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
Press Releases
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%)
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:
- Travel agent
- Cashier
- Fast-food cook
- Mail carrier
- Bank teller
- Textile worker
- Printing press operator
- Sports referee/umpire
- Retail jeweler
- Dispatcher
- Lumberjack
- Telemarketer
- Fisher
- Legal secretary
- Assembler/fabricator
Top ten careers for the future:
- Registered nurses and medical professionals
- Data analysts
- Plumbers and electricians
- Dentists and dental hygienists
- Software developers
- Cybersecurity experts
- Alternative-energy installers and technicians
- Mental-health professionals
- Veterinarians
- Artificial intelligence engineers