What is North Carolina's future?

My new book, “North Carolina in the Anxious Age”, is now available in stores and websites. Published by  The UNC Press, it is the third book I have written about our State’s future, and the challenges we must address so tomorrow’s North Carolina is successful for the State’s people and industries.

In this column I give the highlights of the book. Of course, with limited space, details and nuances will be overlooked.  However, if you want more information, go directly to the book.

Any look into the future starts with people and places.  It’s predicted North Carolina will be among the states adding population in future years. Our State is expected to add between 2 and 4 million people by 2050. Over time, a larger share of the new population will be from people moving from other states and countries.

Regarding geography, North Carolina’s urban-rural divide, where urban counties have prospered more than rural counties, will begin to close.  Enhanced communication and buying technologies, reduced open space in urban areas, and lower housing costs in rural regions will cause faster growth and development in North Carolina’s “wide open spaces.”

At the same time, North Carolina’s “hands-off” approach to the labor market could be challenged in the future in two areas.  Currently North Carolina has no legal limit on hours worked per week.  Don’t be surprised if there is a movement to legislate a work hours limit. 

Changes in the workplace will likely create the most long-lasting, impactful, as well as controversial, changes in the future.  Driven by artificial intelligence (AI), there will be some jobs lost, some new jobs created, and other jobs kept but with different tasks.  Hundreds of thousands of North Carolina workers could be affected.  Also, as North Carolina, together with several other states, has a very low minimum wage, a complementary campaign to significantly increase the State’s minimum wage could occur.

Addressing the challenge of AI and the remaking of numerous jobs will be led through adjustments in education and training at all levels.  Perhaps ironically, look for educators to embrace AI as a learning tool. Education will become more individualized, with learning more focused on both learners’ characteristics and their interests and goals.  The days of an instructor standing in front of scores of students and lecturing about the same content will be gone.  With teachers and technology working together, students will receive an education developed specifically for them.

There will be one other major educational change in the future.   Education will be on-going, unlike today where it usually stops at twelve or sixteen years.  Rather than having one life-time career, the average worker may have two or three different careers over their working years.  The future dynamic economy, pushed by AI and other technologies, will create an on-going pattern of job change requiring workers to adapt and re-train.  One major impact will be on public support of education.  Rather than focused on a limited couple of years, with individuals retraining several times during their working life, public educational support may be needed many times.  One idea of how to address this new realty would be to provide each individual access to a specific dollar amount of public educational support, but leaving it to the individual when to use the funds.

The concluding chapters of my book address what might be the greatest future challenge to North Carolina.  It is keeping North Carolina attractive, in terms of its beautiful beaches, stunning mountains, and open spaces convenient to both nature and modern necessities.  Some say the answer is high density living, thereby preserving more open space.  But many households don’t want to live in apartments, condominiums, and high-rise towers.  Can North Carolina add between 2 and 4 million people and still keep its beauty without forcing people to live in small spaces?   I and you will have to decicde.

Walden is a William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor Emeritus at North Carolina State University.  His new book, “North Carolina in the Anxious Age” is available from The UNC Press.