That the future of the economy could be threatened by social influencers whose creativity and intelligence are being poured into homemade videos rather than commercial challenges in our high-rise CBD towers or labour shortages across the nation?
That next month’s Jobs and Skills Summit needs to come to grips with the radically different work dreams of a new generation at the same time as it figures out the IR issues and wages crisis of the old world of work?
Research for this newspaper released on Tuesday confirms what has been apparent to any parent of teenagers – that a new generation is more interested in building a social media profile than a career in tech or science.
The research was carried out as part of Thursday’s publication of The Influence Index by The Oz – a listing of the 100 most influential Australian creatives. The research found that more than half of young people surveyed would be social influencers if they could be. The lure of fame and fortune online now often outweighs the jobs that once would have been at the top of the pile.
Twenty-somethings, the Gen Z or zoomers born this century, would not know the phrase but “you can drag a horse to water but you can’t make it drink” comes to mind when considering where our next layer of lawyers, doctors, teachers, nurses, aged-care workers and tech staff will come from.
It’s a joy to see new jobs created online and in virtual space. There’s such energy and skill in the material pumped out by the social influencers. And they are a serious lot, as interested in saving the planet and ending world slavery and disease as they are in applying the perfect shade of lipstick. Online news and entertainment have transformed the way we all interact and see the world. To use another phrase perhaps foreign to 20-somethings, one wouldn’t be dead for quids in such a fast-moving and passionate culture.
But encouraging people to study tech and segue into cyber careers, or making apprenticeships more attractive, or even lifting the pay of aged-care workers and teachers may go only so far in a world where glamour and wealth are just a touchscreen away for kids who have no conception of life before TikTok.
Earlier generations may have aspired to wind up a princess like Grace Kelly or beat the Beatles or Coldplay at their own game or make it to the cover of Vogue, but there was a sizeable gap between fantasy and reality. Technology has dissolved those old-fashioned geographical, financial and class barriers and we are learning that the internet democratised aspiration as well as access. The recent debacle over cryptocurrency in which many people, especially younger people, gambled and lost on the dream of huge wealth creation is the most recent example of how the virtual world can distort reality.
In truth, most of the teenagers practising after school to be influencers will be winnowed out, with only a minority surviving for potential inclusion in The Influence Index in the future. But in the short term, a focus on followers rather than fractions sows its own problems in terms of ensuring an adequate intellectual foundation or even necessary discipline for the jobs the next generation will eventually need.
And there is a deeper issue here for policymakers: the social influencer craze alerts us to a real shift in attitudes to work and institutions, none of which exercise the same attraction as in the past for many people.
Covid played a big role in convincing knowledge workers there were better ways to earn money than trekking to the office every day – but the pandemic only accelerated the cultural and social shifts under way. Now we face a world where the entreaties of some bosses to get back to the office go unheeded and smart companies are working on new ways to manage and motivate remote workers who increasingly mix personal and professional tasks throughout the day.
The rise of the gig economy, too, has been a concern to many who are rightly afraid of the development of a second class of casual, exploited workers. But we need to recognise, as PricewaterhouseCoopers chief executive Tom Seymour said in this paper this week, that gig workers are here to stay and need protection but not removal from the economy. The social influencer phenomenon may prove to be just one element of a very different approach to work, at least in relatively rich and privileged Western economies.
The agricultural and horticultural sectors here long ago gave up on getting enough locals to do the work. Ditto, truth be told, in the caring professions and in many service and labouring industries.
The word from business as well as politicians ahead of the summit is that there are no silver bullets to force or cajole people to take up the training and jobs we need to keep growing the economy. We are in this for the long haul and not even more skilled migrants will fix this one in a hurry. Even so, understanding the lure of social influencers and gig work may be as important to those 100 or so leaders gathered around the summit table as devising policies for more apprentices.
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