Men Without Work

Jun 18, 2025 | Upward Mobility Signals

Envision Board Member Jim Golembeski reviews
Men Without Work by Nicholas Eberstadt
And offers thoughts about the Wisconsin corrections system

Envision Board Member Jim Golembeski reviews and offers thoughts about the Wisconsin corrections system.

Our ENVISION Upward Mobility Signals Team recognizes that unemployment is a serious barrier to financial success. We have also identified a continuing worker shortage as a key driver in the coming decade for our region.

 So, I read Nicholas Eberstadt’s book, Men Without Work, a 2016 study of the American workforce, in which he concludes:

 America is now home to an immense army of jobless men no longer even looking for work—more than seven million alone between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five, the traditional prime of working life.

 His recent edition provides a post-pandemic introduction as well. In it, he notes that COVID relief financial support programs might have unwittingly worsened the situation, particularly for older workers and the least wealthy portion of the workforce by providing temporary financial support. Those programs, however, have ended. 

A quick look this morning (May, 2025) at Job Center of Wisconsin, the state’s job board system, showed over 2,100 job orders for just Brown County. A job order may represent more than one opening as well. An aging workforce, low birth rate, and out-migration from the state are all putting pressure on our labor supply. Our manufacturers report attracting and retaining skilled workers as their biggest challenge. My colleague, Dennis Winters, State Labor Economist, projects that Wisconsin will have a labor shortage of over 122,000 workers by 2031.

 My friend, Paul Rauscher, retired owner of a local manufacturing business, has frequently tried to convince me that a large number of people in our community have voluntarily opted out of the workforce. They are either unwilling or unable to get and keep full-time employment. He likes to say, “Put their name on the back of their jersey and get them in the game!” He and I have both been working with The Joseph Project to do just that. But we have not had much success in finding these workforce dropouts.

 Eberstadt’s book provides a wealth of data. Continue reading here

Rogue Waves by Jonathan Brill

May 26, 2025 | Strategic Foresight

Foresight tools plus a strategic action orientation: 

Randall Lawton reviews Rogue Waves by Jonathan Brill

Brill’s book and methods are built on many of the strategic Foresight foundations familiar to us, but he removes the academic & bureaucratic processes and replaces them with practical and accessible methods that most organizations can use and afford.  These are built around the strategic position of the organization, but with an orientation toward transforming to survive—a handbook for surviving and profiting from radical change. Continue reading here

A Review of Imagining After Capitalism by Andy Hines

Mar 4, 2025 | Upward Mobility Signals

Foresight on our Future Economy

Jim Golembeski, Upward Mobility

Twenty-five years ago, as Director of the Bay Area Workforce Development Board, I
experienced, along with my colleagues, the shockwave of local plant closings and
worker dislocation as new technology and economic globalization drove overwhelming
economic changes we hadn’t seen coming. Companies closed and workers lost jobs.
We weren’t looking for the signals back then; we didn’t know how. Continue reading here

Interview with Social Philosopher Roman Krznaric

Mar 4, 2025 | Signals to Watch

Nan Nelson, Economic Transformations

Futurist Andrew Curry is recommending we check out an interview with the social philosopher Roman Krznaric on Five Books about how the lessons of history might help us navigate the present. It’s prompted by Krznaric’s recent book History for Tomorrow.  There’s a long tradition that we can’t learn from history, and there’s another one that says that we tend to draw the wrong conclusions because we use history metaphorically and then choose the wrong metaphors. Krznaric is interested in patterns, which Curry thinks is an underlying principle of futures work: patterns exist.

Krznaric has a chapter in his book on artificial intelligence, which seems essentially modern. “Reading Why History Matters made me think,” Curry says. “Have we ever created large-scale systems which could potentially get out of control, which is one of the potential risks of AI?”

And he answers, “Yes, we have. We invented the instruments of financial capitalism in the Netherlands in the early 17th century: the first stock exchanges, the first public limited companies, marine insurance. It was a human-created system that very quickly got out of control, with the advent of multiple financial crashes.

As the futurist Wendy Schultz says from time to time: to be a good futurist you also need to be a good historian. Deep structures matter.

Tariffs Are Coming

Jan 29, 2025 | Upward Mobility Signals

Jim Golembeski, Upward Mobility Signals Team

Tariffs are coming. The aggressive approach to international trade that began in the first Trump administration will get renewed life in the next four years. What will it mean for Americans struggling to get by month to month?  I wanted to better understand this renewed focus on tariffs and what they will mean for our low income citizens. Read my review and what I learned in two recent books on the subject. Continue Reading Here

Upward Mobility for Economic Growth

Jan 19, 2025 | Upward Mobility Signals

Judy Nagel, Upward Mobility Signals Team

Upward mobility is the desired status for any society that wants to achieve economic growth and sustainability. It supports achievement by merit versus privilege, the prerequisite for a society that seeks continuous improvement.

So where does the US rank internationally in upward mobility? The International Organization of Economic and Community Development measures upward mobility across the world. Five criteria determine the measurement; labor, healthcare, social safety net, education and technology. We refer to upward mobility as the American Dream. According to OECD analysis the US ranks as 27th in the world for social mobility. In the US it is the norm to take five generations to move from lower income to the middle-income class. Some countries achieve this norm in two generations.

Learn more from the linked report which compares Wisconsin to other states and the US to the rest of the world. There are many clues and models that offer learning opportunities for achieving upward mobility. Learn more here