Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 7, 2013

The New Serfs :    If current trends continue, the fastest growing class will be the permanently property-less. The Yeomanry :  In neo-feudalist California, the biggest losers tend to be the old private sector middle class.

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 6, 2012

Today's New York Times has an editorial on the job woes of the class of 2012. It's covers much of the same ground we did in yesterday's post  on Gen Y and Seniors turning to independent work. percent.

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Small Business Labs

AUGUST 17, 2021

.   The Harvard Business Review article The Creator Economy Needs a Middle Class further illustrates the issue at hand. The article goes on to discuss ten strategies to grow a middle class of creators, and it's clear from the Spotify data that new ways for creators to generate income are needed.

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Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 22, 2021

Business Insider has an excellent interview with Richard Florida , a leading expert on cities and urbanism and the author of The Rise of the Creative Class. The interview covers a lot of interesting ground, and it’s well worth reading. But one part jumped out at us.    Key quote: Human beings are social animals.

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Small Business Labs

NOVEMBER 2, 2017

Propelled by global online markets and platforms and a growing global middle class, small businesses and even freelancers and individuals are exporting goods and services in growing numbers. Globalization and international trade was once driven almost exclusively by large multinational corporations. In fact, according to the U.S.

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Small Business Labs

JULY 31, 2017

Friedman points out that tour guiding will likely not solve the middle class jobs problem. Again from the article: "Is this the only answer for the American middle-class jobs challenge? We have to do 50 things right to recreate that broad middle class of the ’50s and ’60s, and platforms like Airbnb’s are just one of them.

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Small Business Labs

AUGUST 27, 2018

  Skillshare is an online education platform with over 5 million users and over 20,000 classes taught by a network of 6,000 teachers across dozens of fields.  interesting conversation with Skillshare's CEO Matt Cooper on the Trending in Education podcast. 

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 6, 2018

Examples include The Atlantic's  Craft Beer Is the Strangest, Happiest Economic Story in America , Bloomberg's  Craft Brewing as a Model for Helping the Middle Class , and the Economist's  Crafting a Life.   That artisan businesses can be job creators is certainly true in the case of craft brewing.

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Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

  But even more recently, Atelier switched to calling it the creator economy in their Harvard Business Review article The Creator Economy Needs a Middle Class. .   More recently, the venture capital firm Atelier called it The Passion Economy in an essay that drew a lot of attention. 

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Small Business Labs

MAY 31, 2018

  He argues that despite relatively high incomes, growing numbers of Americans can't afford a middle class lifestyle. Key quote: The meritocratic class has mastered the old trick of consolidating wealth and passing privilege along at the expense of other people’s children. control a bit under 60% of our nation's wealth.

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Small Business Labs

SEPTEMBER 20, 2016

  This is one of many interesting stats about the growing number of rich Americans in the Baron's article Penta Millionaires: The New Rising Class. Trust, 77% of these millionaires came from middle class or lower backgrounds, including 19% who grew up poor. The number of U.S. According to research from U.S.

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Small Business Labs

APRIL 27, 2015

I can't imagine any clearer signal that the freelance economy is happening than having one of the most successful business authors of past decade or so - Seth Godin - release a training class on becoming a freelancer. The class is available on Udemy at a cost of $57.

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Interviewing AT&T Training UPS 100

Small Business Labs

JULY 19, 2018

who are creating materials and classes that they can sell like products. Also, a growing number of services businesses are creating products. This is especially true for training firms of all kinds, including fitness trainers, business coaches, music instructors, etc. These independents also are finding it easier to export.

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International Training 140

Small Business Labs

MARCH 18, 2019

They describe this as: " building a statistical view of your project based on a reference class of similar projects." But our favorite was what they call taking an "outside view" of a project or forecast.

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AT&T Learning 146

Small Business Labs

SEPTEMBER 26, 2017

" Key quote on earning Badges: Badges will be earned based on the same standards around the world – through world-class learning, fulfilling required experiences and making a contribution to the broader community, such as coaching colleagues, presenting to clients or publishing an article that educates others about the acquired skill.

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Skills Learning 150

Small Business Labs

JUNE 13, 2017

Stagnant wages, declining middle class jobs and rising costs (particularly for housing, education and healthcare) are resulting in more Americans supplementing their income through regular but occasional independent work.  million, up from 10.5 million in 2016.   See the report for more details. 

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Small Business Labs

DECEMBER 23, 2014

Business Class Fares Declining : Entrepreneur says domestic, cross country business class fares have declined from $2500 round trip to around $1200 round trip over the past year. According to the Wall Street Journal , some airlines are trying to class up coach.

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Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 15, 2018

As the IEEE Spectrum article  Rethink Robotics, Pioneer of Collaborative Robots, Shuts Down  (which is where we got the sad Baxter picture above) points out, Rethink "developed a new class of factory robots that could safely work alongside people." " Expect to see more cobots in the future.

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 5, 2017

Mulcahy packages up the information from her MBA course in this book, and at only $16 ($11 if you buy the Kindle version), it's a a whole lot cheaper than taking her class at Babson.    The book covers a range of topics, including: How to stop looking for a job and start looking for work.

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 1, 2015

   Their decoupling has led to growing income inequality, greater economic uncertainty and fewer Americans being part of the middle class.    The article is excellent and well worth reading, but the charts are even better.            

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 6, 2017

These include relatively slow growth, stagnant wages, middle class job losses and declining job security. We also think it's one of the least studied and understood. A combination of factors drive economic uncertainty. In addition, a growing amount of research also points to income volatility as a cause of economic uncertainty.

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Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 18, 2012

 These jobs tend to be good paying, middle class jobs that haven't required high levels of education. The bad news is routine jobs - the backbone of the middle class - are going away due to automation and foreign competition. Many clerical and manufacturing jobs fit in this category.

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Small Business Labs

MAY 3, 2016

The Atlantic's The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans  is written by one of the 47% percent of all Americans who couldn't come up with $400 to cover an emergency expense without borrowing or selling something. In other words, Uber didn't invent the gig economy, they tapped into it. 

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 29, 2019

Stagnant wages, reduced hours with unpredictable schedules and the hollowing out of middle class jobs have all led to more people turning to 2nd and even 3rd sources of income to make ends meet.   But it's not just those with financial hardships that need supplemental income.

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 8, 2018

Our research shows a combination of wage stagnation, the hollowing out of middle class jobs and growing economic uncertainty are driving this trend. .  Their survey also fails to address a major economic issue, which is why are so many Americans turning to 2 nd jobs and alternative sources of income?

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2017 UPS 155

Small Business Labs

SEPTEMBER 19, 2016

Key quote: "Older workers are trying lawsuits, classes, makeovers—even surgery—to keep working." Welcome to Silicon Valley.    Bloomberg's It's Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley nicely captures the youth ethos of the valley.   Tech firms and industry participants often don't even try to hide this.

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Interviewing AT&T UPS 100

Small Business Labs

MARCH 26, 2014

While a small elite of corporate managers and knowledge workers would reap the benefits of the high-tech world economy, the American middle class would continue to shrink and the workplace become ever more stressful. Sound familiar?

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 23, 2015

Exist's Could Creating a New Class of Worker Solve the Sharing Economy's Labor Problems  makes the case for a new class of worker, the dependent contractor: Today, all employees are either full-time or independent contractors. Fast Company Co. For many modern workers, the definition is somewhere in between.

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Small Business Labs

AUGUST 15, 2011

." Key quote on what these productivity gains means for people: " to get into the middle class now, you have to study harder, work smarter and adapt quicker than ever before. All this technology and globalization are eliminating more and more “routine” work — the sort of work that once sustained a lot of middle-class lifestyles."

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Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 25, 2016

These are: World-class business infrastructure: Small businesses have the ability to build upon technology infrastructure that was once the sole domain of large organizations, such as cloud computing, manufacturing and distribution.  Last week Intuit released the Slideshare presentation  The Future of Small Business.

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2020 Learning UPS 100

Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 25, 2010

  The reduction in poverty levels in the developing world is accompanied by a growing middle class.    We expect developing world economic growth will result in 1 billion new, middle class, developing world consumers joining the global economy over the next decade.    Tags: Economic Decentralization.

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2020 UPS 100

Small Business Labs

AUGUST 26, 2014

  This summer's class included quite a few companies focused on independent workers. .   A wide variety of startups are chosen to be in the Y-Combinator program, everything from biotech to Internet apps to even a couple of companies working on nuclear energy. 

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Small Business Labs

MAY 2, 2017

Surprisingly, this illiquidity was a problem even for families who would by other measures be considered middle class. As the authors write, “The Diaries make salient the critical distinction between not having money at the right time versus never having the money, or in more academic terms, illiquidity versus insolvency.”.

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Small Business Labs

NOVEMBER 25, 2014

Two cleaning ladies have filed a class-action lawsuit against Handy , claiming the maid-on-demand service violated a number of labor laws. The basis of the suit against Handy is the folks filing the suit claim they should be classified as employees, while the company claims they are independent contractors.

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Small Business Labs

MAY 7, 2012

 Since then we've been able to review a number of their studies and their work is first class. .    One of the groups tracking the Longevity Economy, and other issues related to aging boomers and seniors, is the MetLife Mature Market Institute  (MMI).   We were introduced to the MMI at the Boomer Summit.

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 29, 2011

Here are the direct links to the essays that most caught my eye:  The Rise of the Middle Class - Just Not Ours. .  They describes these essays as: A guide to the intellectual trends that, for better or worse, are shaping America right now. Plus a bunch of other ideas, insights, hypotheses, and provocations.). Nothing Stays Secret.

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 28, 2016

  In the post-urban model Bain suggests that due to costs increasing numbers of the middle class will move to "New Villages" These are "residential zones lying at the furthest edge of the traditional metropolitan commuter belt, more than 50 miles or a 90-minute commute from city centers." 

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