Nine Shift

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The Top 5 Stories of the Year 2017

From this year's all-new NineShift presentation, heard by 300 people live in-person and as a webinar this month. Only two more years to go and our story of the transformation of society from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge Society is complete. 

Symbolizing this year is Prince Philip, shown in the bowler hat at his last public appearance. The bowler represents the great middle class of the last century. His final appearance represents the saying good-bye to the industrial way of work, life and education; as the knowledge way of work, life and education takes over for the rest of this century.  Thanks for all your support of NineShift this year!!

#5 Story of the Year 2017

TELECOMMUTING, THE SILENT REVOLUTION, KEEPS GROWING

 Over 40% of workers now telecommute at least part time. Telecommuting has doubled in the last ten years.
Working from home (wherever you choose 'home' to be) is changing the workplace culture, increasing productivity, allowing organizations to hire specialists, and boosts employee morale, health, mental health, and greater personal leisure time.  No one is predicting a plateau, much less a decline, in the growth of telecommuting.   

Photo, upper left. Tilikum Bridge, recently built in Portland, Oregon, where the LERN Annual conference was this year, is now the longest non-car bridge in the U.S.  Image, bottom, a new walkable neighborhood with mixed zoning is being envisioned for downtown Toronto. 

 

#4 Story of the Year 2017

UNEMPLOYMENT IN CANADA AND THE U.S. HITS ROCK BOTTOM

 There are no more workers available. The acute shortage of college graduates, which NineShift predicted for 2017, is now here. The lack of four year college graduates is the most critical. All societies, and particularly the United States, needs more four year college graduates for economic prosperity in this century.

#3 Story of the Year 2017

PEOPLE ARE EXHAUSTED BY CHANGE

That exhaustion is visible politically, but the causes lie in the societal changes that lead to political instability. We predict the political polarization will decline significantly beginning around 2020, just like it did 100 years ago.  The chart below shows political polarization in the U.S., with the higher lines indicating greater polarization between the two major parties. Notice how in 1920 the extreme political polarization, the greatest in the last century, falls in 1920, when both parties recognized the reality of the new Industrial Age of the 20th Century.

#2 Story of the Year 2017

GEN Y ANXIETY EPIDEMIC

NineShift co-author Julie Coates discovers this major crisis in post industrial societies.  Our post on it got the biggest response from both Gen Yers and their parents this year, confirming the situation.

Photos below taken by NineShift in Grant Park Chicago during a student demonstration against college debt, just one of the causes of Gen Y anxiety.  The bottom photo is of a girl showing the policeman the welts she received from police at the previous day's demonstration. 

#1 Story of the Year 2017

CITIES REBUILD FOR THE 21st CENTURY

Toronto is building an area ‘from the Internet up.’ (top drawings in the image below).

Symbolic of the change was the Lauren Herstik (shown in image below) NY Times story about Los Angeles becoming a pedestrian culture, having a tax increase for mass transit, building dense neighborhoods near light rail stations, city leaders visioning a new city, and the first report of the automobile in the past tense, ‘when the car was king.’

New Way to Evaluate Schools

Surprise. The Chicago Public School system is the best among large city school systems in the country.

It is based on a new, second and better way to evaluate schools:  measure how much progress a student makes.  Here's the story.

Example:  In Chicago the average third grader, most of whom come from low income at-risk communities, makes 6.0 years of progress by the time the child gets to 8th grade.  In other words, children start behind and catch up in those five years.

By contrast, in Wichita, Kansas, a far wealthier city, where most children are white, the average third grader makes only 4.1 years of progress by the time they get to 8th grade. In other words, children in Wichita do not make nearly the same progress as children in Chicago. 

We consulted with Chicago State University this week, an historically black university.  Yes, we took the train (happy holidays!).

Light Rail Heavy Force Now

Here's the latest light rail news:

1.Los Angeles. An extension of the Gold line in Los Angeles was announced last week.  Another 12 miles. Another 6 stops.  Another step forward for the car city becoming a train city.

2.Chicago. The city has announced an RFP (request for proposals) for a company to build a non-stop light rail service from downtown Chicago to O'Hare Airport.  And the other way of course. 
This is big. There's already light rail service, but with stops.  Nonstop will cut travel time to less than 20 minutes.  It is the way of the 21st Century.  

3.New York. Beleaguered as it is, the city knows the subway is the future.  So 'bad news' is good news in a way.  The city just hired a new manager for the mass transit system, the man who runs the Toronto mass transit system. 

As Toronto-New York-Chicago and LA go, so goes the nation (and Canada).  

From grocery store in - - Portland of course. 

Is Another Recession Coming in 2020 ?

Our predictions stop at 01/01/2020  but our questions continue.

There was a recession from 1920 through 1921.  It lasted 18 months from peak (before business contracted) to trough (when business started expanding again.)

That is tied with the great recession of 2007-2010 for the longest recession, second only to the Great Depression of the 1930s. 

The cause in 1920 was the federal government cutting government spending, and the Federal Reserve doing nothing.

Last week Congress passed a bill that will result in cutting government spending.  And in the United Kingdom, wages are now predicted to decline or remain stable until 2022 as a result of Brexit.

So we have reason for guessing.  

Gen Y pub crawl at the LERN annual conference in Portland.  Yeah Gen Y, it's your world now.