Are you working in a phantom job?

Check the digital structure of your job.

So you have a great job; you are well paid; and your future looks assured [see photo].

Perhaps, just perhaps, you are working in a phantom job. That is the job you have right now will not exist in one to five years time. Why is this so? It is so because digital technology and the structures that promote, and support, it tends to dis-intermediate labour. Think of the loss of jobs in the travel industry as it shifted from main street to web street. And that is the first test for your current job. Can what you do be done online by algorithms and bots. Here is a clue. If you are able to work from home then your job is highly likely to be [in some part at least] a phantom job.

The reason that so many current labour-intensive jobs are in danger of disappearing is that there is an economic transformation going on. Labour is prized as a part of "value-adding" process [this stems from the mass-production at Henry Ford's assembly-in factory in 1908]. But in a digital economy the economic imperative is "use value". Digital production is geared towards "use value" which is registered at the point of sale, consumer interaction, after-sales service, etc. And any measure of "use value" is obviously not that amenable to the "batch processes" which anchors the structures that most labour is hired to fit.

So the contemporary test for a real job is: does it provide "use value" for a client, user, or consumer? The related [yet secondary] factor is whether your client, or user, is an internal agent to the entity that pays you. If this is the case for you [think most HR professionals] then chances are you occupy a phantom job. if your client, user, or consumer is external to your entity then you probably do not have a phantom job - just yet.

Those of you who are currently in phantom jobs might consider taking some purposeful and specific steps to improve you chances of future employment. First and foremost, you can start your own business. Second, you can focus tightly in on what scope you [as an individual or a valued member of a team] have to deliver sustained "use value". Third, you can attach your work to all the remaining "face-to-face" elements of the structure that frames what you do. And so on and so on.

Richard.