Here's another little known fact about me:  I'm addicted to business books.  Oh yes - I have highlighted and dog-eared copies of 'The Goal', 'Who Moved My Cheese', 'The One Minute Manager', 'The E-Myth', 'Rich Dad Poor Dad' and at least 50 others. 

I read them all and keep them, like some sort of security blanket, just in case I need one of their little pearls of wisdom.  In fact, I rarely reread them or even scan the highlights.  They just sit on a bookshelf gathering dust and every time I've ever tried to discard one, I read the cover or flip through the pages and find myself inspired and with renewed enthusiasm for the work I do and thus cannot part with any.

However, this last month, I embarked on yet another ruthless sweep through my home and office to rid myself of unused clutter and found myself face-to-face with my cherished business books.  You have to understand, some of these gems have been around for at least 20 years. 

'The Goal', as an example, was handed out to every employee of the company where I worked in 1992.  It was required reading at the time and worthwhile too.  The gist of it?  The Goal of your company is to Make Money and every decision, action, policy and process in your company should be aimed at accomplishing that goal.  Duh!  And I didn't even have to pick the book back up to remember its lesson - some things you never forget.

I ended up letting almost all of my business books go, but not without perusing them first.  Two of them, both also handed out and required reading by that same employer but in 1994 and 1997, were specifically aimed at the new Information Age and how it was going to impact the work environment.

They are 'Mind Shift' and 'New Work Habits for a Radically Changing World'.  Since they both were intended to be forward looking and prophetic, I took the time to re-read them and then had to go check their facts and figures to see how the World has actually changed.  This just might astonish you.  It did me!

Today most people have basic living necessities that once were considered only for the rich.  Some of these include:

All too often we hear scary news stories about lost jobs or extinguished professions, but occupations are ever changing, ever evolving.   Jobs have changed radically since the beginning of the 20^th century.  Here are just a few examples:

It's easy to see how growth in one area reduces others.  For example, since the percentage of people owning one or more cars has risen to 91%, the need for truck, bus and taxi drivers is reduced. 

Cell phones, non-existent in 1983, jumped to 16 million by the end of 1993.  By 2010, there were 5 BILLION cell phones in use.  That's a sobering number since the World's population is predicted to hit 7 billion in October of this year. And of course along with cell phones comes the entire cell phone industry, not even on anyone's (literal) radar scope in 1910.

In 1993, 19 million people carried pagers and they left 12 billion messages that year.  Now pagers and its industry are obsolete, having been replaced by cell phones and email.  In 2010, 294 billion emails were sent PER DAY in the US.  Holy Cow! (Some days it seems I actually send that many myself)

In addition to the changes in occupations and labor distributions, there have been other interesting developments in debt, wages and the industries in which we find work.

We've been watching intently the public debt crisis* but do you know how fast the debt has been rising?  Here is a quick look (data for 2011 captured July 22^nd): 

Year	Amount (In Millions)	Per Capita
1800	$83	$15.87
1860	65	2.06
1900	1,263	16.6
1920	24,299	228.23
1930	16,185	131.51
1940	42,968	325.23
1950	256,087	1,688.30
1960	284,093	1,572.31
1970	370,094	1,807.09
1980	907,701	3,969.55
1990	3,233,313	12,823.28
1994	4,643,711	17,805.64
2011	54,925,515,700	176,165.00

Salaries seem to have kept pace with the times for the most part.  Education always has and most likely always will play a big part in our ability to earn a decent living:

What kind of work do we do?  We have to ask: What makes up our Gross Domestic Product (GDP)?  In the late 1800's, the service economy represented 33% of the GDP.  It grew to 66% after WWII, to 75% in the late 1970's and to 80% by 1996.  In 2010, the service industry still represents 78% of the GDP.  Compare that to Agriculture (1.2%) and Industrial (22.2%) and you can see that the services sector is an important part of our economy and future.

Having said education is key, it is my opinion (and only my opinion) that the entrepreneur will make up the new middle class, especially now that factory work and manufacturing is all but gone from our country. 

As traditional jobs disappear, more and more of us will 'find a need and fill it'; the hallmark of all successful entrepreneurs.  And while I am an education advocate and junkie (love to fill my brain with new facts and figures), it doesn't always take a formal education to be successful.  You just have to surround yourself with the kind of people who can help get you where you need to go.

The keys to success in a World that changes as quickly as ours does is to be flexible, embrace change, keep your eyes open and seize new opportunities and be wise enough to continually upgrade your knowledge base so as to be useful and value-added no matter what line of work you opt to pursue. 

Charles Darwin said 'It's not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change'.  As our world changes, so we must change with it.  We do need to shift our thinking and embrace the fact technology is here to stay. 

Every time I think surely we've maxed out in technological growth for one area, another new avenue pops up.  Newer, faster, shinier, slicker, amazing things we can do electronically and by using our brains instead of our brawn.  That is fact.  And I figure it is an amazing era in which to live.....

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Facts and Figures from multiple internet sources including the US Census Bureau, the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the US Debt Clock (www.usdebtclock.org) and Wikipedia.