A post #Toyota and #Holden Future
With all the understandable uncertainty around jobs and careers triggered by Holden and Toyota’s recent shutdown announcements listeners to Geoff’s ABC Perth Breakfast show were wondering what their kids should be studying and what Future careers might be available to them.
We started by looking at the realty that many of today’s careers are going to stick around including healthcare which according to Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) will see job demand increase by 13% between now and 2017, retail trade will have a 8.9% increase in job demand and construction will have a 10.1% increase in job demands.
Other jobs, in particular routinised easily transferred to machinery jobs, will decrease and fall away.
We chatted about today’s school leavers having 6 careers and 14 jobs in their 60 years of work and 120 years of life and the notion that work, what it is and how it’s done will be very different in the future as we begin to evolve and innovate new jobs, tasks and industries that today are unthinkable.
Some of these future jobs will include Transhumanist Engineers who will undertake a HR role and employ both people and machinery/robots and teach both to work harmoniously with each other. Data Scientists (someone who manages and makes sense of data) are on the rise in geek land and will become a must have employee over the next few years as are Genetic Counsellors and Telematic Engineers.
The employment world of tomorrow is evolving. On one end of the work spectrum we are returning to a pre-industrial time where work was decentralised, transitory and time appropriate and on the other end of the work spectrum we will continue to have professions that will always require substantial labour, infrastructure and and resource investments and in between these two book ends we will see a plethora of endless physical and digital career and work style possibilities.
Have a listen now to the interview and then share your thoughts on the careers and industries of the future.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What did the exit of automotive manufacturing from Australia signal about industrial policy and economic transition?
The exit of Toyota (announced 2014) and Holden (announced 2013) from Australian manufacturing was not a sudden development — the signals had been visible for years in the widening gap between Australian production costs and the economics of global automotive supply chains. The policy signal was about the limits of subsidy in the face of structural cost disadvantage. The economic transition signal was about the challenge of redeploying skilled manufacturing workforces in regions where manufacturing had been the primary employment base for generations. Neither signal was handled as well as the lead time available should have allowed.
Q: How do communities rebuild economically after major employers leave?
The communities that have rebuilt most successfully after major employer exits share several characteristics: early investment in economic diversification before the exit, rather than after; deliberate skill development investment targeting transferable capabilities rather than employer-specific training; physical infrastructure adaptation that makes the location attractive for different industries; and leadership that maintains honest, forward-looking communication rather than defending the status quo until the last moment. The communities that struggle most are those that allowed the single-employer dependency to persist until the exit, then began diversification from a position of economic distress.
Q: What do post-Holden and post-Toyota communities reveal about the Ripple Effects of major employer exits?
The Ripple Effects™ of major employer exits extend well beyond the directly displaced workforce: the supplier ecosystem loses its primary customer; local retail and service businesses lose their highest-density customer base; regional property markets reflect the reduced employment base; and the community’s confidence in its economic future affects decisions about whether to stay or leave that compound the economic impact over years. Tracking these second and third-order consequences is essential for effective policy response — single-point interventions for the directly displaced workers miss most of the damage.
Q: How can I book Morris Misel for an economic futures, regional development, or strategic change keynote?
Contact the team at morrismisel.com/event-organisers.
With all the understandable uncertainty around jobs and careers triggered by Holden and Toyota’s recent shutdown announcements listeners to Geoff’s ABC Perth Breakfast show were wondering what their kids should be studying and what Future careers might be available to them. We st.
The window between a signal arriving and it demanding a response is shortening. A post #Toyota and #Holden Future is already shaping strategy conversations in forward-looking organisations. Treating it as a future concern rather than a present one builds a preparedness gap that will have to be closed under pressure.
The most important question is not whether A post #Toyota and #Holden Future will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
