Is the sky falling, or isn't it?

As I understand it, there seem to be two visions of the working world of the future, and they're heading in opposite directions from one another.

One view could be called the Global Pessimist point of view. In this view, everything that can be moved to lower-wage countries will be. We've already seen this in the manufacturing sector: how many of the clothes we wear are now made in countries such as China, Indonesia or Vietnam? And how much are the workers who are making them being paid?

The development of universal high-speed broadband Internet connections means that it is now possible for knowledge work to be outsourced in the same way. The most well-known example of this is customer call centres: many major companies have moved these tasks offshore to countries such as India. But many other jobs could go offshore, or are doing so already: software development, graphic design, web applications, and other language-independent tasks can be done for less money overseas. (By the way, Rohan Jayasekera has recently discussed this issue in his blog.)

Does that mean we're all doomed? Are we all going to be forced to work in fast-food restaurants or at Wal*Mart? Are we condemned to a life of simply struggling to get by? (And are we excessively fond of rhetorical questions? Sorry.) Perhaps not, if an article in today's Globe is to be believed.

According to workplace reporter Virginia Galt, the North American workplace needs to brace itself for a major change. Many of the baby boom generation will be retiring in the next ten years. And those of us who will be remaining in the job market are insisting on maintaining a healthy balance between work and life. According to this view, employers will need to be more flexible in order to attract employees, as workers will have more options available from which to choose. (A personal aside: as somebody who has been struggling to find meaningful work in the last few years, I say that it's about time.)

So you can now mark me down as confused. Is the future going to be better for the average worker, or not? My prediction is that a whole bunch of totally unexpected events will change the modern workplace in ways we can't possibly imagine yet. That's kind of why it's worth sticking around for a while - I, for one, want to see what happens.