It really is creative people - artists, innovators, entrepreneurs - that drive growth

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We've become a little obsessed by a thing called STEM - science, technology, engineering and maths. And I think this is great is what you're planning is a technocracy - don't get me wrong scientists, engineers and tech folk are great, indeed if you want your child to get on in life never - under any circumstances - let them cop out from studying these subjects, never. But, just as you shouldn't let your child give up maths and science, you shouldn't let them drop arts subjects either.

And this is why arts matter - from some top French academic economists:

Historical accounts often assert that notable individuals matter for the growth of particular cities. This column uses a new database of 1.2 million people from 2,000 cities since 800CE to show that some types of ‘notable’ individuals have made a difference. Specifically, the presence of many entrepreneurs and artists is associated with faster long-term growth, but the association does not hold for notable military, political or religious figures

And - this is a moment of View from Cullingworth prediction - arts and creative subject will be more important to future jobs than they are at present. Robots will take over and routinise jobs we pay expensively trained technicians to do today and in doing so raise productivy giving us more time and money to spend on good stuff. And the good stuff is arts, culture and creativity - that's where the future jobs are. For sure, our technical world means those creative people will need a pretty sound understand of STEM but it's the people with this understanding as well as skills or knowledge in art, language, history, architecture and music who will be the future elite. Maybe.

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Manufacturing - no longer the place for cheap labour...

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And this is a good thing because cheap labour isn't just cheap it's dirty, unsafe and unpleasant - replacing the drudge with robots is a good thing:

Some might say that’s terrible: what are we going to do when there’s no more cheap labour? I look at it the other way around. When there’s no more cheap labour then there’re no more poor people, are there? For by definition people who are getting good wages just aren’t poor. So once we’ve run out of places where we can chase that cheap labour then we’ve actually solved one of humanity’s longest running problems. How in heck do we cure poverty? And we’ll have done it by the only logically sound method known: making everyone rich. Hurrah!

There will still be manufacturing jobs but they will look rather different - as I noted a while back:

I visited a manufacturer the other day. Part of a multi-national business in the electronics industry. Big plant in Chadderton employing about 360 people.

Of those 360 people, 54 have PhDs and over 70% have a degree of some sort.

Rather makes the point that, even if we have a boom in manufacturing, it is't going to provide jobs for 16 year olds who have scraped five GCSEs.

Manufacturing soon becomes a high skill, high value added business filled with society's elite - all graduates, many with higher degrees and all creating, thinking and developing the business.

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A thought on manufacturing...

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I visited a manufacturer the other day. Part of a multi-national business in the electronics industry. Big plant in Chadderton employing about 360 people.

Of those 360 people, 54 have PhDs and over 70% have a degree of some sort.

Rather makes the point that, even if we have a boom in manufacturing, it is't going to provide jobs for 16 year olds who have scraped five GCSEs.


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An indication of everything wrong with our political order...

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OK it's from America but...

One recent arrival says word has gotten out to new graduates that Washington is where the work is. “It’s a place where a ­liberal-arts major can still get a job,” she says, “because you don’t need a particular skill.”

That's politics for you. Is it any different here?

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More on our dysfunctional labour markets...

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Highest rates of unemployment for a couple of decades and this:

...XpertHR's annual survey of graduate recruitment found that many employers faced barriers when trying to recruit graduates, with poor-quality applicants cited as the biggest problem. Four-fifths (80%) of those surveyed said they faced difficulties recruiting graduates due to a lack of skills, knowledge or the attitudes of the candidates.


Perhaps more worryingly, the second biggest problem employers faced when filling graduate roles was candidates accepting job offers then withdrawing from them, which more than two-fifths (44%) of organisations said they had encountered.

The findings are similar to last week's survey from the Association of Graduate Recruiters, which found that one-third of employers had failed to meet their targets on recruitment in 2010-11 because of a lack of candidates with the right skills.

Something isn't right is it?

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Get the right skill and you should have no problem getting a job...

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...or so it seems:

Job opportunities were 17% higher in December 2011 compared with the same period in 2010, and were more than one-fifth higher than in December 2009, according to figures published today by reed.co.uk. The most recent Reed Job Index data highlights growth in demand for new staff in 2011 compared with 2010. According to Reed, this trend was largely driven by demand for technical staff, such as engineers and IT and telecommunications specialists, with an annual increase in job vacancies of more than 40% across these roles.

But a couple of sectors continues to decline:

Unsurprisingly, decline was reflected in the figures for public sector activity, with demand in that sector 15% lower than during the same period in 2010, and at one-third of its 2009 level.

Meanwhile, demand for staff in financial services fell slightly in December 2011 to a little below its level of 12 months earlier, although it is still above its level two years ago when the index began.

Not surprisingly the UK can find jobs for skilled people who contribute to production and create wealth but not for parasites like me!

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