The focus of this article is more on the poor in rural areas and bringing jobs to folks who are struggling and don't have an in demand skill set but are willing to learn.
I always thought that remote front line customer service would be a good job for these kind of situations, but I think most companies feel it better to just offshore or discard customer service altogether. Not sure there's an opportunity there :(
I'm currently working with a state governor's office on this policy. Their state needs more state workers, but comp is of course limited by tax revenue. So, my suggestion to them was: allow state workers to work remote as long as they're within the state. This keeps the income tax in the state, should be fine with the masses (the workers are still state residents), but enables these workers to put roots down in more rural areas that need workers for their tax base but couldn't otherwise attract industry or for profit entities who will pull up stakes and bail as soon as a better deal is on offer. These workers also, in theory, should have longevity due to the benefit of a stable government job they can work remotely. Good for retention, good for folks who want to ride such a job into retirement or need the flexibility (parents, caregivers, etc).
The federal government is not competent or sophisticated enough at the moment to enable something like this unfortunately (except in small pockets where telework has long been codified into worker agreements, such as the USPTO). Also can't rely on companies for such a program, due to their incentives and lack of worker protections around remote workers.
(this is not to say rural america won't continue to be hollowed out as young people move for economic opportunity or for locales where healthcare systems are not collapsing, but it gives some economic potential to people who need it while enabling state governments to attract talent as ~4M Boomers retire a year, ~11k/day, ~2M people 55+ die every year, about half of which are in the labor force; that means ~13k-14k workers leave the labor force every day in the US)
The focus of this article is more on the poor in rural areas and bringing jobs to folks who are struggling and don't have an in demand skill set but are willing to learn.
I always thought that remote front line customer service would be a good job for these kind of situations, but I think most companies feel it better to just offshore or discard customer service altogether. Not sure there's an opportunity there :(
I'm currently working with a state governor's office on this policy. Their state needs more state workers, but comp is of course limited by tax revenue. So, my suggestion to them was: allow state workers to work remote as long as they're within the state. This keeps the income tax in the state, should be fine with the masses (the workers are still state residents), but enables these workers to put roots down in more rural areas that need workers for their tax base but couldn't otherwise attract industry or for profit entities who will pull up stakes and bail as soon as a better deal is on offer. These workers also, in theory, should have longevity due to the benefit of a stable government job they can work remotely. Good for retention, good for folks who want to ride such a job into retirement or need the flexibility (parents, caregivers, etc).
The federal government is not competent or sophisticated enough at the moment to enable something like this unfortunately (except in small pockets where telework has long been codified into worker agreements, such as the USPTO). Also can't rely on companies for such a program, due to their incentives and lack of worker protections around remote workers.
(this is not to say rural america won't continue to be hollowed out as young people move for economic opportunity or for locales where healthcare systems are not collapsing, but it gives some economic potential to people who need it while enabling state governments to attract talent as ~4M Boomers retire a year, ~11k/day, ~2M people 55+ die every year, about half of which are in the labor force; that means ~13k-14k workers leave the labor force every day in the US)
The time to advocate this, and to begin preparing for the necessary attitude shift and buildout, was thirty years ago.
It doesn't feel like the country is currently headed in this direction.