Many of the job losses in this economic crisis will not be coming back, ever. America in 2009 is very different than America at any other time. Technology has matured to such a point that many jobs that previously were done by people are being done by computers or fewer people. Just a handful of humans can run a web site that use to be dozens, if not hundreds, of retail stores employing many people at each store. The complexity of maintaining those stores required even more people. Yet, today this can all be replaced with a web site, distribution center, and delivery services (like UPS, Fed Ex, or the US Postal Service). Those jobs are never coming back.
So … maybe those retail jobs were not any good anyway. Likewise, for banking with ATMs and online banking replacing thousands of bank tellers and loan officers. Those jobs weren’t good either. Likewise for office workers who are being replace with email, databases, and web sites. There are many examples.
So … how about high tech jobs?
Today, with free software there are literally hundreds of thousands of people working for free developing software and giving it away for nothing. Software engineers haven’t even been around very long — 40 years is a stretch. But, today, much fewer numbers of software engineers are needed. Plus, it can be done from anywhere, like India where salaries are much lower. So, most of those job losses are not coming back either.
Music industry has been decimated. Likewise, for newspapers and magazines. Same will happen with TV and movies. Actors are cheap, really cheap these days.
Manufacturing has been sent overseas for decades. In fact, the U.S. has an uninterrupted downtrend in the number of people employed in manufacturing since the 1950s, not even accounting for the increases in population. Even family farms have been replaced with large corporate owners.
Jobs which require lots of education are available but students will come out of school with large debt. Nonetheless, this is the area people should pursue. However, there can still be problems. For example, stem cell research is an up and coming field, but because U.S. policies many of these jobs are being done in places like Singapore which is more enlightened as the U.S. lets the crazy religious people cause stem cell research to be off limits. Even if Obama reverses this, many of these jobs will never come back to America because they know that Republicans could just reverse it all in the future.
America Universities are great and are educating hundreds of thousands of foreign workers. However, there is a glut in the number of people who want to teach in Universities. Just how many places can a Ph.D in History work? Community colleges are cheap and are educating many Americans but they are so dumb down that the education at these colleges is dubious in many cases. Important programs, like Nursing, are so impacted that it takes years to get into those programs. State budget problems will likely make the problem even worse in the future.
People need to just think about jobs in their career area and identify how technology is eliminating jobs.
America is doomed.
