Your Well-Paid, Middle-Class Job Is in Danger

by Ruth Mantell

Some highly-paid workers may find they need to switch careers.

The job market is changing, and it's not just manufacturing jobs that are disappearing. Even some highly-paid workers may find themselves needing to re-tool their skills in the years ahead.

The ongoing movement of jobs to countries where labor is cheaper, plus the development of new technologies, may mean fewer opportunities for some well-paid positions in the U.S. over the next decade, said Larry Katz, an economist at Harvard University.

"Employment growth has stopped, or even declined, among many middle-class jobs that are high wage" and don't require a college degree, Katz said.

"A lot of traditional middle-class, upper-middle-class jobs have been disappearing. If you look at general managers and middle-management jobs, those are ones that have been in decline and will decline further," he said.

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Workers making about $40,000 to $80,000 a year constitute the bulk of labor costs for many companies, and these workers may be on the chopping block, said Jeffrey Joerres, chief executive of ManpowerGroup, a Milwaukee-based staffing services firm.

"That's your middle class," Joerres said. "Companies are finding ways to reduce the number of people in those areas, and change the jobs to make them more simple, to reduce the skill that is required."

Changes in the Health-Care Field

Kevin Hallock, director of the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University, cited radiologists as an example of a well-paid worker that could be hit by technology and cheap global labor.

"I suspect that we will see fewer radiologists in the U.S. than we have in the past since I understand there is little reason for a radiologist to be in the same place as a patient," Hallock said. "A radiologist can read a Terre Haute X-ray as easily in India as she can in Indiana."

However, fewer opportunities do not necessarily translate into the disappearance of an entire field.

"A lot of medical diagnostic work will be done overseas. You can have the initial diagnostic done elsewhere, and have a domestic supervising physician," said David Autor, an economist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Medical costs are a huge issue, and there's enormous incentive to find ways to reduce these costs. The internationalization of medical services will be one of the important ways that costs will potentially be slowed," he said.

Software can also cut down on workers needed to sort through paperwork, such as legal documents, Autor said.

"You digitize all of those documents, and a piece of software reads them and catalogs them," Autor said. "There is a lot of legal work that is essentially increasingly subject to automation, and that will affect the opportunity set for lawyers."

Computer programming is also becoming a commodity, Katz said.

"What used to be good programming jobs, or routine legal work, these are things that are easily broken into parts, and done in other places," Katz said.

Good News, for Some

However, not all is doom and gloom. Among the 20 fastest growing occupations from the U.S. Labor Department's employment projections for 2008 to 2018, 11 earn at least $10,000 more than the national annual median wage of $32,390 in May of 2008.

Examples of these workers are biomedical engineers, network systems and data communications analysts, and financial examiners.

Meanwhile, more than half of the 20 occupations with the fastest projected decline -- think sewing machine operators, photographic processing machine operators and file clerks -- were below the national median wage. Read the Labor Department's report.

Here are the 10 fastest growing occupations from 2008 to 2018, and their median wages, according to the Labor Department:

• Biomedical engineers, median wages of $77,400

• Network systems and data communications analysts, $71,100

• Home health aides, $20,460

• Personal and home care aides, $19,180

• Financial examiners, $70,930

• Medical scientists, except epidemiologists, $72,590

• Physician assistants, $81,230

• Skin care specialists, $28,730

• Biochemists and biophysicists, $82,840

• Athletic trainers, $39,640

Here are the 10 fastest declining occupations:

• Textile bleaching and dyeing machine operators and tenders, $23,680

• Textile winding, twisting, and drawing out machine setters, operators, and tenders, $23,970

• Textile knitting and weaving machine setters, operators, and tenders, $25,400

• Shoe machine operators and tenders, $25,090

• Extruding and forming machine setters, operators, and tenders, synthetic and glass fibers, $31,160

• Sewing machine operators, $19,870

• Semiconductor processors, $32,230

• Textile cutting machine setters, operators, and tenders, $22,620

• Postal Service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators, $50,020

• Fabric menders, except garment, $28,470

Adaptation Is Key

Workers with diminishing prospects will need to evolve, experts said.

"Lots of people can transform themselves," Katz said. "People with a good set of flexible skills will be able to adapt. Creativity and flexibility will continue to be greatly valued. People with a certain specific set of vocational skills are going to have a tougher time without some new training."

While technology may replace some workers, it also creates opportunities to use new skills.

"Some types of engineers won't be doing the type of engineering they are doing now if someone comes up with a technology that makes what they do obsolete," Hallock said. "But they are likely to do something related."

To succeed, a worker should "be an active learner," Manpower's Joerres said.

"Taking on responsibility for invention and innovation gives you a better chance of remaining in a position than the person to your right or to your left," Joerres said.

Comment:

Well paid middle class jobs? In other words, the White Working Class. Of course, we National Socialists have known this for some time. At last, more people are starting to become aware as well. The question is, will enough people try to do anything? I fear the answer to that is no. Most of the Sheeple will sit back and hope the government will do something to "fix things".

My response to that is, hasn't the government done enough already? It's their treacherous actions and inactions that have gotten us into this fix in the first place. It's the government who bankrupted themselves by criminal overspending and waste, such as fighting useless war after useless war. They overpay themselves, and give themselves expense accounts which they abuse every chance they get. It's the government who caters to Judeo-Capitalist special interest groups whose sole purpose is to get money and power for themselves at the expense of the people. It's the government who puts the interests of non-Whites first, straight down the line in all things. It's the government who allows big business to ship our jobs overseas and does nothing to stop them. For example, when Obama was campaigning, he made a lot of noise about imposing harsh taxes on corporations who outsource. I don't know about you, but I haven't heard about any of these proposed taxes yet.

Of course, it's not just the government who's at fault. The cause of our problems is the government and OURSELVES. Yes comrades, ourselves. We allowed this deplorable situation to get this far. WE did nothing to stop it. WE blindly "trusted" the government to look after us. WE kept flip-flopping from Democrat to Republican, then back to Democrat, and again back to Republican etcetera ad nauseum.

When will the Sheeple learn that the Democrats and the Republicans are just two sides of the SAME coin? What we need is a new coin. That coin is called National Socialism. Through National Socialism we can create a stable economy, provide jobs for our citizens, remove illegal aliens from our country, and get the crime problem under better control. Hey, let's face it. No matter what kind of government we have, there will always be some crime. But at least we can get things under better control than the present administration has.

We are making some progress comrades. We are bringing in new Supporters every week. We are holding several, and I mean several events every year. Our next one is of course next month in Laurens, SC, and after that, if we do like last year, there will be one in October, and another still in November here in California (same location as last April), not to mention our Christmas party in Laurens in December.

Hint to our Pacific Northwest Comrades: If you wanted to have a regional conference of your own, I would be willing to come up as far as Oregon. I've never been to Oregon before. I'd like to see it.

Add to that our outreach efforts, and political activities like running candidates for office. In my case, I'm thinking of something less controversial than school board. Something that does not directly involve children. This is something we'll be discussing in Laurens next month.

I sincerely urge everyone to attend. We have some very important things to cover. We won't be sitting around having a bar-b-que and telling Nigger jokes. We'll leave that to the NSM. We have a lot of work to do, and rest assured, we will do it. Hail Victory!

Dan 88!