Unemployment may still be high because companies aren’t hiring, but one sector is the exception: Firms specializing in high-tech manufacturing are begging for workers because skilled labor simply isn’t there. According to a recent New York Times article, factory owners have been steadily adding jobs since the beginning of the year and would love to hire more, but can’t fill many openings because there’s a mismatch between the kind of skilled workers they need and the applicants out there.

Part of the problem is that young people don’t see manufacturing as a career path. And why should they? U.S. manufacturing has been on the decline since the 1970s. But the ugly reality is that a robust economy can’t be built on service and retail alone. Our staggering trade deficit is evidence that America doesn’t make tangibles anymore — we just buyand sell stuff to each other, and most of that stuff is made in other countries.

The other side of the equation is that in spite of the wonders and ubiquity of technology, not everyone wants to spend 40 or 50 years sitting in a cubicle punching computer keys. Neither of my Depression-kid parents ever finished high school — they were factory workers. Their idea of nirvana was a “nice, clean office job,” and for that you needed an education. The irony is, in those golden post-WWII days, my uneducated parents probably made a better living on the factory floor than most people working today’s nice, clean office jobs.

Back in the day, there were technical schools where kids who weren’t “college material” could learn a trade. Today, when you need a B.A. or B.S. to be considered for a receptionist job, kids who want to go into manufacturing need a college education. Unfortunately, much of the grant money for tech majors has dried up, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.

On the bright side, there are organizations that are working on educating young people on this viable career path — and insurance is helping out.

I recently spoke with Janice Allen, national program director at CNA, about the CNA Foundation’s $15,000 funding of Nuts, Bolts & Thingamajigs (NBT), a program sponsored by the Fabricators & Manufacturers Assn. International (FMA). NBT centers on a national summer camp program for grammar and high school kids during which they spend 2 weeks at a manufacturing facility, learning about the business, and end up actually making something to take home. The camps, which start in June and run through August, are connected with community colleges in the area, which partner with local manufacturers to host the programs. 

“The idea is to get the kids interested at an early age and consider manufacturing as a vocation,” Allen said. “Even if they don’t go into manufacturing, they will have appreciation of what it means.”

CNA’s involvement is a multiple win for the insurer: because they are the endorsed business insurance carrier for FMA, the sponsorship helps build their relationship with the association, demonstrates commmunity involvement, and assists in developing a pipeline of new employees to keep the manufacturing industry viable. “In an industry where the workforce is aging, and where it’s hard to find replacements, there is no stronger thing we could do to support that,” Allen said.

Given the current deadlock  in Washington on any meaningful job creation and training programs, the CNA/FMA partnership seems to be a workable solution to a very real problem.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending an independent agent seminar presented by Hales & Co. and hosted by National Underwriter and AA&B on “creating and enhancing shareholder value.”

Don’t let the Hales tag fool you: although M&A was a large part of the discussion, it was by no means the only topic. In fact, the all-day event pretty much ran the gamut of all the challenges independent agents face, from complying with the new healthcare reform law and other legislation to building a stronger brand.

The main message I came away with was this: Being an independent insurance agent is not for wimps. Not only are you stuck competing in the worst economic mess since the Great Depression, but you also have to worry about complying with state and federal regulations, finding new business, tracking your insurers’ financial stability, and on top of everything else, staying on top of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

And now, to add insult to injury, you’re also a target for professional wrestlers.

In a story that sounds like something from the Onion, last week the St. Petersburg Times reported that Hulk Hogan (real name: Terry Bollea) has sued his insurance broker, Wells Fargo Insurance Services, claiming the broker should have offered him an umbrella policy, which would have protected him from lawsuits when his son crashed his car, catastrophically injuring a passenger in 2007. Although he had a third-party auto liability policy with a $250,000 limit, Hulk recently paid a confidential settlement in the accident, which the broker lawsuit seeks to recover.

The case goes to the heart of the broker-as-consultant issue, which holds the profession to a higher standard of ethics and expertise than a mere policy-pusher. According to the Times article:

Didn’t Bollea have a personal responsibility to investigate on his own what he needed to do to protect his multimillion-dollar net worth?

“Not if you put your trust in your broker,” Florin (Hulk’s lawyer) said.

“This isn’t a personal responsibility case,” Florin said. “This is a professional responsibility case.”

 Every agency consultant, including those at the Hales event, extols the virtues of independent agents and brokers differentiating themselves in a tough market by becoming more professional and consultative. Unfortunately, as the Hulk case demonstrates, that professionalism can be a double-edged sword. If you’ve cut corners to survive the soft market and the recession, that frugality could come back to haunt you if you’re not covering all the bases with your agency services.

 As the industry continues to evolve in sophistication, don’t be surprised if you start seeing more of these types of cases.

And it would be really cool if they could be settled with a cage match.

And now, more unexpected fallout from the recession: senior citizen entrepreneurs.

If you’re not already seeing a demographic shift in the makeup of your small business clients, you probably will soon. A recent study by the Kauffman Foundation, a private organization which tracks entrepreneurism, indicates that to 24-to-34 age bracket of entrepreneurs behind start-up companies, which ruled during the dot.com boom, now has the lowest rate, surpassed by entrepreneurs age 55 to 64, whose start-ups increased 36 percent in 2008. In total, more than 80 percent of all startups were by people over 40 years of age.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise: older workers have been disproportionately affected by the brutal layoffs of recent years, and many close to retirement age have had their portfolios decimated by hard times — their age precludes them from getting another traditional job, and they and can’t afford to retire (just think of all those “consultants” out there).

But societal shifts could also be responsible: today’s middle-aged and older population is healthier and more active, and many are intent on “living the dream” with second or third careers instead of slowly driving Cadillacs in Boca. Many have worked their entire careers making money for someone else, and want to work for themselves for a change while they’re still able to.

The lesson for insurance agents and brokers is that this is just another page in an unfolding saga of how the American workplace is changing. Everyone in our industry is aware of the importance of understanding the Gen Y customer and employee; now it turns out that Gen Y is only part of the equation.

In my recent blog about the multigenerational household, we discussed how the new economic realities are bringing back the days when Mom, Dad and the kids live under the same roof as Grandpa, Grandma, and other members of an extended family. The new configuration creates new risks for the family unit, and new opportunities for agents and brokers who serve them.

Similarly, start-up businesses headed by older entrepreneurs face a unique set of challenges, especially at a time when business loans are hard to come by and employee benefits are in a state of flux.

Are you prepared to serve these new businesses — or even start one yourself instead of retiring?

It’s a growing reality that many of you may be personally familiar with: the return of the multigenerational home. And it’s also an opportunity for insurance agents.

According to a recent Pew Report as reported in the Washington Post:

The number of people living with several generations under one roof in the United States is at its highest point in 50 years, as families cope with ruinous job losses and foreclosures…

During the first year of the recession, the number of Americans living in such multi-generational families rose by 2.6 million, or more than 5 percent, from 2007 to 2008.

Now 49 million Americans — 16.1 percent of the population — live in homes with multiple generations. Many include adult children in their 20s…

Young adults are less likely to be married than they once were. The typical age of first marriage is five years later than it was in 1970 — 28 for men and 26 for women…

In a tough job market, many still live with their parents. Pew’sanalysis showed that 37 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds in 2009 were either out of the workforce or unemployed, a nearly four-decade high. The figure includes some college students.

According to the report, the multigenerational trend has been growing since the 1980s, in part because of the economy, but also because multigenerational homes are common for many ethnic groups.

It certainly wasn’t weird for my family. My parents were married right after World War II, and due to the lack of jobs and housing, went to live with my Italian grandmother in her two-flat on Paulina Street in Chicago. Turnaround is fair play: when my parents moved to the suburbs, Grandma came with and lived with us for many years. At one point, so did my Uncle Jimmy and my cousin Millie. It was pretty fun having a childhood in what amounted to a boarding house. Likewise, after I married and had kids, and my mother died, my father came to live with us. 

But the recession is what’s really driving the current trend. One of my best friends currently has her late-20s son, his wife, and two toddlers living with her and her husband. Other households include unmarried, recently graduated children in their early 20s who can’t find jobs.

For independent insurance agents, this trend is just another way to solidify your relationship with your customers. With so many of you now writing personal lines coverage — or doing so to round out a favored commercial client — it pays to ask some probing questions come renewal time.

Things to think about:

• How many additional drivers are on the client’s auto policy?
• With more people living in the home — including the elderly and small children — should the customer increase his/her homeowners’ liability limits?
• Is anyone living in the household running an at-home business (child care, consulting, etc.)? What additional insurance coverages are needed to protect the homeowner and the consultant?
• Is the home being used for the storage of additional property, such as furniture, cars, or “toys” like boats and motorcycles? Is additional coverage needed to protect these items?
• Is everyone in the household covered under some form of health insurance? If not, can you advise them about changes in the healthcare law that will make coverage available to them? And for now, are there options available to them under COBRA or other sources?

The creative agent/broker can come up with many more.

What are your customers telling you about changed conditions in their living situations? And what other coverage questions come up in relation to a multigenerational household?

With all due respect, I think the researchers at Careercast.com must be, as the Brits say, “having us on.”

That’s the only conclusion I can come to after looking at their much-touted “Best Jobs for 2010” list, just up on their Web site.

Not so much that they rank the job of insurance actuary as No. 1. After all, the rankings are based on a combination of “environment, income, outlook, stress and physical demands.” The fact that actuaries make good money, wear nice suits and sit at a desk would obviously rank the profession higher on the list than, say, anything seen on the “Dirty Jobs” show.

Nor do I take much umbrage over most of the other top 10 jobs, including the predictable computer software designer and analyst, accountant (they’re in demand in all economies) and dental hygenist (although I beg to differ with the “stress” element of that job — when my son was young he once threw up on one).

But guess what: ”Insurance agent” came in at an unenviable No. 103, right between “telephone installer/repairer” and “artist (fine art).” While the job of insurance agent might well include elements of both those jobs, I find it hard to believe that the job outlook for insurance agents is only one step above that of an aspiring paint-flinger. (It’s gotta be the stress level: 63.322 compared with 51.994 for artistes.)

Another position that handed me a laugh was that of “publication editor” (in the immortal words of Bozo the Clown, “Hey, that’s me! Wha-ha-ha-ha!”). Ink-stained wretches actually beat out insurance agents for job viability, coming in at No. 65. And although the fine print did concede that the hiring outlook for editors was “very poor,” this relatively high ranking completely ignores the fact that more U.S. print publications went down the tubes in the last two years than in the history of publishing.

I also had to laugh at other job entries that beat out insurance agents on the list — including “historian” at No. 5 (hey, all you business school students — ditch the MBA and start focusing on the Punic Wars!), “author” at No. 74 (riiiiight…), “janitor” at No. 83 and “bookbinder” at No. 91. Although ballerinas, astronauts, cowboys and pretty-pretty princesses didn’t make the cut, this list suggests that even your wildest kindergarten career fantasy would have been a better choice than what you’re doing now.

Still, you can take some comfort in the fact that you’re not in the career that came in No. 200: “roustabout.” No, not in the circus, but on oil rigs. Careercast.com describes it as a job with good earning potential, but with long hours, dirty and dangerous working conditions, isolation and high stress. Oh, wait…sound familiar?

Last June, AA&B took an in-depth look at insurers and agents who were specializing in “green” insurance coverage. Our sources spoke glowingly of the potential for growth in green construction, especially in the area of retrofitting existing buildings — a topic covered in a current Web exclusive article on the subject.

Supporters maintain that adopting green building methods and materials will create a “green collar” job transformation in the U.S.  The latest figures from the USGBC in a “Green Jobs Study” conducted by Booz Allen suggests that green building will support or create 7.9 million jobs between now and 2013. And in certain areas of the country, it seems to be working. One independent study shows California green jobs grew 36 percent from 1995 to 2008.

But President Obama’s campaign promises to create 5 million new green jobs and put the U.S. in the forefront of renewable energy production have failed to materialize. Ironically, China, which for years has been reviled for its profligate use of nonrenewable energy, is now the world leader in the production of off-grid wind turbine generators, according to a recent article in EcoWorld.com.

According to a recent article in Fast Company magazine, there is terrific potential for green job growth in these areas:

• Farmers
• Foresters
• Solar power installers
• Energy efficient builders
• Wind turbine fabricators
• Conservation biologists
• Green entrepreneurs
• Recyclers
• Sustainability systems developers
• Urban planners

This list is inclusive enough to accommodate all levels of workers, from MBAs to retrained blue-collar people.

Nobody should be cheering green jobs more than the insurance industry. With the manufacturing and construction industries struggling to find a place in the “new normal” economy, a burst of new activity in the green jobs area could pull these and other industries out of the doldrums.

But as the California example indicates, it takes more than hope to build the new green collar middle class American worker. Green is “gold” in California in large part because of state and municipal rules mandating green compliance. Like any fledgling industry, green jobs need some government incentive to get off the ground. As long as it’s cheaper to keep doing things the old way, the green promise will remain just that. In China, the government subsidizes wind power, knowing the young industry won’t be self-sustaining for years, but willing to make the investment. It seems if we really want to dig ourselves out of our current economic malaise, our country would be better served by a government that’s willing to invest in the future instead of propping up relics from the past.

Everyone is worried about healthcare, whether it’s the cost, the coverage, or how legislastive reform will change the way we’re used to dealing with it. Just yesterday, after meeting with representatives of all factions of the healthcare equation, President Obama reiterated his commitment to moving a healthcare reform bill through Congress before its August recess. Details are sketchy, other than suggestions that the plan could center on expanding Medicare to cover the uninsured (even though the recession has both Medicare and Social Security on the ropes).

Healthcare reform is a huge, complex issue that’s tough to get your arms around. But a recent New York Times article brought it down to a more human scale, and provides a hint of what could be in store if Washington takes a more active role in healthcare issues.

The article dealt with Congress’s plans to “give employers sweeping authority to reward employees for healthy behavior, including better diet, more exercise, weight loss and smoking cessation.”

Federal rules currently limit what employers and insurance companies can do to “incentivize” employees to focus on prevention and wellness. Several proposals are afloat that would rescind these limitations as part of whatever federal healthcare reform program gets passed.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, right? According to the article, employers currently face some confusing tax, labor and insurance laws when it comes to offering wellness programs. It only makes sense to introduce some standardization to these well-meaning programs.

What bothers me about this move is the potential to punish rather than encourage — and the not-so-subtle subtext of lifestyle discrimination.

Everybody knows that prevention programs are far less costly to administer than having to treat an illness directly arising from poor lifestyle choices.  But somewhere in the inevitable gray area in between lies the touchy issue of personal freedom — you know, that pursuit-of-happiness stuff that’s written into the Declaration of Independence.  

When it comes to the workplace, we’re already living in a recessionary, layoff-driven “buyers’ market,” with most states giving employers at-will rights to hire and fire. Employees still left standing in today’s job market are dancing as fast as they can, picking up the slack for their laid-off brethren. It doesn’t seem right that on top of everything else, their employers can levy financial penalties for unhealthy practices, either on or off the job.

And I’m not talking about shooting black-tar heroin or killing a quart of Finlandia before work. Clarian Health, an Indiana hospital chain, made headlines several years ago when it announced plans to deduct as much as $30 per paycheck for workers it deemed obese.

We’re living in a culture where We-TV can get away with “I Want to Save Your Life” — an “Intervention”-type program that puts overeating on the same level as drug or alcohol abuse.  In this sort of environment, it isn’t that far-fetched to think your employer could send a skeletal guy in Spandex charging into your office to make sure your carbs are curbed.

It seems to me that this sort of Big Nannyism would ultimately be bad for employee retention and productivity, not to mention opening the floodgates for some really nasty EPL lawsuits.

If employers want their workforce to focus more on the carrot than the steak, they should use the carrot instead of the stick. And if Congress wants to help them, legislators should be careful not to introduce measures that could make it easier to punish workers instead of helping them.

Get out the cynanide capsules.

According to Forbes economic guru A. Gary Shilling (http://www.forbes.com/shilling), the current economy — which many experts are calling the worst since the Great Depression — is a long way from hitting bottom.

Shilling describes a four-phase process of deterioration in which the current housing and financial services failures are eventually followed by a depression of gross national product and finally, a global recession.

According to Little Mister Sunshine, American consumers are already curtailing their discretionary spending, even at the high-income levels. The rest of us, he says, are shopping at discount chains instead of department stores, and otherwise cutting corners (News flash: I stopped buying toilet paper at Nordstrom’s years ago.)

Shilling advises investors to purge their portfolios of stocks from companies that provide such discretionary products and services as “cars, appliances, air travel, cruises and vacation houses.” But if his bleak prediction is true – and current events suggest that it could very well be — how soon will it be before insurance becomes a discretionary expense for financially strapped consumers?

Recent surveys already indicate that many Americans are cutting back on medical visits to cut corners, and that businesses are bypassing some liability coverages because they think the cost exceeds the risk. If strapped consumers eventually just stop making payments on their credit cards, car and student loans as Shilling predicts, it’s not much of a stretch to see them giving up all but the legal minimum on insurance — if that.

All this speculation begs the question of what impact this will have on agents and brokers. Are your policyholders telling you they can’t afford coverage? Are you seeing more resistance to cross-selling and personal lines sales? And what are you doing about it?

At a time when unemployment is putting a major drag on an already lagging economy, some unexpected news: U.S. insurance industry payrolls added 2,800 new positions from June to July, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That represents an increase of more than 8,000 jobs since July 2007.

To put it in perspective, this increase happens at a time when general unemployment increased to a four-year high of 5.7%.

Reinsurance led the pack for payrolls, up 11.9% percent over last year. And while property/casualty insurers grew payrolls only 0.8% year over year, their employees remain the most highly compensated, with employees averaging $986.50 a week.

In an earlier post on this site, I asked what (if anything) your businesses were doing to trim costs during these tough times. In light of these new numbers, I’m wondering whether my assumption of across-the-board cost cutting was premature. After all, it takes money to make money, as the old saw goes, and adding a high-performing producer or CSR can be a smart investment, even in hard financial times.

So, assuming that the carriers you represent are adding new talent, is your agency thinking of doing the same?