And that's not as far-fetched as it sounds.

Rispin refers to a project at Selwyn Village, a retirement care facility in Auckland's Pt Chevalier, where a robot called Charlie does menial tasks such as taking residents' blood pressure, blood glucose and oxygen levels.

The robot also offers entertainment to keep residents alert. It has nine music video channels, a selection of quotes, a phone system, so residents can call family or friends, as well as Brain Fitness - a game to improve memory.

The Selwyn Foundation says it won't reduce staff numbers. But care of the elderly is generally a bottom-line-driven industry and operators could be tempted to use robots instead of workers and cut jobs.

Robots such as Charlie cost just a few thousand dollars these days, not hundreds of thousands of dollars as they did in the past.

The march of technology also downgrades the value of certain jobs.

A pay clerk, for example, was a highly specialised role before computers came along to crunch numbers.

The role became commoditised in the 1970s and 1980s and the relative earnings of pay clerks fell.

Some of the remaining jobs have been moved overseas in the past decade.

Rispin believes many of today's technical jobs will become tomorrow's entry-level jobs, meaning young people will need to be better educated and have more critical thinking and creativity skills than their parents had.

Rispin cites the example of a taxi driver he met recently.

While he was waiting in the queue to pick up his fare, the driver had attended two university lectures online.

His plan was to become an SAP database manager after finishing his degree - a job which in the past required many years of experience.

Many such jobs are being outsourced to low-wage economies.

"We are offshoring the low-value jobs and we want the high-value jobs to stay," Rispin said.

That's why, when you phone 018, you'll speak to someone in the Philippines, or your Vodafone customer services enquiry will be answered by an Egyptian.

Even some high-value jobs are being sent overseas.

Some architectural and engineering design and documentation work is being sent to India.

Technology puts those outsourced jobs at risk too.

If you order a Dell laptop from Dell.co.nz, your order needn't be handled by a person at all.

Computing intelligence determines what parts are needed according to your preferences and the jobs are eliminated.

The good news is that as old jobs die or are replaced by technology, new jobs and whole industries will be invented.

If, for example, you first entered the world of work more than a decade ago, you wouldn't have had the option of being a carbon emissions trader. Such a job didn't exist. Nor were change managers, life coaches or3D animators seen as mainstream jobs.

"I met a guy in the airport who was involved in 'bioinfographics'," said Rispin.

"It's graphic modelling of medical research and universities have just started courses in this and there is already a professional society."

Nanotechnology is another new industry. Futurologists of the 1950s such as physicist Richard Feynman dreamed of building minute machines.

Then in 1986 the term nanotechnology was coined and funding of research got off the ground in the 1990s.

Another high-demand industry is biotechnology. It's a huge growth area with enormous promise and a worldwide workforce which is expanding by the day.

FORWARD THINKING

* Many more people will freelance.
* Perceptions of what a career is are changing.
* People will have more careers in their working lives.
* Complex jobs are becoming entry level.

Video of uncontacted Amazon tribe triggering change

By Michael Bolen | dailybrew – Fri, 4 Feb 2011

Deep in the world's largest rainforest, a few scatted tribes are clinging to a way of life on the verge of extinction.

Now the BBC and Survival International have teamed up for a campaign to help protect the last remaining uncontacted tribes in the Amazon. Their strategy? Use photos and videos to convince the world not only do these peoples exist, but that they are worth protecting.

Former "X-Files" star Gillian Anderson narrates a newly released video in which members of a tribe can be seen covered in red body paint, surrounded by their homes and gardens, looking up curiously at the aircraft above them.

Check out the video below:

The footage was taken from a distance of 1 kilometre in an effort to minimize disruption, however, the tribespeoples' upturned faces suggest the effort was somewhat fruitless.

According to Brazil's National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), there are 67 tribes in Brazil that have yet to establish sustained contact with the outside world. While they are often referred to as "uncontacted," most, if not all, have had some interaction with modernity.

Deforestation continues to be the number one threat facing the tribes.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization states trees are still being cut down at an "alarmingly high" rate in the Amazon. And while Brazil has been working to protect these indigenous people for some time, logging in Peru has continued unabated.

The video and photo campaign is already having an effect. Peruvian authorities have announced their intention to collaborate with Brazil to protect the tribes from loggers. Stephen Corry, Survival's director, calls the move a "really encouraging first step" and hopes "their declared intention turns into real action quickly."