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Clark Howard (0:54)
It'S my pleasure to welcome you here to the Clark Howard show where our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you to make better financial decisions in your life. Are you thinking about getting a new job this year? You're not alone. But do you know there's a lot of training that can help you for free make yourself a better job applicant as you go out and look for that new opportunity. And also, do you know there's a magic pill? There's an actual magic pill that can extend your life or improve your health. I'm going to tell you what it is right now. I want to talk about the job market. Gallup that does so many polling and survey things has found that individual workers are really, really miserable right now in numbers that are virtually unprecedented. I'm looking at the Gallup survey called the Life Evaluation Index. This survey finds that we are 50, 50 now. And the people that are, as they would say they're asked, are you thriving at work? Are you struggling? Are you suffering today? And I don't remember this ever happening. Even during the Great Recession, the number of people that were struggling or suffering at work was never close to being half of all workers in the United States, which is where it is right now. People are. Well, I mean again, 50, 50. One out of two people at work are miserable, struggling or suffering. That's bad, ugly. Because think about how much of our waking hours we spend at work. And if we go to work dreading walking in the door. I've had a job like that before. It is no fun dreading going to work, hating being there and can't wait to leave. It's bad for your mental well being. It's bad all the way around but also, if you are not engaged in what you do for work, you're not going anywhere in that job. And so why this is so important to me is there are so many opportunities out there for you to skill up into things that the marketplace is calling for. You know, the workforce is not a static thing. What people are seeking in a worker, the skills, constantly moving, target never stops changing. And if you decide you're going to be what you're going to be forever, that's a mistake. You know, I've talked about this to my kids their whole lives from when they were really young. So much so, I knew I had succeeded when my son, who's training to be a professional airline pilot, called me and said, dad, I'm going to get a second degree. I think I'm going to do finance. Is it okay with you? It'll take me one additional semester to complete professional pilot and also to have a degree in something else. I said, yeah, I think that's a great idea. Why do you want to do that? And then he was repeating back to me what he heard. Propaganda works, he heard much of his life, that the nature of work never stops changing. He said, dad, I saw this story that Airbus is trying to get approval around the world by 29 to only have a single pilot in the cockpit, you know, because of all the automation going into airplanes. He said, I don't know what kind of longevity my career as a professional pilot will have. I don't know when planes are going to all fly themselves. And I thought that was really smart of a teenager to recognize that and already be preparing for what happens if his dream job. Because let me tell you, he loves flying an airplane. If his dream job no longer is viable, he's already thinking, what else would he be doing? And that's not human nature. Usually we have blinders on with our job or career, and what we do is what we do. Then that makes you roadkill for what changes over time. Because I will tell you that in 2050, almost all the jobs that exist will be things that don't exist today. Because the market never stops changing, technology never stops moving forward. And so you have to be prepared for change. And sometimes that's going to mean additional training or even education. I mean, I think about how many times over the years I've talked about Coursera, which has thousands upon thousands of free courses available that can teach you skills for free. You don't get a degree, you don't get a certification, but you're able to learn skills and a Lot of employers now are not as much into Certs certifications of various kinds as they are into you having the skill base to do a job. And there are hundreds of universities that make their courses available for free through Coursera. I love that. There's another one I didn't know about. I saw in Fast Company edx, which has a thousand courses that was founded by Harvard and MIT has a thousand courses you can take for free. They call it auditing the courses, but there's an online catalog of those. And then for years I've talked about Khan Academy, which is a non profit that is all about free education for stem. And you know, last month I read a list of all the jobs that are paying the most money and they were, almost 100% of them were somehow engineering or STEM. Trying to think if there were any that weren't engineering or stem. So you've got these resources available. To not feel stuck in a rut, to not feel like I just hate. I'm, you know, I'm. What were the terms of the Gallup thing? Suffering or struggling, man? Is that a way to live your work existence? Struggling or suffering when there's so much other opportunity out there? It's not just about money. It's about that you look forward to what you do, that you enjoy what you do, that you have options in what you do. That's what I want. I don't want you stuck in a rut.