Say a 42 year old guy with a background in electronics engineering and instrumentation, specializing in industrial automation has an opportunity to start a new career. What do you think would be a good choice given the tough economic times, I’m assuming that law and medicine would be good choices but what else is there that pays well?, and perhaps not as time consuming as far as education are concerned, maybe around three to four years?
Controls, perhaps? Like for water wells, pump stations, traffic signals. Seems to me that companies specializing in controls will have steady work from government entities (cities, counties, water associations, etc.).
For example, a company which installs and monitors SCADA systems for city water networks will have work regardless of a recession.
I beleive that you can become a Funeral Director in 12-18 months. But I don’t even want to know why the average pay goes down after the first year. :eek:
This is probably better suited for IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
My wife just spent the weekend in Princeton NJ with my ex-cousin, who said that she feels reasonably secure in her job: she’s a pubhlic high school English teacher in an upper-middle-class area. Maybe not the greatest pay in the world, but tons of job security.
The federal government is generally pretty insulated from economic ups and downs - at least so long as you are not in a very small, politically volatile component. Whatever the downsides of federal employment might be, it is hard to object to the job security. The pay may not be the greatest, but those COLAs keep coming on schedule.
I would focus on jobs that are stressful, exacting, frustrating, and thankless in any way other than monetary reward. There will always be chairs to fill there.
What about a repo man?
That’s the difference between stealing gold fillings and getting caught stealing gold fillings. 
There is a major shortage of good nurses pretty much everywhere.
Soldier.
When I first started working in the pharmaceutical industry back in the '90s I figured I had a reasonably recession-proof job. Of course I didn’t account for the company’s internal dynamics (patent expirations, crappy pipeline, bloated staff, etc.) and my recession proof job was gone. I’m still in the industry, though, it’s just not as stable as it once was. There might be a drug manufacturing plant looking for people with your skills. They seem to be scattered around the country more than the HQs and research centers are.
I was just saying to my husband the other day that both our jobs are pretty safe. I’m a teacher, and he’s an accountant for a business that makes and delivers burial vaults. People are always going to be born, be educated, and die.
Looks like the ‘less than 1-year’ average is based on 7 responses, whereas the rest are based on 150+ responses, so it’s probably just a fluke. …probably.
My wife is an elementary school teacher, but unfortunately in California that doesn’t mean her job is as secure as one might think. The state’s budget is in shambles, and the state may actually go into default in a matter of days, which would mean (among many other things) that school districts would not get paid, which could have a trickle-down effect and end up with teachers being laid off.
Ed
You might have some luck applying for work with ETS, the Educational Testing Service. They own and distribute the standardized tests that are driving school curricula today from elementary grades through high school (note, I did not say “driving education”). They also own publishing companies that design texts that match the tests that the company is marketing. In other words, this is a self-energizing and recursive set of components within an industry. It’s not likely to crash any time soon, alas. I lament its presence, but acknowledge its power and ubiquitousness.
I work in the govt It sector in Massachusetts & was just at a presentation. The presenter started the session listing job losses by sector such as financial, manufacturing Etc & listed the jobs gained by sector & IT & Govt were the only 2.
I’m not so sure about funeral director…a guy I know works in the “business of death” (his company makes & installs vaults for caskets) and he was laid off this summer. I think his boss says more people are going with cremation because it’s cheaper.
I personally think any industry can be at risk. Look at the post about CA school teachers. If people in a community don’t have money, they don’t vote for levies. If levies don’t pass, there’s not enough funding for teachers. If there’s not enough funding for teachers, teachers don’t just take pay cuts - they lose their jobs and the remaining teachers just have to pull more weight.
Even if people keep doing what they’re doing - having kids, dying, using utilities, buying groceries - it doesn’t mean that it will keep all people in those industries employed. It just means that the people left in those industries will have to work harder, possibly for less pay.
This is true, both of my brothers in the service always start off every phone call with “Hey, so are you guys doing alright?” because they’re slightly mystified by the economy as of late, since the business of killing things and blowing shit up is currently enjoying a major resurgence.
IRS. It is just as much work to file taxes when you make 30 k or 80. Not doing taxes though, that is outsourced.