Change of lyrics? When I was a little girl, I asked my mother, What will I ... do? (Undated publicity photo of Doris Day)
When Doris Day chirped her big hit in the fifties, the lyrics probably made perfect sense. "When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, 'What will I be? Will I be pretty, will I be rich.' Here's what she said to me..." Back then, pretty and rich seemed like perfectly fine aspirations for little girls.
By the seventies and eighties, we started demanding more practical career planning of our children. "Que sera, sera" was not an acceptable response to young people. Career colleges and vocational institutions grew in popularity. Liberal-arts educations started to be derided because they didn't teach you how to be anything. Career was a noun - it defined what you would be when you grew up.
As we enter the second decade of the century with the global economy still in tatters, we need to rethink our notion of the word "career."
Many Americans are sadly finding out the problem with picking a single career. With about 8.5 million people out of work, the world's largest economy is spinning its wheels. Jobs haven't come back with stimulus spending or cheap money. The problem isn't cyclical unemployment (i.e., the kind that goes away when consumer demand picks up); it's now the far more troublesome structural unemployment - many traditional careers are gone and they're not coming back.
Canada has fared better, but this is no reason to let down our guards. In fact, with possibly flat to zero growth in the U.S. for the next several years, this country's job market is going to feel the strain as well. On both sides of the border, we are realizing that alongside uncomfortably high joblessness, thousands of positions are going unfilled. It's a mismatch between the jobs that are available and the skills of those seeking work.
Retraining is one obvious solution. But it's a tough slog for workers later in their careers, sometimes setting them up for completely impractical and unrealistic expectations. Is it even fair to ask a 59-year-old, laid-off assembly-line worker to retrain as something else? It's no panacea.
So how can we prepare young Canadians entering a challenging job market in the coming years?
One thing we need to do is start thinking about a career as something you do, rather than something you are. The difference is subtle but important.
Take a person who assists in the building process. We describe these people with a noun: construction worker. But what does a construction worker really do? What are his or her skills? Are they simply swinging a hammer or operating a crane? Or are they teamwork, spatial perception, problem-solving and project management? Helping people identify what they really do in their day-to-day jobs will go a long way in encouraging them to think of other work possibilities if necessary.
Flexibility in the labour force used to mean mobility; workers would be expected to relocate physically to where the jobs were. But that's no longer sufficient. In the future, a flexible worker will be the one who can take skills and competencies learned in one job and parlay them in a totally different job. Multiple careers are to be embraced, not feared.
Entrepreneurship is another trait that is undervalued and underappreciated in Canada. We tend to think of entrepreneurs such as Donald Trump or the people in the shiny downtown office towers. Far more common and numerous are entrepreneurs in the suburbs, the ones managing pizza joints and helping people with financial planning. They're the ones creating organic dog treats or designing specialty clothes for seniors with limited physical movement.
Notice the verbs: manage, help, create, design. Recession or not, there will always be a demand for these verbs, and entrepreneurs will know how to tap into it.
Perhaps there should be a remake of Ms. Day's trademark song. Little girls and little boys in the 21st century won't ask, "What will I be?" but rather, "What will I do - and in how many unimaginably different ways can I do it?" That's a much bigger question, but one that will lead to more fulfilling and nearly endless opportunities.
Todd Hirsch is a Calgary-based senior economist at ATB Financial. The opinions are Todd Hirsch's own.