I read this extremely interesting article by Nathan Kowalski – http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20120910/COLUMN05/709109994 – a contributor to Bermuda’s Royal Gazette Newspaper.

Essentially, a guy called Jim Clifton, Chairman of Gallup (www.gallup.com – provides data driven news based on US and world polls, daily tracking and public opinion research) wrote a book called ‘The Coming Jobs War’. In some of the paraphrased details below, it sounds an extremely pertinent read on the world’s current employment and socio-economic situation.

Nathan’s article begins with the line “Labour Day may have come and gone, but the war for jobs is just getting started.”

Gallup and Jim Clifton undertook a massive global survey. Perhaps their most significant finding was that the new principal aim of much of the world’s population was no longer peace, freedom, family, home ownership, God, democracy / politics or even a triumphant sports team, but about having a good, solid, stable job. As such, it’s likely that the main propaganda for politicians over the next generation will be about addressing the creation of ‘good jobs’ for their nation.

Mr Clifton summarized, “Of the seven billion people on Earth, there are five billion adults aged 15 and older. Of these five billion, three billion tell Gallup they work or want to work. Most of these people need a full-time formal job. The problem is that there are currently only 1.2 billion full-time, formal jobs in the world. This is a potentially devastating global shortfall of about 1.8 billion good jobs. It means that global unemployment for those seeking a formal good job with a pay cheque and 30-plus hours of steady work approaches a staggering 50 percent, with another ten percent wanting part-time work.”

Therefore the focus for the future is to get people back to work and into tangibly exciting opportunities – fundamentally for the youth. Clifton offers some additional guidance of what does and doesn’t work by way of job creation.

• Many leaders think they can “buy” job creation, but that doesn’t work. Sustainable jobs cannot be bought. Governments cannot create new sustainable jobs. “Shovel-ready” government jobs are not sustainable jobs that need to be created through entrepreneurial spirit and innovation.

• When entrepreneurial spirit is high and confidence is up, job growth follows. It is the emotional lack of confidence that holds business back, not rational reasons.

• “Even the best ideas and inventions in the world have no value until they have a customer… “Entrepreneurship is more important than innovation. Put another way, it’s far better to invest in entrepreneurial people than in great ideas.”

• “Gallup has determined that 28 percent of the American workforce is ‘engaged’, another 53 percent is ‘not engaged’, and a staggering 19 percent is ‘actively disengaged’. “Raising the percentage of America’s engaged employees from 28 percent to 60 percent would double innovation and double entrepreneurship. It would create the conditions necessary to suddenly overwhelm competing nations because engagement creates new customers.” In other words, workers who are excited about work, or have ‘good jobs’, are much more likely to be productive, and furthermore create other jobs, than people who are bored with their jobs. If this applies just to America, imagine the implications globally…

• “Gallup has found that children drop out of school when they lose hope to graduate. That’s it. Not because they’re lured into gangs or have to flip burgers to support their family. The reason they lose hope of graduating is because they don’t feel excited about what’s next in their lives. The moment they feel that despair about what is ahead, they start psychologically dropping out. Having no vision or excitement for the future is the cause of dropping out of school. Students need to be rescued at or before the moment they lose hope in the future. And when they aren’t caught in time, they don’t just drop out of school, they drop out of life.”

• Healthcare costs undermine small- and medium-sized business confidence — the key developers of job growth. Astronomically escalating healthcare costs could cripple ability to generate jobs. Healthcare inflation could become the private sector’s biggest fiscal drain.

• The major focus needs to be made on how to lower these costs before they escalate to the point of making employment prohibitive from a cost perspective. Right now the focus seems to be on “who is without” and “who pays for what” but really the focus should be on mitigating the never-ending cost inflation of healthcare.

• “The next big economic city empires will rise up where the most talented entrepreneurs migrate and stay. National policies on immigration of unusually gifted people to need to be changed or the country will lose the next generation of jobs.”

• “Every economy rides on the backs of small to medium-sized businesses. Every strategy about everything has to relate to small-business creation and acceleration.”

The international economy over the next few years will hinge almost entirely on ability to create and expand ‘good and sustainable’ jobs. For the Offshore world this is even more significant given that much employment is about attracting new businesses, employers and entrepreneurs to the Islands or fostering support and inspiration for local individuals to realize their dreams and aspirations. In Cayman, we don’t need to look any further than Don Seymour for an illustration of successful entrepreneurship with a Caymanian tilt. The war on jobs can’t be won without concerted support and working amongst all national leaders; political and private.