Preparing for the Work Only Humans Can Do

“Merisotis has written extensively about higher education and the future of work, butHuman Workis a departure from much of his past writing.”

Tesla is currently recruiting 10,000 people to work for Giga Texas in Austin. An announcement, retweeted by Elon Musk last week, states: “High School Grads: You do not have to have a college degree to work for Tesla. You can work for Tesla straight out of high school.” The announcement goes on to explain that Tesla is looking to hire passionate young people, who have an interest in continuing their education.

Clicking through to Tesla’s job board for Austin, I was struck by how technical and challenging most jobs sounded. As I scrolled through the job titles, I could not find a single job I would have felt qualified to work if I were a recent high school grad. “Class B Driver” is the “easiest” job I can find, but one would need a commercial driver’s license, and it is recommended that one has “Forklift Certification training.” If I were 18 or 19, I would have given this job board one glance before going back to filling out college applications.

The future of work is full of many challenges and uncertainties. With the advent of artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing, and other technologies, we are entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution. A great deal of attention is given to the question of whether automation will destroy all jobs. This is a real concern for some sectors of the economy and for particular regions, such as America’s Rust Belt. But there are good reasons to believe that jobs will not all go away in the future; they will just be different. This might seem like great news for workers—until one checks the job boards.

Far from a simple job shortage, there is currently a global talent shortage. Tesla’s 10,000 job openings are a perfect illustration of this problem. In the near term, I am sure Tesla will find and hire the people it needs to get its factory built. However, in the long term, businesses throughout the world are going to struggle to fill positions that require increasing levels of talent.