Trends Shaping Tomorrow's - World Future Society

4.5% of revenues. Corporate R&D in
the United States has shifted in recent
years, with less emphasis on
pharmaceuticals and computer-related
fields and more focus on biotechnology,
nanotechnology, and security
technologies.
• China has taken second place in
the world’s R&D spending, with a
budget estimated at $136 billion in
2006, up from $60 billion in 2001.
Still more spending may be hidden
in military budgets. China says it
will raise its R&D spending from
about 1.23% of GDP in 2004 to 2.5%
in 2020. In 2008, it spent 40% more
on R&D than the year before. China’s
output of research papers increased
from just over 20,000 in 1998 to
nearly 112,000 in 2008. It passed
Japan, Germany, and the United
Kingdom in 2006. A study by the European
Union predicts that China
and India will lead the world in R&D
by 2025.
• R&D outlays in Japan have risen
almost continuously, to nearly 3.5%
of GDP. In 2007, Japan spent about
$148 billion on R&D. In 2008, its
R&D spending grew by 4.4%.
• R&D spending by the top 350
companies in the European Union
amounted to $170 billion in 2008, up
8.1% in a year.
• In Russia, government R&D
funding amounted to about $53 billion
in 2008, approximately 60% of
total research funding in the country.
Some 44% of Russia’s R&D budget
goes to defense research, 10% to
space. These figures omit whatever
clandestine military research escapes
notice. Owing to the global recession,
however, Russia’s research budget
faced planned cuts of 30% in 2009.
• Western corporations are outsourcing
a growing fraction of their
R&D to foreign contractors, just as
they do other functions. Much of this
work goes to India, some to Russia
and eastern Europe, but the growth
area is China.
Assessment and Implications:
This is a significant factor in the acceleration
of technological change.
The demand for scientists, engineers,
and technicians will continue
to grow, particularly in fields where
research promises an immediate
business payoff.
Low-wage countries such as China
38 THE FUTURIST May-June 2010
once took only low-wage jobs from
advanced industrialized countries.
Today, higher-paid jobs in science,
technology, and the professions also
are at risk.
Countries like India, China, and
Russia once suffered a brain drain as
those with high-tech skills emigrated
to high-demand, high-wage destinations.
Today, many students and professionals
spend time in the West to
learn cutting-edge skills, and then return
to their native lands to work,
start companies, and teach. This promotes
the growth of some developing
countries while reducing the
competitive advantages of the developed
world.
■
Services are growing faster
than any other sector of the
global economy.
• Service jobs have replaced many
of the well-paid positions lost in
manufacturing, transportation, and
agriculture. These new jobs, often
part time, pay half the wages of
manufacturing jobs. On the other
hand, computer-related service jobs
pay much more than the minimum
for workers with sound education
and training. Medicine, the law, and
many other well-paid occupations
also fall into the service sector.
• Service industries provide more
than 79% of the GDP in the United
States, 77% in France, 74% in Britain,
73% in Japan, and 70% in Germany.
In each case, services are growing
rapidly; other sectors, less so.
• Service industries account for
about 77% of private nonfarm employment
in the United States, up
from 70% in 1990. Services accounted
for the entire net gain in U.S. private
employment in the decade ending
2010.
• In Britain, services provide
80.4% of jobs; in France, 72%; in
Japan, 68%; in Germany, 64%. In each
case, the percentage of service employment
is rising.
• In contrast, services in China
provide only 40.5% of GDP and 33%
of employment. In India, they account
for 63% of GDP and perhaps
35% of jobs. (Sector employment
data for India are extremely dated.)
• In the decade ending in 2016,
service industries will provide 15.7
million new jobs, according to the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
• Education and health services
will add 5.5 million jobs, more than
30% of all new jobs expected for the
period. Employment in professional,
scientific, and technical services will
grow by 28.8% and add 2.1 million
new jobs by 2016.
• Production and less-skilled jobs,
in contrast, are disappearing. By
2014, the United States is expected to
have more chief executives than machine
tool operators, more lawyers
than farm workers.
• Meeting the BLS estimate of 15.7
million new jobs by 2016 would require
the creation of some 300,000
jobs every month from November
2009 on. This assumes that it is necessary
to make up the 8.4 million
jobs that the official numbers say
have been lost since the recession began.
It omits 10 million or more
people who either have given up
looking for work or have settled for
part-time employment.
Assessment and Implications:
This trend is helping to deplete the
middle class, as well-paid jobs in
manufacturing are replaced by illpaid
service positions, leaving a
country of “have lots” and “have
nots,” but relatively few “have
enoughs.”
Services are now beginning to
compete globally, just as manufacturing
industries have done over the
last 20 years. By creating competitive
pressure on wages in the industrialized
lands, this trend will help to
keep inflation in check.
The growth of international business
will act as a stabilizing force in
world affairs, as most countries find
that conflict is unacceptably hard on
the bottom line.
■
Job creation is ceasing to provide
employment for all who
need it.
• According to official estimates, it
takes 100,000 jobs per month to absorb
young people and others just
entering the labor force. Between
January 1999 and October 2009, the
U.S. economy generated an average
of only 26,000 jobs per month.
• Most economists believe it will
take five years—that is, to 2015—just