Technology also allows organizations to do more with fewer workers. As the 2007-
2009 recession (“The Great Recession”) took hold and businesses laid off employees,
corporations were forced to become more efficient—and they had the technology to
do it. Employers are not about to go back to their larger, less-efficient workforces, and
that will hit middle-class workers with no special skills the hardest. Fully 95% of the
net job losses during the recession were in middle-skill occupations such as office
workers, bank tellers, and machine operators. HRD challenges associated with reskill-
ing, or up-skilling, these individuals will present a major public policy issue and also
a significant opportunity for HRD specialists to contribute to the betterment of human
welfare (Cascio, 2014). This is not a one-shot opportunity either; the MIT Center for
Digital Business predicts that the next 10 years will be more disruptive than the past
10 (Dorning, 2012).