Robert Reich, former secretary of labor under former President Bill Clinton, said enough jobs exist in the U.S. market and unemployment is relatively low in this country and in North Carolina in particular.

Reich spoke on “China, India and the future of everything,” which included the topics of outsourcing and its relationship to the American job market in Stewart Theatre Thursday.

“Some jobs in the global economy are going where there are low wages, but what is also required is high skills,” Reich said. “Jobs are going where there is high value, expertise and innovation.”

According to Reich, the educated and skilled hold the advantage in our job economy.

“Who in North Carolina is going to get those good jobs?” he said.

“People with expertise and education. The most important singular fact — if you are well educated, you are advantaged in the global economy. However, if you don’t have the right skills, you will be on the opposite end of the economic ladder.”

According to Reich, the standard of living workers can enjoy in North Carolina is much more dependent on the value they add to the global economy than the profitability of American companies. The state is bringing specific assets to the table, he said.

“I find that there are three major trends happening now,” Reich said. “Number one — you have heard this so many times — is globalization. In the global economy, various jobs are located around the globe.”

He said technology is a key part of the economy and takes jobs out of the economy.

“The second trend is technological advances that are being made in the world,” Reich said. “Even if the U.S. was unwise enough to put a huge gate around America, we would still be losing U.S. manufacturing jobs, because they are becoming automated. Software is also taking away jobs.”

According to Reich, software replaces routine jobs, like those at banks and gas stations.

“In the U.S. during the early 1900s, 40 percent of the population worked on farms,” he said. “Now, although a much lower number of workers actually work on farms, agriculture is still a huge success, that is, because the productivity level has increased more than tenfold due to mechanization.”

And unlike globalization and technology, which can be unpredictable, the third trend — demographics — is not, according to Reich.

“The number-three trend in the business cycle is demographics. Demographics are easier to plot,”he said. “Do you know why demographics are much easier to predict?”

And Reich said this predictability stems from population balance.

“It’s because we know that all the people who are 30 years old now will be 40 years old, 10 years from now,”he said. “The biggest demographic issue is the aging of the baby boomers who total 76 million of our citizens. The boomers are going to be a huge drain on the economy.”

Phil Williams, a sophomore in agricultural business, said he appreciated the former secretary’s words.

“I really enjoyed the speech. The way he broke it all down to three trends in world economics really put things into perspective for me,” he said.

Lawson Hickman, a sophomore in political science, agreed and added that Reich’s view on economics intrigued him.

“I never thought about world economics in the way he laid it out,” he said. “I always thought that a job in China was one less job in the United States, but he explained it in a way that all the world’s super-producers can coexist and flourish.”