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Get A Better Job: Changing labour markets

by Rod Ashley

The labour market constantly changes in response to evolving needs.  The job of central and local government, as well as other agencies, is to map and predict trends in order to plan for identified employment demands and to prepare people for these.  In a rapidly-changing world this can bring some difficulties.

Consider the rapid rise of the PC, developed only in 1982.  In the early years, it was predicted that only a minority of people would actually use PCs and that the principal skills would be in programming.  Who could have predicted the reach of IT into everyone’s lives, whether at work, for personal business use, or social networking?  This phenomenon has fundamentally changed lives within a generation.  Who would have considered the growth of jobs with titles like ‘IT architect’, ‘imagineers’ or people uploading ‘user-generated content’ to media channels like YouTube?

Likewise, can we predict accurately the working lives of those who are currently young children now?  Many of the jobs they will do are not yet invented!  Indeed, it may be counter-productive to constrain their aspirations by thinking about dying, rigid concepts of work.  Teach Yourself Getting a Better Job gives an overview of these changes and provides toolkits for identifying in a structured manner factors affecting your current or chosen employment sectors.


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Get A Better Job: Biography - Rod Ashley Rod Ashley owns Ashley Consult (www.ashley-consult.co.uk), which incorporates Ashley Associates and CATS.  It provides consultancy and training services to a wide range of clients, such as local authorities, the BBC, universities, private companies, the European Commission and the Welsh Assembly Government.
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