Future manufacturing and construction jobs in the United States should not be viewed as blue collar jobs but rather as white collar jobs.
The September 18th panel convened by the National Association of Corporate Directors/New England (consisting of GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt, Suffolk Construction CEO John Fish and Simmons Business School Dean Cathy Minehan) spent a lot of time discussing the role of technology in the economy. Technology was seen as the key to economic expansion.
Fish noted that construction was now viewed by him as a “white collar” industry, in that his company was “doing more with fewer people,” and while we needed more seats in vocational schools and we needed companies to take a lead in worker training, the application of technology to construction was changing the nature of the workforce he required.
Immelt was even more emphatic. All industrial companies either are now or soon will be reliant on software and analytics. He used as an example the jet engines built by GE. By measuring robust real-time data concerning how a jet engine was running, its wear and tear, its use of oil and fuel, and its overall performance, and by injecting that broad data back into the manufacturing process, the manufacture of jet engines would improve, over time, establishing a competitive edge.
There was also discussion of the use of technology as solving growing problems; for example, worldwide pollution, something which will become a central planning issue for China (suffering from pollution which must be mitigated by the government). Technology is addressing global warming through new developments in solar and other alternate power, and electric vehicles. Additionally, technology is addressing the shortage of water, a major need for the growth of industry as 70% of the world’s land mass does not have an adequate supply (even before you get to the need for water in fracking).
The ages of the panel members might make you expect that they would not be particularly attuned to technology as a key element in business growth. Nothing could be further from the truth. Job growth and competitive advantage, and the re-establishment of the United States middle class through creation of well-paid technologically oriented jobs, were all related by the panel to further technological innovation.