Dixie Sommers, assistant commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, recites a list of the 10 occupations that the BLS expects will provide the greatest number of new jobs over the next decade. These include:
1. Registered nurses
2. Home health aides
3. Customer service representatives
4. Food preparation and serving workers
5. Personal and home care aides
6. Retail salespersons
7. Office clerks
8. Accountants
9. Nursing aides, orderlies and attendants
10. Postsecondary teachers
Six of the top seven fastest-growing occupations are low-skill, low-wage jobs.
This raises an incredible array of questions.
How do we create new enterprises and entrepreneurs in these sectors so that they can professionalize these jobs for richer career and earnings potentials? How do we grow other sectors that create options for people with more experience, education, and expertise? Can we grow any economy on local or global scales through an imbalance of service over product jobs? Can the world economies be more creative than focusing on health care to baby boomers - inspired by a vision of the world we want when baby boomers are no longer the dominant driver of new jobs?
Comments (9)
Many companies tend to look for particular experience in their own industry....So, for example, a person could have all the requisite skills necessary for a solid foundation to perform a particular job, but they are excluded from consideration because they don't have experience performing that role in that particular industry. What the heck is up with that? Are managers so busy that they can't take a little time to orient the new worker to the corporate culture? What makes them that busy? Whatever happened to the concept of mentoring and on-the-job training?
I work in a department that has no end of regulations and nuances that apply to our business. I learned all of it on the job. There are a few golden opportunities to morph oneself into new industries. An employee needs to be quite wily to find them. It shouldn't be so hard.
At the same time, Americans need to really consider the idea of wage, property and possessions and consider the question, "How much is enough." I know people who are single, make over $50,000 annually and still have problems making ends meet.
Society is out of balance. The American Dream has lost the plot. Full of brilliant colors and sparkly objects, the dream has become a well-disguised nightmare.
Americans do need to get out of the "more for me, shop at WalMart" mentality": (I get more, nobody gets what they need).
We are creating more health care jobs because Doctors tell patients they need to be seen 10 times more than 40 years ago. We also don't take care of ourselves.
Home health care: of course. Boomers will live longer.
Customer Service: There are few people who understand what that means. Retail: For college degrees in Art History. (ooops that would put an end to HR jobs).
INDUSTRIAL JOBS WILL BE BOOMING IN THE NEXT SEVERAL YEARS. The need for skilled labor is already feeling the pinch.
One example of a system that is in peril: the US electric grid. It is estimated that 3/4 of the existing linemen will retire in the next 5 years. There are very few people going in to this very dangerous but needed work. What will happen when our aging grid (and all of the lives and services that depend on it) crashes? How will we build that Smart Grid initiative that has been so widely funded? Our grid may or may not provide power with the quality that allows the smart grid equipment to actually function properly.
This lack of skilled labor for construction and industrial jobs will be what forces us into bringing our economy back into a realistic balance -- which is going to be very much unlike the "growing" economy we expect. It will be one more of thrivancy and community than growth.
I've never been a member of a union, though my grandfather was a union organizer for the coal miners...In fact in most jobs I've been in, I've been fed the Kool Aid that unions are a bad thing. Being the independent type, I've tended to agree. But the little guy is losing his voice, it seems. If not a union then there must be something else.
While working for the state, I've been in both union (positions were created within the bargaining unit to protect the energy analysts/technicians from political whims) and exempt/classified. Within government, union serves an important purpose in buffering staff from politics (admittedly it's highly imperfect). I can tell you that three years ago, when OSFC became so large that it attracted union attention and AFSCME/OSCEA got our admin staff moved to union, people were offended and did not want to be union. I can tell you the folks at OEPA and Development who are protected by their positions being union (thus findings and research are less likely subverted) are happy to be union.
At the same time, I cannot comment on what is going on in our agency because of union pressure on the Governor and the results that might collapse the work we do from the inside. It is very sad. I can tell you I've seen the good and the bad sides of the coin, but mostly these days...I can't support the traditional union. And, I'm a card-carrying liberal.
I wish the pundits would stop flapping their lips at the easy topics to talk about and spend more time talking honestly about the challenges we face and the myriad of [unclear] solutions. Stop the rhetoric; start the dialogue.
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