Media

Media Inquiries

For interviews and bookings, please contact:

Suzanne Skees, Author, MY JOB Books
suzanne@suzanneskees.com

Sally Skees-Helly, Director, Skees Family Foundation
sally@skees.org

Suzanne Skees Author Q&A

Press Releases

Skees Press Release MY JOB Book Series

MY JOB: Real People at Work Around the World, Book 1

MY JOB: More People at Work Around the World, Book 2

MY JOB Gen Z: Finding Your Place in Fast-Changing World, Book 3

About the Author

SUZANNE SKEES, curator and author of the MY JOB book series, also works in international development as the founder of the Skees Family Foundation and as a storyteller who travels from schools to slums, prisons to farms, writing for nonprofits and their courageous clients who toil every day to end poverty and create equality. She holds masters’ degrees in English literature from Boston College and world religions from Harvard Divinity School.

Job Statistics

FACTS ABOUT JOBS

Now

Understanding unemployment: There are three types of unemployment, according to World Population Review: frictional, structural, and seasonal. Frictional unemployment refers to temporary unemployment during the period when someone is searching for a job. Structural unemployment is the mismatch between workers’ skills or locations and job requirements. Seasonal unemployment is caused by seasonal changes in a population’s activity, such as tourism or agriculture.

Unemployment has many adverse effects. These include:

Increased depression and other mental health problems
Increased crime rates
Overall lower economic productivity and consumption
Lower rates of volunteerism
Erosion of skills

Current unemployment rate in the U.S.: Officially—6.6%, but Pew Research data indicates more like 9.9%.

Current unemployment rate in the world: 8.62%, according to The Global Economy.

Ten countries with the highest rates of unemployment:

Burkina Faso (77.00%)
Syria (50.00%)
Senegal (48.00%)
Haiti (40.60%)
Kenya (40.00%)
Djibouti (40.00%)
Republic Of The Congo (36.00%)
Marshall Islands (36.00%)
Namibia (34.00%)
Kiribati (30.60%)

Ten countries with the lowest unemployment rates are:

Cambodia (0.30%)
Qatar (0.60%)
Thailand (0.70%)
Belarus (1.0%)
Benin (1.0%)
Gibraltar (1.0%)
Tonga (1.1%)
Isle of Man (1.1%)
Laos (1.5%)
United Arab Emirates (1.60%)

– World Population Review

Top ten jobs right now that pay well, challenge us year after year, match our talents and skills, aren’t too stressful, offer room to advance throughout our careers, and provide a satisfying work-life balance (Click on link below to see top 100.)

Physician assistant
Software developer
Nurse practitioner
Medical and health services manager
Physician
Statistician
Speech and language pathologist
Data scientist
Dentist
Veterinarian

– Money/U.S. News & World Report

Informal sector: The International Labor Organization (ILO) states that more than 60% of workers around the world work informally, which means they lack access to a paycheck, benefits, and job security.

Even when excluding agricultural jobs, that statistic still hits over 50%.
In Africa, 85.8 per cent of employment is informal. The proportion is 68.2 per cent in Asia and the Pacific, 68.6 per cent in the Arab States, 40.0 per cent in the Americas and 25.1 per cent in Europe and Central Asia.

Remote work (Work from home/WFH):

Upwork estimates that 1 in 4 Americans over (26% of the American workforce will be working remotely through 2021 and that 22% of the workforce (36.2 million Americans) will work remotely by 2025, reports Apollo Technical. That drastically reduces commuter time, with an aggregate time savings of over 9 billion hours per year.
A Stanford University study reveals a gain in worker productivity of 22% when employees work from home.

Future

Employment is projected to grow by six million jobs (from 162.8 million to 168.8 million) by 2029; the greatest growth will occur in healthcare-related occupations. – U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Fifteen jobs predicted to be extinct by 2030: