Global Talent Economy Will Be 50% Mobile by 2020

There are two sides to this story, one light and one dark.

The 'light,' or optimistic view is that mobile workers will enjoy freedom to set their hours and places of work. That as free agents they will negotiate with the highest bidder, or most congenial bidder or with whomever strikes their fancy. And that this mobility will result in a happier, less stressed work force with more time for family and personal pursuits. The classical economics implication is that this arrangement creates a more efficient distribution of tasks around the globe, benefitting society as well as business.

The darker view is that, as Janet Joplin once sang in "Me and Bobby McGee," 'freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.' That the price of that mobility is lower wages, a complete absence of employer benefits and diminished prospects for all but a few who have extraordinary skills or a personal brand that insulates them from the constant fear of not securing the next gig. For those who are wondering, garden variety software writing, engineering, legal, medical, architectural, accounting and managerial skills (among others) will not be extraordinary in this scenario. Just ask anyone who has already seen the future of outsourced services in India.

Is it possible that there is some sort of happy medium? That people will be able to choose between a riskier, peripatetic free agent path and a more stable but perhaps less stratospheric choice? Perhaps. And it is also likely that most jobs will have a more mobile component than they do now. But as those in the US, Europe and China are already experiencing, there is no Panglossian 'best of all possible worlds.' There are choices. Some are better than others, but not all of them are good. JL

Ross Dawson reports in his blog:

Research firm IDC has forecast that there will be 1.3 billion ‘mobile workers’ in the world by 2015, representing 37.2% of the global workforce. This points to the massive explosion of what I call the ‘global talent economy’, in which talent can be and will be anywhere.

The forecasts suggest that the bulk of the growth will be in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), which will see 838 million mobile workers in 2015, up 237 million from 2010, representing well over half the global mobile workforce Europe, Middle East, and Africa is expected to have 244 million mobile workers, up 58 million. The figures in Americas will increase only slightly, while they will decrease marginally in Japan.

I haven’t been able to find a definition of what IDC means by ‘mobile worker’, but we can assume that it covers anyone who works remotely using internet, smartphones, and laptops, in home offices, while travelling, or in internet cafes. It seems much of that shift to mobile work has already happened in developed countries, however now we are seeing literally hundreds of millions people join the world of connected work, instantly giving them access to employers around the world.

IDC’s forecasts suggest that over 37% of the global workforce will be at least partially mobile by 2015. It is safe to envisage that by around 2020 half the global talent pool will be available to companies located anywhere in the world.