By Dave Maney, an entrepreneur and former journalist

Posted: 09/11/2011

The evolving job market will require workers to be flexible, competitive and

"mini-preneurs" who can identify where they're needed. (David Paul Morris,

Bloomberg News )

Given all the attention it's getting in Washington, D.C., millions of Americans

are no doubt wondering when our economy's job-creation machine will crank

up again.

Brace yourself: It isn't likely to happen — not in the way it worked before.

In fact, the economic laws that undergird the system of jobs and

employment as we have known them are wobbling from the torrents of

information flowing through businesses from the Internet and related

information processing technologies. We're experiencing a Great Scouring

Out, as we move through a painful streamlining and restructuring of our

entire economy.

Sounds awful, doesn't it?

But it's not, at least in the long term. The demand for work isn't going away,

even though millions of jobs have. The economy, more efficient than ever,

will catch the wind again, providing well- equipped Americans with bountiful

opportunities to make a good living.

But not through jobs — not nearly to the extent they exist today. The idea

that we accomplish work mainly by organizing people to show up together at

the same central office or factory at the same time five days a week for a

certain amount of pay and benefits is in steep decline. We now stand at the

gates of what policy expert

Full-timers priced out

Companies are getting what they need done with fewer jobs. Period. That

won't be changing.

But if that's the case, how will we earn a living?

There's only one way out. We have to compete. We have no choice but to

make ourselves into the labor service providers that are in demand in the

new marketplace. We won't be employees. We'll be small, focused company

founders. Free agents. Mini-preneurs.

The Individual Economy will require more technological skills and more

individual initiative. It will require creativity and innovation. It will require

people who hate selling anything to anyone — ever — to work hard to sell

themselves and their capabilities to individuals and companies who need

them.

A search-driven world demands that individuals focus on being world-class

at a narrow thing and then use information tools to find the narrow audience

that wants it. It requires mastering the marketplace platforms that have

competed jobs away and possibly new capital formation mechanisms that

resemble Third World microcredit programs. It needs universal

telecommunications infrastructure and availability. And it will require

massive education, practical training and cultural re-wiring.

Yes, we need safety nets and transition assistance and significant

expenditures by our society to move ourselves to this new model. It will take

no less than an economic-war footing to do it.

But as with all wars, the difficult years won't last forever. The new model will

take root, and America's history of rugged individualism makes us wellpositioned

to thrive with it.

Goodbyes are hard. This farewell to jobs isn't going to be easy, but it's our

reality.

Dave Maney, an entrepreneur and former journalist, runs Economaney.com