Wired for the Future

Phoenix feels like a young, robust optimistic city. We're cited for our rapid growth, with a blooming startup community, a growing technology sector, and increasing numbers of the telltale coffee shops, artist's communities, and farm to table dinners that are the artifacts of knowledge workers. Our population is growing at a staggering rate and cranes rule above downtown as space is made for new business. At the same time, a large portion of our residents work for lean hourly wages and eke out a marginal living in the service, hospitality and retail trades (those at McDonald's and at pre-schools make the same $10.50 an hour).

At ShiftLabs Phoenix, we grappled with how the booming metro region can ensure that workers on either end of the income scale, and those in between, have access to the opportunities that automation is bringing to cities and towns across America. New America, Arizona State University, and the Rockefeller Foundation partnered to better understand how American workers—including Arizonans—can have the tools and support they need to compete and thrive in a changing world.

Discussions of automation sometimes lead us to images of empty factory floors and decimated small towns. Phoenix has been largely untouched by the dark side of automation that hit industrial towns over the last several decades. But looking ahead, Phoenix—like all major metropolitan areas across the country—is vulnerable to the risks of automation and emerging technology that will transform work in the next decade and beyond. The Phoenix region has the opportunity to get ahead of automation, to show the rest of the country how to be proactive about spreading opportunity, and reduce the chance that our neighbors are unprepared for rapidly changing jobs.

At ShiftLabs, we asked ourselves, What kind of work will people do in five, ten, and twenty years? Do emerging jobs provide the stability workers expect? What are the best ways to empower workers with skills and opportunity? How will the future of work transform our communities?

Automation’s Impact on Phoenix

In advance of ShiftLabs Phoenix, New America produced a first-of-its-kind analysis of automation’s potential impact in the Phoenix region. Our data found that the most educated are likely to continue to have high-wage work, and will be best able to adapt as their jobs change. Education serves as the most potent innoculation against both losing a job due to automation, and being unable to adapt–and connect to the new opportunities from automation–if you do lose a job. For instance, as the marketing field embraces software to understand customers and bots to reach them, it's likely that a marketing professional with a bachelor's degree will adapt, and learn the new skills she needs to keep up.

We also found that those with the least amount of education are the most likely to have their jobs either change dramatically due to automation, or to have them disappear altogether. Jobs like cashiers, retail salespersons, waiters and office clerks face a high risk of automation and employ tens of thousands of workers in the region. These workers will face multiple headwinds as they adapt to changes brought by automation. For instance, a cashier without education after high-school is much less likely to know how to access the resources he needs if his job is changed dramatically, or made obsolete, by computers. He may not have the time, or the money, to seek out and get a credential or a bachelor's degree. And if he has a family to support, that makes losing a job even more difficult.

Overall, one out of three people in the Phoenix metro region is likely to have their job change dramatically or disappear because of automation. We know change is coming. The question is: how will we respond?

What Did ShiftLabs Phoenix Unearth?

When ShiftLabs participants dug into the opportunities and challenges automation could bring to the Phoenix metro area, magic happened. There were no long faces or sighs of overwhelm.

Using a process based on human-centered design, these captains of industry, startup founders, artists, writers, job trainers, philanthropists, educators, and futurists leapt in and pointed us in the direction of a few places to dig in:

First, it's education, stupid. We know that education is the best predictor of how well someone in Phoenix (and globally) is likely to do in the face of their job being automated. Fundamentally, automation increases the overall demand for workers with more education and higher-level skills, which means that our neighbors without high levels of education fall farther behind.

In part, education is also so crucial because those who view themselves as lifelong learners are better able to weather change. In part, it's because they are likely making a higher salary and can better pay for additional education a change may require. And, in part, it's likely because they know where and how to access credentials, post-secondary education, MOOCs, or other forms of education.

A team from ASU and the Center for the Future of Arizona agreed to start integrating automation into their programs for potential students. This will include the Pathways to Prosperity program and ASU’s programs for students interested in re-skilling. More broadly, as Arizona focuses on ensuring a greater portion of our young population graduates from high school, and achieves a post-secondary credential or degree of some kind, our entire economy will do better. This is especially important because Arizona lags behind the national average for education spending and education outcomes – a reality that puts the region at greater risk from automation.

Second, yell this from the rooftops! Why don't more people know this?, we heard again and again during ShiftLabs. More business leaders, educational leaders, political leaders should know how automation is going to impact us so that they can act. The City of Phoenix is leading the charge to make sure that leaders in charge of workforce ideas and solutions have automation on their minds, and that they understand the ideas that emerged from ShiftLabs.

Third, solve smart, don’t reinvent the wheel. The Phoenix area has an abundance of entities already working on bringing business to the region, creating jobs, helping residents find jobs, and bridging the divide between education and business. ShiftLabs endeavors to always work with those efforts, not on top or around them. In addition, many of the existing efforts are not always as coordinated as they could be. Because previous efforts to map Phoenix's workforce ecosystem haven't been sustainable, ShiftLabs decided to explore existing startup models to connect distributed groups.

Four, raise up what's already working. The Phoenix area is home to many efforts to get residents ready for automation and into sustainable jobs. We are committed to highlighting and promoting the efforts like the ASU/Starbucks partnership to provide Starbucks employees free bachelor's degrees, Phoenix Coding Academy's work to provide students with skills that employers say they want, Chicanos Por La Causa's job training partnerships with industry to connect young Latinos with work, YearUp's model of imparting hard and soft skills, Achieve60's sprint to get 60% of Arizonans a post-secondary credential or degree by 2030, and startups like Schola, which connects students to schools. The Rockefeller Foundation is supporting a documentary filmmaker to tell the stories of some of these prototypes and the people they touch. ShiftLabs is moving through American cities, sharing the stories of American renewal across New America's network and connecting innovators online via #ShiftLabs.

As ShiftLabs moves on to other cities, we have a lot to learn, and we’ll be sharing as we go. Follow along on Twitter and Instagram via #ShiftLabs, and let us know what you’re seeing in your region.

For more on ShiftLabs, including why we’re starting in Phoenix and Indianapolis, see here. For more on the origins of ShiftLabs, see here.