How to be passionate about making money and increase your job security

World population is increasing.

The number of full-time job vacancies is decreasing.

Automation is reducing the number of lower-skilled jobs needed.

Skills shortages will only get worse.

Salaries and wages are not growing.

Housing is getting unaffordable.

These are some daily headlines that we are confronted with.

What’s going on?

Why do we need to worry about these trends?

What can we do about it?

The highly competitive market for job seekers

According to the United Nations, the world population is estimated to increase from 7.6 billion in 2017 to 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100.

It’s no surprise that the International Labour Organization has said that the number of new entrants into the labour market will be increasing in many countries.

Close to 40 million people will be entering the labour market each year.

By the year 2030, the world economy needs to create close to 520 million new jobs in order to match the projected increase in the size of the global labour force.

The International Labour Organization has warned that the growth rate of the available workforce shall exceed the rate of job creation. The total unemployment is estimated to exceed 201 million people.

To make matters worse, McKinsey has predicted that by 2030, between 10 million and 800 million full-time equivalent workers whose work will be potentially displaced by the adoption of automation.

With the adoption of automation, employers will want more skilled employees to operate technologically advanced machines.

McKinsey has also predicted that between 75 million to 375 million people globally will likely need to switch occupational categories by 2030, depending on how quickly automation is adopted in the countries they live.

On the state of our education systems, the U.S. Secretary of Education has said that “the factory model of education is the wrong model for the 21st century. Today, our schools must prepare all students for college and careers and do far more to personalise instruction and employ the smart use of technology. Teachers cannot be interchangeable widgets. Yet the legacy of the factory model of schooling is that tens of billions of dollars are tied up in unproductive use of time and technology, in underused school buildings, in antiquated compensation systems, and in inefficient school finance systems.”

As a confirmation to this, research by The Foundation for Young Australians revealed that 25-year olds are better educated and more invested in their education than ever before, but half of them can’t get a full-time job. Nearly 60% has tertiary qualifications, up from about 30% in the late 1980s.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation has reported that many of those looking for work do not have the skills required by businesses looking to hire resulting in higher unemployment even as businesses desperately seek new talent.

Let’s put this into context.

From 1948 to 2000, jobs grew about 1.7 times over the rate of population growth. This means that there were more jobs available for people to dive into without any problems of finding work.

But from 2000 to 2014, something has shifted.

Instead, the population grew about 2.4 times more than jobs. This means that there are many more people going after fewer jobs.

This trend will get worse and labour unions can’t do much about.

People are at a structural disadvantaged than ever before.

With more competition for a limited number of job vacancies, there will be stagnant wage growth for many years to come.

Why do job seekers need to worry?

Whether we like it or not, these trends only show one thing: There’s a surplus of labor that employers do not want.

You may disagree with the facts and figures presented above, but we cannot be complacent about the evidence from multiple sources showing a severe skills supply and demand problem.

There are four things to note:

1. Increasing global population and immigration will only produce an increasing number of people looking for work to support themselves. When labour supply is more than employer demand, excess job seekers and workers will only be driving down salaries and wages, expanding the gig economy, and aggravating housing affordability issues.
2. Increasing automation and artificial intelligence is shifting employment requirements for higher-level skilled jobs that require a technical college or university education to develop, deploy and operate high tech machines and robotics.
3. Faced with increasing digital disruption and severe business competition, employers and businesses are forced to focus on the short-term. They must quickly adapt to the competitive environment and compete by hiring specific skilled workers who can immediately do the work without any form of retraining. Hence the growth of part-time and freelancing jobs and the decline of full-time employment and wage growth. To keep the cost down to survive, unproductive workers are terminated or restructured out.
4. Our current outdated factory model of education will not prepare w0rkers to fully meet the work demands and the job requirements of employers. As universities are trying to justify their existence, workers are demanding just-in-time employable skills and experience at an affordable cost, rather than costly just-in-case unemployable knowledge. It has to come down to employability, cost, and duration of upskilling.

Here’s the thing.

If you do not have the right education, qualification, and experience that fully meet the demands of employers, then there is a higher likelihood that you will not get hired if you are a job seeker, or remain for long in employment if you are an employee.

As businesses are desperately trying to cut or contain cost just to survive in competitive or severe business environments, employers are forced to hire skilled people specifically to do particular jobs on a short-term basis when they require them.

Having skilled labour on a “stand-by” basis does not make good business sense.

What we are seeing is that existing full-time jobs are constantly being restructured and decreasing in numbers.

People who can no longer contribute or add value to the business will be terminated. They no longer have relevant skills to perform their jobs.

The irony is this.

Businesses are finding it difficult to find appropriately skilled workers who are job-ready to perform the work immediately when recruitment is on.

They will maintain job vacancies even if they find it difficult to find qualified and skilled workers.

In order for businesses to survive in competitive environments, they need appropriately skilled workers who are able to innovate and add value to their business immediately.

With automation becoming more prevalent, businesses will require highly skilled workers who are capable to operate their high-tech machines.

Developing a passion for making money

The secret is out.

The authors of the research Implicit Theories of Interest: Finding Your Passion or Developing It? found that the usual advice to find our passion is flawed.

From a motivational and expectation perspective, it was found that urging people to find their passion may lead them to put all their eggs in one basket, but then to drop that basket when it becomes difficult to carry.

Discouragement will soon set in. They will lose interest altogether.

Instead, the researchers found that it’s much better to develop a passion rather than trying to find something that is not there in the first place or maybe “elusive”.

To put the research findings to the test, I asked a group of friends about their passions. Most couldn’t clearly articulate what their true passions were.

The reason to develop a passion must always start with our “whys”.

Given that “how to make more money” (or variations of this) is one of the most searched terms on the Internet, we can safely say that people are desperately trying to earn or make more money just to make ends meet.

We know that salary or wages growth is flat, the number of full-time jobs is decreasing, and unemployment rates for people in their 20s are rising.

The motivation to survive or just to be able to pay the bills can be a strong motivation for people to find ways to make money for themselves.

So too is the desire to be financially free.

For some, the motivation to make more money is to bless others. Or to be able to support worthy causes that they believe in.

Whatever your whys are to make more money, money is only the vehicle. It’s the means to an end.

This strong WHY will ultimately drive and motivate you to develop your passion for making additional money for yourself.

Given that you can develop rather than find your passion, why not start developing your passion for making money based on the things that you are already good at doing?

There will be multiple benefits for doing so.