The Futures - No. 17

From Quantumrun

Aug 08, 2023

Source: KelloggInsights / Artist: Yevgenia Nayberg

TLDR: In this issue

The Quantumrun team shares actionable trend insights about China’s youth unemployment surge, the rapid urbanization happening across Africa, the EU’s power move on EV charging, and the humanoid cobot cool factor.

Future signals to watch

ChatGPT’s plugin marketplace might become the real Web 3.0, able to do just about anything—from research to writing to coding.
By 2025, the EU plans to equip highways with fast electric vehicle chargers at every 60-km interval. These chargers will accept payments via cards or devices and won’t require subscriptions (👏👏👏).
North America is taking notes. Seven automobile giants (including BMW Group, Honda, and GM) join forces to build an extensive public charging network fueled by renewable energy.
Japan’s demographic crisis sees a 14th consecutive contraction, falling by 800,000 in 2022.
Coca-Cola became the first major brand to appoint a global head for generative AI.
The race for healthcare market share among Big Tech is intensifying. Amazon Clinic, offering 24/7 virtual consultations, is now accessible to customers across the US.
Scientists plan to send 3D-printed hearts to the Space Station in 2027 to see how they handle strong space rays, which is important for future long space trips.

Not enough knowledge-based jobs for China's youth

Source: Dribble / Artist: Henrique Rossatto

Unemployment among young people in China has reached an all-time high, creating a tough situation for recent college graduates. Many find themselves having to take jobs that don't pay well or match their education level. The latest data shows that the unemployment rate for young people aged 16 to 24 in China's cities hit a record 20.4 percent in April, about four times higher than the overall unemployment rate.

Experts think there are too many college graduates for the number of high-skilled jobs available. The economy hasn't been able to keep up with the large number of graduates since colleges started growing in the late 1990s. In addition, young people are leaning more toward knowledge-based jobs, like IT, instead of traditional factory jobs.

However, President Xi Jinping has set up a strict system, including limits on free thinking and discourse, that makes it difficult for the workforce to move toward knowledge-based labor. Even getting simple economic data, like weather information, is a challenge.

This gap between the quality of workers and the structure of the economy is something China has seen before. It led to protests like the ones in Tiananmen Square in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But unlike before, no groups with independent power are left to find a middle ground because Xi has brought all the power under his control.

Monthly surveyed urban unemployment rate of people aged 16 to 24 in China from June 2021 to June 2023

Actionable trend insights as youth unemployment grows

For entrepreneurs: Youth unemployment is a global challenge. As generative AI evolves the labor market, people of all ages will need to retrain for new skills on an ongoing basis. Skilled professionals can offer in-person training classes, boot camps, and tutoring services for skilled labor jobs, while tech-leaning entrepreneurs can support the growing demand for education in knowledge-based fields by launching EdTech and job placement startups.
For corporate innovators: By the mid-2020s, companies will experience competing incentives between automating ever more knowledge work, while still recruiting the best knowledge workers available. Meanwhile, the surge in domestic manufacturing capacity investment will drive rapid demand growth for blue collar workers of all kinds. Corporations may need to partner with online learning platforms and in-person boot camp training services to develop a customized pipeline of trained professionals to meet their changing labor needs.
For public sector innovators: Governments can implement policies that encourage the growth of the knowledge economy, such as tax incentives for businesses that invest in employee training or funding for research in IT and other knowledge-based fields. Singapore's TechSkills Accelerator, a government initiative providing skills training for the technology sector, is an example. The public sector can also play a role in education reform, including reintroducing apprenticeships and technical training for students interested in pursuing careers in the trades.

Trending research reports from the world wide web

This study discusses the top 20 jobs affected by large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. (Telemarketers are the most affected).
This report examines how climate-driven extreme heat is driving a new health inequality, particularly among women doing unpaid domestic labor.
Companies are focusing their AI training on leaders and not front-line employees (44 percent versus 14 percent).
This US Department of Treasury report discusses what’s behind the surge of manufacturing facilities construction in the country.

African urbanization spreads wealth across the continent

(This section was contributed by a friend of Quantumrun, Bronwyn Williams, Futurist, Economist, and Business trends analyst. Explore her newsletter.)

If there is one thing that the covid pandemic made us think about, it’s the value of human connection - physical connection.

This applies to individual relationships, companies, and societies. At the individual level, the NHS found that elderly people felt more lonely after a video call with their loved ones than if they had no contact at all. At the organizational level, even as workers are happier working at home, the latest data is showing that remote work is less economically productive than hybrid or in-office work. At the societal level, the trend towards urbanization can be thought of in the same way; economic opportunity lies where the people are.

Urbanization increases economic growth, access to skilled job opportunities, average wages, years of education attained, and access to financial services. Indeed, a full 30% of Africa’s GDP growth over the last 20 years can be directly attributed to urbanization.

This becomes particularly important if we are looking for opportunities for future growth over the coming decades when we consider that the majority of Africa’s population is still rural. This implies significant growth ahead for the continent by 2033, when Africa’s rural-urban balance is set to flip towards majority urban, rising to 60% urban by 2050. The trend towards urbanization will be amplified alongside the continent’s projected population growth rate of around 2.3% per year to reach 2.5 billion by 2050.

Added together, urbanization and population growth alone make Africa one of the world’s key regions for real (unavoidable) growth over the coming decades. Whether one’s politics tend towards growth or degrowth as a goal, demography remains destiny, and human birth and migration patterns are long-tailed, sticky trends that take generations to bend. Growth in Africa is, at least in the mid-term, worth betting on.

Actionable trend insights as Africa continues to urbanize

For entrepreneurs: Africa’s fastest growing, most populous cities—particularly Cairo, Kinshasa, and Legos, represent new sources of talent—and new target markets. Africa’s middle class has tripled to represent over 30% of the continent over the last 30 years, and their number and spending power will only increase alongside urbanization and population growth.
For corporate innovators: New and growing cities need to be built from the ground up. This means massive opportunities for laying foundations for transport and telecoms systems and physically building residential and commercial properties to house massive influxes of people and projects.
For public sector innovators: Fast-growing cities and populations bring challenges as well as opportunities. Decent housing and access to basic services remain challenges for many African citizens, city planners would be well advised to heed the warning of the likes of South Africa, which failed to plan and invest adequately in infrastructure ahead of projected urban migration. There are also opportunities for global as well as local public-private sector partnerships to preempt infrastructure squeezes; particularly partnerships to invest in circular, efficient infrastructure built for the future that balances the twin pillars of economic and environmental sustainability that are so critical to human flourishing.

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Outside curiosities

In case you’re ever wondering how fonts get their quirky names.
Everyone has an opinion on Twitter’s X rebrand - from “ugly honesty” to “good, actually.”
This whimsical kid-friendly art installation in South Korea uses immersive light projections and optical illusions.
Temu and Shein are battling it out in court on who can dominate the market for low-cost goods in the US.
Humanoid cobots are an emerging tech that will see explosive growth by the late 2020s as their tech matures … and as the global labor market turns increasingly gray-haired.