Economists and some government reports are saying that the American economy is improving. Therefore, hence, and in conclusion we can expect to see that more jobs will be appearing. Alas! Unfortundately, and sadly those won’t be the same lucrative jobs of yesteryear.

What happened?

A couple of things happened on the way to the next job market. One of them was automation. As we look for newer and better efficiencies in productivity and administration we continue to reduce demand for actual human workers in various non-scalable capacities. That’s the ironic thing about a technology-driven economy: all the investors insist that any human-performed task is not scalable and therefore not worth investing in.

Never mind the fact that there are now 7 billion people on the planet and that number is expected to grow by leaps and bounds over the next 15-100 years. The one thing of which we are NOT in short supply is people. It’s just that people don’t scale despite the fact that they breed faster than rabbits.

Assuming it takes you 10 minutes to read this article, in the time you read these words 2500 future workers will be born around the globe. That’s just an estimate based on a reputed birthrate of 134,000,000 babies per year.

We automatically make babies faster than we automatically make automobiles — but search engineers have estimated that as many as 1,000,000 spam pages are published each hour. That is about 67 pages of automated muck being launched for every baby that takes in its first breath in the ten minutes you read this article.

Another thing that happened on the way to the next job market is that a lot of people chose the wrong majors in college. We are graduating an entire generation of debt-laden experts in fields as diverse as “business administration” and “anthropplogy” — experts for whom there are too few jobs and in industries that are reportedly shrinking, not growing.

Of course, that is not always the case. Take computer programmers, for example. Thanks to cheap, penny-pinching west coast companies like Microsoft and Google there are booming markets in overseas computer programmers. That is because the average American technology company will hire anyone with the qualified skills they need NOW but after about 10 years — when those skills have become obsolete — these companies refuse to retrain highly qualified, productive workers.

And That Brings Us To Blogging

So, here you are with lots of training and/or experience and you’re struggling to find a job that will sustain your lifestyle, pay your bills, and help you plan for the future. It may be of little comfort to you but many companies are in the same boat as they struggle to transfer their “brick-and-mortar” thinking to online marketing practices.

You can find articles going back to 2007 on various Websites that document “blogging mistakes” that companies make. Year after year I see many of the same mistakes in these articles. Most of the articles are probably just fluff used to keep someone’s byline active. But one mistake that rings true every time I see it is that companies start blogs with the best of intentions and then fail to follow through.

One article I read the other day suggested that any company that wants to take blogging seriously should hire a full-time blogger. Can you imagine getting board approval for THAT? “What do you mean ‘hire a full-time blogger? People are not SCALABLE!'”

It’s the failure to understand scalability that leads companies to balk at good investments. Blogging works when you don’t interfere with it. Let the blogger blog day after day for a year and you’ll see growth. Of course, there should be editorial oversight but don’t let the chase for conversions mislead your blogging strategy.

Any company that wants to “try blogging” needs to to try it for at least 250 posts — and not fluffy, “afraid-to-say-anything” posts. You need to publish interesting, useful, helpful, time-enduring articles.

And That Brings Us To Who Should Be Blogging

Never let a business owner make a decision about what to put on a blog. They can decide what NOT to say but these people are too busy and often too afraid to take the bold step of being creative. If they don’t see the ROI they make at best half-hearted efforts that are doomed to failure.

So that Rick Newman article on Yahoo! Finance that I linked to above lists 10 college majors that are glutted with unemployed or underemployed graduates:

• Business administration / management
• Criminal justice
• Drama / theater arts
• Anthropology
• Liberal arts and sciences
• History
• Psychology
• Biology
• English
• Economics

And, just for good measure, let’s add Journalism to that list.

You know — I see a lot of great writers coming out of fields like these. And I don’t mean just flaky “literary writers” — I mean productive “business writers”.

Take Anthropology and History, for example. If you’re struggling to be recognized as an authority in your industry (i.e., every little spammer outranks you on Google) then you’re obviously doing something wrong. A trained Anthropologist or Historian will know how to dig into the inner workings of any topic. They will look for the historical processes that brought us to TODAY and they will look at how people choose to interact with and engage in any activity.

Anthropology and History demand analytical and intuitive skills that we also want to see in our basic “made-for-SEO” blogger stereotypes who are marketers extraordinaire. And anyone who has ever had to write a proposal for a research grant or a change to curriculum can tell you that marketing is an important skill in academia.

English majors catch a lot of flack for being word-weenies but, frankly, if you want to use a metaphor or share an obscure-but-fascinating anecdote my money is on the word-weenies. One of the best writers I know has an English degree. He also makes his living from Internet marketing. Coincidence? Maybe. That doesn’t change the fact he can write like a house afire (or something metaphorical like that).

If you want to get ahead in “business blogging” then you need someone who understands business, economics, finance, and maybe even human resources. In other words, if they cared enough to put up with four years of business education classes then they just might write something worth reading on your “business blog”.

The Drama majors of the world lack support from their fellow art enthusiasts because no one has really figured out that the billions of dollars the film and stage industry do “in business” every year is connected with drama. I fact, if you’re contemplating creating a video blog or an “online TV channel” you should be able to find a few unemployed drama students who might just want to take a chance at building a whole new form of online entertainment. We have only scraped the surface of possibilities with video creativity.

In Short, the Bottom Line Is…

Give me any unemployed college graduate who has some feeling, some passion left in his or her heart and I will give you in six months or less a killer blogger or videographer. They don’t lack opportunities — they lack support for their creative and analytical skills.

At a time when thousands of companies are spending ridiculous amounts of money on poorly planned marketing strategies that call for “social media links”, “community engagement”, and “link building” we are passing up a generation of people who have dreams — dreams that fuel passion. And if there is one thing I know about Internet Marketing, it is that nothing drives success faster, farther, and higher than passion.

You CAN buy passion in the marketplace today. You just have to know what to look for. It’s knocking on your door, asking for a job with a resume that doesn’t meet your expectations.

You need to broaden your sites, expand your criteria, and dispense with the illusory criteria that you need to find someone “with the right skills”. The “right skills” are in high demand and short supply. You’ll do better by finding someone with the right passion. Skills can be acquired more cheaply and easily than passion.

The perfect blogger for your business isn’t an expert in anything except asking questions, digging for the truth, and being there when the times are tough and your only option is to go out and get people interested in your business.

If an anthropologist can get people to talk about broken pottery and rotten fabric, he or she should be able to get people to talk about garden furniture and carpet. And you just might be amazed to learn how many centuries back our taste for garden furniture and carpet goes.