Edward E. Gordon - Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis

Future Jobs lays out a roadmap to the best jobs and careers in America in the coming years. By also explaining the gaps between our educational systems current outputs and the different skill sets employers are increasingly seeking, Ed Gordon has done a service not just for students, their parents and educators, but most importantly, for the executives now losing the global talent search competition. Finally, by cataloging working examples of regional workforce development partnerships, Gordon shows there are solutions here today that can help deliver the technical training so key to our countrys future prosperity.

William J. Bowe
Executive Vice President, Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc.

Future Jobs is the clearest, most incisive assessment of our job crisis Ive seen. Its unique in getting beyond hand-wringing to real life solutionsan invaluable resource for individuals and communities.

Henry J. (Hank) Lindborg, Ph.D.
Marian University Past Chair, Career Workforce Policy Committee, IEEE

Future Jobs puts the critical shortage of highly trained business, professional, and construction jobs into an extremely readable and understandable perspective. As a pioneer articulating this growing shortage of skilled professionals at a time of accelerated technical evolution, Gordons book is a call to resolution that can be accomplished by Americas business leaders, best equipped to resolve this problem.

Morris R. Beschloss
Global Economist & Analyst, Business News Publishing

You volunteer your time to education and employment initiatives. You donate resources. Read Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis to know why your continued contributions will be absolutely essential to enlarging your communitys future talent pool and keeping the U.S. an economic superpower.

Peggy Luce
Vice President, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce

Everybody talks about the growing shortage of skilled workers, but nobody has done anything about it until now. In Future Jobs, Ed Gordon documents the widening gap between the skills required by the 21st century workplace and the skills by the graduates of our 20th century schools. He also reports on the growing number of successful local initiatives to close the skills gap and accelerate economic growth. An open invitation to local activism! Just add leadership and stir!

David Pearce Snyder
Contributing Editor, The Futurist Magazine

Dr. Gordons book is a wake-up call to the world. The demographic and economic changes that have taken place in recent years not only in the US, but globally have changed things forever. The mismatch between the education our schools provide and the skills businesses need has never been greater. Our education system is ineffective, producing graduates with skills that are not needed and have no place in our society. At the same time businesses have numerous jobs that go unfilled because they cannot find individuals with the required skills and talent to fill them. His research and insights on the concept of Regional Talent Innovation Networks (RETAINs) may be the only way to re-sync our society and bring back the competitive advantage we have been known for.

George Vukotich, Ph.D.
Dean, College of Business, Concordia University, Chicago

If you care about the future of our economy for the next generation, read this book. Gordon delivers a wake-up call and its time for us to wake up. Future Jobs provides all you need to know to get engagedreally engagedin the single most important challenge we face as a nation: transforming our economy by investing in people and skills. With each of us taking small steps, our nation can make a huge leap. Thats how its done. Thats how its always been done.

Ed Morrison
Regional Economic Development Advisor, Purdue University

An amazing book that everyone needs to read! Dr. Gordon cites well-documented information about the mismatch of needed and available job skills, and he proposes solutions to the education-to-employment dilemma. He notes the success of many Regional Talent Innovation Networks in creating talent to meet the employment and skills crisis.

Pat Nellor Wickwire, Ph.D.
President, American Association for Career Education

A book every parent should read as soon as the first child joins high school. It will be a great help to make an informed decision about job opportunities and challenges our kids will encounter and how to help them in making the right choices.

Martin von Walterskirchen
Regional Director, Americas Swiss Trade and Investment Promotion

Ed Gordon pulls no punches in Future Jobs. He quickly identifies local, national, and international workforce challenges and provides us with a multitude of real solutions that will change lives, businesses and communities forever!

Bob Zettler
Workforce Consultant for Richland County Commissioners Richland County, Ohio

Ed Gordon, an expert on jobs and the people who do them, has zeroed in on a jobs crisis that should keep all of usemployers, educators, especially tomorrows workersawake at night. Theres a new job era Gordon says, with a workplace that demands technological skills and education that most Americans dont have, and that schools arent teaching. Our economy and our standard of living depend on solving this problem. In Future Jobs, Gordon shows the way.

Richard C. Longworth
Senior Fellow, Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Ed Gordons Future Jobs offers a true reform and growth compass to educators, public officials, and business leaders facing skills and jobs mismatches in their communities. He focuses on regional public/private partnerships and presents careful research and pertinent case studies that offer practical guidance for reviving stalled economies.

Dale Ward
Executive Director, High School Inc.

Typical of Ed Gordons in-your-face, call-to-arms style, Future Jobs does not disappoint. The book highlights contributions that education, government, business and American society have made to the talent crisis, as well as our collective responsibility for its resolution. Gordon provides well-researched, challenging perspectives and examples of real-life, real-time successes to spark much needed collective, cross-sector conversation. Unless we confront the mythologies we have created, identify the knowledge and best practices needed to revitalize our communities and their economies, provide freedom to public education to diversify, and sustain resources essential to supporting creativity and innovation, we will failagain.

Judith A. Ponticell, Ph.D.
Professor, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, University of South Florida

The United States is in serious danger of losing the global enterprise war. Not only will Future Jobs help you to understand how we got here, but it also shows critical ways you can support responding to this dire situation. The very survival of our country depends on people at all levels waking up to the perilous position to which our mismanaged priorities have brought us. This valuable book is the wake-up call this country needs.

Joyce Gioia
CEO, The Herman Group

Sustainable talent creation and attraction is the ground zero of economic development. Talent-ready has superseded shovel ready. There is no quick fix to the decades of public-private disconnect and myopic perspective that have lead us all to this talent crisis. Future Jobs is an insightful blueprint for effective and immediate collaboration and an action imperative for individual and community survival.