Books

Business and Job Opportunities Now and After COVID-19 Pandemic (Part 2)

Published

6 years ago

August 13, 2020

Read part 1 here

As I was writing my most recent book, “Race for the Net,” over the last 30 months, I did not envision an economic Pandemic, but a recession (that we did get).

My focus was on the changes in the labor market due to a shifting economy based on mechanization and robotics. The noted firm McKinsey Consulting states in their recent report that over the next five years, more than 345 million persons around the world will be changing their current jobs (pre-pandemic).

Many of these jobs are in the service sector, in which a preponderance of African Americans generate their income. The technological shift in industries at all levels will result in a reduction of jobs in the following sectors: fast food, public transportation, retailing, manufacturing at level, back-office processing, and education, to name a few.

Public and private sector entities would be shifting from a human-dependent economy to mechanization and robotics. What is driving these changes is a focus on cost-cutting, labor shortages, and a desire for increased productivity. Many businesses were already facing a labor shortage due to workers not being willing to accept lower wages.

I suggested in my book that the African American community should now focus on accessing training and education programs in the growth areas of digital technology, coding, software development, health science, and cybersecurity.

The COVID-19 virus disaster has substantially reduced the size of our economy and created enormous pools of unemployed individuals in the service industries.

This technology transition will take a minimum of five years, beginning within two years under the current economic conditions. This shift to a robust digital economy is at our doorstep today.

Major business entities today are restructuring their human resource strategy with a focus on less human involvement due to health and insurance issues. These companies realize that mechanization and robotics have to be a primary focus if they are to survive in the post-pandemic era. With this in mind, the African American community must start considering alternative areas of employment and entrepreneurial opportunities not dependent on a service economy today.

Excerpted below are a few business areas covered in my book. For a complete description of the business and job opportunities, please read my book. Most of these options are entrepreneurial endeavors.

• Internet Commerce. This will continue to be a growth area. The potential market exceeds 4.2 billion potential customers and growing. People are becoming millionaires every day, leveraging Internet technology.

• Health Care Service. This industry is expected to grow by $4.6 trillion, with the increasing need for service providers and monitoring specialists to track data from home or remote locations.

• Disaster Support Services. A vast potential of job and business opportunities with the increased numbers of floods, fires, and hurricanes every year.

• Broadband transmission services and development. Billions of dollars are authorized to solve the Digital Divide and Broadband Transmission issues

• Small Business Innovative Research program (SBIR), a federal government program that funds inventions and ideas in various areas through the use of federal grants.

Finally, I am a big supporter of Science Technology Engineering and Math programs (STEM) in our communities for young people. I have personally mentored two young men who have successfully become software and app developers with little prior experience.

In less than three years, they secured management positions with software and cybersecurity companies. Each has garnered a salary of more than six figures. It required hard work and determination of these young men to achieve the first step in their goal of eventually having their own business.

You have the opportunity to change your life even through a pandemic. Do not waste this time to learn something that can help you after this disaster is over.

Albert E. White is the author of “Race for the Net.” The book can be ordered at www.raceforthenet.com

By Albert E. White

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Oakland Post: Week of September 30 – October 6, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of September 30 – October 6, 2026

Published

2 days ago

October 4, 2026

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Oakland Post: Week of September 23 – 29, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of September 23 – 29, 2026

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1 week ago

September 27, 2026

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Books

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Laws of Solomon’ Reveals Tender Heart of Former Child Soldier

The monsters that came to him early in his sleep were the easy ones. It was the later demons that stole Solomon Nangobi’s sleep, the spirits of all the people he killed when he was a child soldier in Uganda, and when he was a fixer in New York as an adult. Their ghosts called to him with urgent voices, though he left that life behind long ago.

Published

2 weeks ago

September 22, 2026

Post News Group

Book cover of “Laws of Solomon.” Courtesy of Poisoned Pen Press

By Terri Schlichenmeyer, The Bookworm Sez

Author: Eriq La Salle, Copyright: c.2026, Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, SRP: $18.99, Page Count: 304 pages

Finally, after so much work, you’ve left your past behind.

That’s what you tell yourself: what’s done is done and you can’t undo history. It’s over. You try not to think about last month, last year, a decade back because what does it matter? As in the new novel, “Laws of Solomon” by Eriq La Salle, remembering is too full of pain.

Now, his days were filled working the soil in gardens near Malibu, and he loved the quiet life.

Still, he kept his guns.

And he was glad: when Solomon recognized two Zeta gunmen stalking a well-dressed man, woman, and child through the gardens, he couldn’t walk away. He stopped the gangsters with bullets, but not before the adults and their bodyguards were dead. The child, an 8-year-old boy named Gaby, was safe, but Gaby couldn’t tell Solomon what was going on.

What became quickly certain, however, was that Solomon was now Gaby’s guardian, and the Zeta crime boss wanted them dead, too.

When he was the same age as Gaby, Solomon saw unspeakable things, the murder of his parents, the destruction of his homeland, and the atrocities that Uganda dictator Idi Amin’s soldiers committed. He learned to kill, he observed, and he was hardened, understanding as a small boy that revenge was often necessary and needed, and that blood would shed at those times.

But Gaby was pure, an innocent, a child.

Solomon reached out to his contacts to try to get the boy to safety, but being a contact of a marked man was likewise a dangerous thing: the monsters outside were worse than the ones inside him.

Two words for you: ‘Whoo weee.’ That’s what you’re going to say when you close the back cover of “Laws of Solomon,” knowing that you’ve just been taken on a wild up-and-down, around-and-round ride.

La Salle makes it impossible not to like Solomon, an African man who has, over time, lost nearly everything dear to him and who has no faith in much of anything. Readers get that part of the story eventually, and there’s historical authenticity in some of it, but we never really get to know Solomon, which makes the book feel dark and dangerous. Along the way, we meet and get to know his helpers, which buoys Solomon’s chase to find safety for the boy, and your heart won’t stop pounding.

Keep in mind that this is a thriller partially set in 1970s Uganda, so expect lots of violence but don’t expect a lot of people to live. If you’re up for that, find “Laws of Solomon.” You won’t be able to leave it behind.