Kamran Ashfar's presentation was enthusiastically received by a large Rotary turnout last Friday.
His clear visuals and humorous, easy presentation style made for an interesting and informative perspective on many aspects of the Lehigh Valley and national economies:
- the trajectories of jobs in Lehigh Valley and economic impacts of having employed people we are at tight labor market
- by all markers traditionally used to measure inflation we continue to be in an era of low inflation
- the greying of the job market and the "brain drain" of retiring worker is not having as much of an impact as people think, because many over 65 are still working. But, aging population in Lehigh Valley and this section of country is much higher than nationally, so the impact will continue to evolve
- most Lehigh Valley job growth is happening in the warehouse/transportation sector
- automation has changed the number of people needed to do work, especially in manufacturing
- automated vehicles will replace need for drivers, who are now training to fill shortage, and will make $70-$80K, but then could be jobless
- driverless vehicles are fully ready to go, only legal details need to be worked out so that full scale rollouts can begin
Kamran gave a funny, detailed example of how automation could replace news/broadcasters - believable images with actual human voices reading the words of broadcast. In conclusion, changes in our farm based economy took decades – in contrast changes today are occurring and will continue to occur in an extremely rapid and disruptive ways.
A huge THANK YOU to last week's guest, Denise Woodworth, from LVHN, who provided the notes for this summary of Kamran's talk.
