We’ve all heard the claims of the hollowing out first world economies. That inexpensive workers in Mexico, China, India and, I would assume, progressively further a field nations are taking over manufacturing and technology jobs.
Given that at least some off shore movement of jobs is happening what are the jobs categories of the future? Financial perhaps? What about biotech, or law or medicine?
In the United States, expect to see job growth in fields that cannot be outsourced or automated – e.g., jobs that require constant, face-to-face contact with customers and peers. Since white-collar and high-tech jobs are now also starting to get shipped overseas, the jobs that do remain in the US will also be lower-income, entry-level jobs, probably with a minimal amount of training before you get thrown on the front lines.
Or, in other words, “Do you want fries with that?”
(At least until McDonalds gets their fully-automated McRestaurants up-and-running; then you’ll see job growth in the car-washing, garbage-hauling, and floor-mopping areas.)
Assuming no real plans for job growth get put in place by the people in charge in the upcoming years (and I fully believe whoever it is won’t cause an iota of meaningful growth), I’d imagine that only stuff that requires a phyisical presence here would have growth. Especially health care.
Jobs that can be outsourced will be outsourced, no way around that unless you really lower the wages that high tech jobs are asking here.
You want a high-paying American job for the next decade? Third-World Headhunter. You can be the guy who puts the Fortune 500 corporation together with the Indian tech worker who’ll sign on for peanuts!
Of course, enterprising Indians will have your job after 2010…
Plumbers still pull down a respectable dime, and unless you live in a border town, that’s a gig that’s really hard to outsource.
Health care and other service jobs. This field presents a problem, since without a manufacturing sector there won’t be capital in the economy to maintain living standards in secondary industries.
Certain heavy manufacturing jobs. Not engineering, but physical labor making things that cost too much to ship. If the rail and hghway infrastructure form Central America gets built up, cross these off too.
I would say translator services, but I personally doubt management is going to stick around to be translated for. They’ve already figured out how much money they can save by moving the jobs overseas, it’s only a matter of time before they figure out they can move everything overseas and collect their check from Rio, or Paris, or wherever meets their standard and cost of living considerations.
This place seems to have a prosperous future:
So it’s a race to ever more specialized careers in industries that require less and less hardware to produce them.
So bio tech, law, medicine, politics…
What about education? If the rest of the world wants to take over the tech skill jobs then they need instructors right? I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with 100 frosh from just yet though. 
forget financial jobs. The industry has had a massive consolidation. Since I left the biz in 1998, only about one third of the investment banks are still in business
Forget about retail. When automated self checkout becomes commonplace, Walmart, Kmart, grocery stroes, etc will be laying off millions. It will be harder in the future to find a cashier than it is to get a gas station attendent to wipe your windshield and check the air in your tires.
Any job that “can” be outsourced to an asian worker, “will” be outsourced.
Nearly all white collar jobs will disappear from America - computer jobs, engineering jobs, insurance processing, bank processing, claims processing, accounting, government jobs, etc.
Same thing for all manufacturing jobs. Why would any business/factory owner hire an american citizen when an asian can be hired much cheaper? There is no OSHA, no epa, no medical beneifts, no child labor laws, no social security withholding, etc. in china.
As far as medicine and education, the hospitals and colleges in my area are hiring a lot of foreigners to be doctors, nurses, and college instructors.
As far as law, India is planning on taking over all the mundane legal work/research that traditionally used to be given to new law school graduates.
Biotech is interesting(although very hard to get into), but
dont most biotech companies go bust?
If you get a job in biotech, the odds are that your company will never make any money, never bring a product to market, or if they do will be bought out by a major drug company, and you will be laid off and out of a job within 3-8 years.
You will be so “specialized” from your previous employment with a biotech, that any new company upstart will prefer to hire a bright new college grad than you.
Which is why, I suppose, we need to race to other occupations that can take advantage of the educational infrastructure around us. Having survived (so far) the telecom meltdown I’m looking around, but it looks like it will require me getting a second degree.
The only “real growth” that I see in America, is in housing.
We let in about 50,000 more immigrants(legal and illegal and pregant) into this country each week.
They all gotta live somewhere.
Our population may hit 400 million by 2050 and a billion by the end of the century due to immigration and the comparitively higher birth rate of recent immigrant women. New homes, and more apartments, will be required to house our overpopulation.
Get a job making houses and apartments, and you will have something to do.
Gods, you people are bleak. I suppose we should all just collectively shoot ourselves now and spare ourselves the pain. Damn that Bush…its all HIS fault anyway…blah blah blah. 
You do realize that you are talking about jobs ‘leaving’ America (as far as the tech industry goes) that pretty much didn’t exist 20 years ago, right? In the early 80’s (certainly in the 70’s) technology and infrastructure jobs were either done by a VERY small elite or didn’t exist at all (no web page designers or web hosting companies for instance). Mostly jobs were in the manufacturing sectors, and folks at THAT time were decrying the loss of THOSE jobs overseas…and making similar dire predictions.
So, what jobs will there be 20 years from now? Well, the unimaginative (or totally pessimistic) will say the food services or garbage engineering…if we are LUCKY!! Myself, I think biotech has a good shot, or even informations systems technology, phase II. We are right on the verge of an information systems explosion IMO, which will require (initially…say 3-5 years) huge amounts of manpower.
Or, and I know you guys in this thread will LOVE this…we’ll have jobs in a field that either doesn’t currently exist at all or is so elite and marginal right now that no one even thinks of it. Who knows…maybe cybernetics will be the next big thing, or maybe even manufacturing will come back…nano manufacturing. Maybe there will be a breakthrough in a combination of biotech and information technology and implants will be big. Maybe it will be specialized construction…of a space elevator or fusion plants. Maybe it will be in hydrogen fuel cells, manufacturing and distribution, etc. The point is, that there are a hell of a lot of fields on the cusp right now…any one of which could be big. And US companies (and European and Japanese…but NOT Chinese and Indian, etc) are right there. THATS where the breakthroughs and initial exploitation of those breakthroughs will take place. Think of this decade as the '70’s, where things are percolating but not ready for prime time yet.
The point is, that as long as the US continues to innovate (which we are) we have the POTENTIAL to stay one jump ahead. All those countries you people mentioned are gearing up and focusing on the market TODAY (or even yesterday with manufacturing). They will require quite some time and money to invest in whatever is the growth industry TOMORROW.
Sure, its disruptive…and a LOT of folks will be hurt by the constant switching of jobs. People who are flexable and can adapt will do fine. Those that can’t…won’t. Personally I don’t see what America can DO about it. Its the way the world is now. Unless we are willing to impose OUR standards on all those other countries (and how would we do that? Embargo? Sanctions? Force of arms??) its going to continue to be the way things are. As jobs become both established and lucrative, of COURSE they are going to migrate to those countries smart enough to focus on them, and willing to work for less, have less benifits, etc. Simple economics people. If the US tries to protect those jobs here(without requiring our workers get paid less, have less benifits, etc), in the end we will become less competative. Why? Because we will be setting an artificial price on our own products and services, and some smart company in another country will use that foriegn labor to undercut our companies and take market share. Either that, or more likely, US flag companies will simply leave the US so they CAN compete.
Oh well…now back to the gloom and doom. Enjoy.
-XT
Well it was a fair bit of gloom and down in telecom. Though basically of our own making.
Still it seems the rate of dislocated jobs has increased. The increased ease companies have with virtual teams spread across continents and the increased pool of available low cost intellectual capital and labour can’t do anything but put a downward pressure on current and future job prospects. Though the current wages in China, India etc. are going to be capped by progressively cheaper wages in Africa and Asia.
The question is what will the jobs be that will provide decent pay in the coming decade. You won’t simply be able to be a “worker” in a biotech company; you’ll need to be a designer. You can’t simply be a reactive support worker; you’ll need to actively manage your customer’s networks, billing etc. looking for problems, hidden issues etc.
I’m curious as to what people feel are those kinds of high value-added jobs going to be.
xt: *You do realize that you are talking about jobs ‘leaving’ America (as far as the tech industry goes) that pretty much didn’t exist 20 years ago, right? *
But a lot of the jobs that have been lost over the last decade or so aren’t new tech jobs, they’re in the conventional manufacturing sector. (And a lot of them haven’t so much “left America” as been simply wiped out in productivity increases.) This isn’t just a matter of “easy come, easy go” net job loss following net job creation in a new field.
So, what jobs will there be 20 years from now? […] we’ll have jobs in a field that either doesn’t currently exist at all or is so elite and marginal right now that no one even thinks of it. Who knows…maybe cybernetics will be the next big thing, or maybe even manufacturing will come back…nano manufacturing. Maybe […]
As Grey points out, though, the question is, which field(s) (if any) will be providing lots of jobs to low- and medium-skilled US workers? Sure, Americans will probably be CEO’s and chief scientists of many new nanotech or fuel-cell technology companies, but what’s going to put food in the mouth of the average worker?
*Sure, its disruptive…and a LOT of folks will be hurt by the constant switching of jobs. People who are flexable and can adapt will do fine. Those that can’t…won’t. Personally I don’t see what America can DO about it. Its the way the world is now. *
But the economy and the labor market aren’t just the inevitable outcome of some random “way the world is”. They’re largely the result of our collective choices, and we can influence them by our policies.
I agree that mere mindless head-in-the-sand protectionism is probably not in our best long-term interests, but I don’t think that leaves us with absolutely no other choice than to shrug our shoulders and accept that good stable jobs for the average worker are gone for good, because “that’s the way the world is now”.
One imaginative proposal I’ve seen for improving the quality of American jobs without just retreating into isolationism and protectionism comes from the “Apollo Alliance”, the folks touting a new Apollo Project to achieve energy independence, with large investments in renewable energy, energy conservation, and sustainable development. They point out that building windmills, putting up “green” buildings, making urban infrastructure more efficient, etc., are good sources of domestic jobs that will result in improved living conditions for everyone, besides easing strain on the environment.
From Kimstu
Of course a lot of the jobs lost from the last decade (well, more than a decade) are in the manufacturing sector. Simply put, America can’t compete in that sector effectively anymore. Why? Because our labor costs too much compared to other countries. How do you propose to remedy this fact? You could A) Continue a manufacturing sector, but lower wages/benifits so our companies could be competetive, B) Require OTHER nations to have the same pay scales/benifits as the US does (level the playing field so to speak…but HOW you would do this is a mystery to me), or C) Forget about the manufacturing sector and move on. Easy come, easy go as you put it.
Thats what we did in fact…and moved into the information/tech sector creating new jobs there. Now other nations are seriously ramping up to compete with us there, again because they can provide comprobable service at a lower price than the US…so the US has to move (eventually) into a new area if they want to stay competetive, one where our higher priced services (or laborers) can opperate at a profit while other nations play catch up again.
Why ISN’T it a case of “easy come, easy go” net job loss following net job creation in a new field, Kimstu? Why do you folks always seem to think in terms of static situations? In our fathers fathers day, a WHITE MAN (no real womens work force, not many minorities either) could work the same job in the same company from early manhood through retirement…because the western world had a monopoly on those kinds of jobs and a strangle hold on the rest of the world. This used to be the case in Japan as well. They, like us, have learned that innovation is the only path to survival if you want to stay on top.
In many cases, those same countries competing with us NOW were colonial possessions forced to manufacture a narrow product line by the colonial power over them…with all the profits and benifits going to their colonial masters of course. THATS why we had a monopoly. Well, guess what? We don’t have that anymore, and these emerging countries are using our own ‘weaknesses’ against us. US (and European and Japanese) workers make a lot? No problem, we don’t ASK for as much, don’t need as many benifits (well, can live without them for a job). US and Japanese products COST a lot? NO problem, we’ll make them cheaper by cutting costs and using their own manufacturing techniques.
So, if we want to STAY competetive in the jobs market we need to find new job areas for our workers, giving up those that we can no longer compete in. The tech industry is far from a lost cause, but now we have to compete there. Unless there are a series of new innovations (which I think there WILL be), eventually we will have to give this up as well, as we won’t be competetive with countries willing to sell their labor for a LOT less than the US.
Let me ask you gloom and doomers something, though. If the US is so bad off NOW (lets not even talk for a second about what the future jobs market might be…lets look at now), if things are so horrible, why is our unemployment so low compared to…well, everywhere else essentially? We’ve just been through some very rough times as a country, and our unemployment is, what? 6%? Say 8% if you take into account those that have just given up (just a WAG here)? Where ELSE in the industrialized world is unemployment so low? Oh, I’m sure there are countries out there where it is, but there can’t be too many. And this is even WITH the fact that our workers are some of the highest paid in the world.
-XT
xt: *If the US is so bad off NOW (lets not even talk for a second about what the future jobs market might be…lets look at now), if things are so horrible, why is our unemployment so low compared to…well, everywhere else essentially? We’ve just been through some very rough times as a country, and our unemployment is, what? 6%? Say 8% if you take into account those that have just given up (just a WAG here)? *
Actually, according to this “Online Focus” report, even 8% is on the low side for the effective rate of unemployment (among men, at least). The official figure of 6% or so doesn’t take into account the following factors:
(It took me a minute to figure out what was meant by the “older workforce” factor, but I think that what it means is that we now have a higher percentage of workers above the statutory retirement age, which artificially depresses the unemployment rate for workers overall?)
And don’t forget, we can’t measure workplace prosperity solely by whether workers are able to snag any job at all. What we’re talking about here is whether workers are able, and will be able in the future, to get good jobs: ones that are reasonably stable and pay them enough to live on comfortably. Many other industrialized countries may have higher unemployment rates than our nominal figure of 6+% (although I think our “hidden factors” of discouragement and incarceration may even out a lot of the discrepancy), but they also have highly subsidized universal healthcare and higher education, childcare, paid parental leave, shorter workweeks, and four to six weeks of vacation per year.
*Where ELSE in the industrialized world is unemployment so low? *
Well, in 1996, even our nominal unemployment rate (which ignores the hidden factors mentioned above) was higher than that of Switzerland, Norway (4.9 percent), Luxembourg, Iceland, and Austria, and only one percentage point lower than that in Denmark and the Netherlands. I think the popular notion that the other developed nations are economically crippled by their labor regulation while the US is uniquely dynamic and successful is a bit outdated.
xt: *So, if we want to STAY competetive in the jobs market we need to find new job areas for our workers, giving up those that we can no longer compete in. *
I don’t think anybody’s denying that businesses will always be moving into different specializations and new fields. What we’re asking here, though, is: what new fields, if any, will accomodate large numbers of displaced workers from the old obsolete fields? Yes, we created a number of new jobs in high-tech, but they weren’t being filled by the former auto-manufacturing workers in the Rust Belt. As long as we end up displacing more workers from old fields than we shift into new ones, and/or shift them into worse jobs, then we haven’t succeeded in achieving an “easy come, easy go” economic transition.