Are you in a job that will become obsolete in the next 20 years?

[SamTheHobit]

http://www.economist.com/news/leade...rows-jobs-will-be-immenseand-no-country-ready

 

[Desdinova]

I was 5 years ago when I was repairing electronic devices. Lots of the chips we were ordering had phased out their standard packaging and went surface mount only. Entire circuits were being put onto a tiny circuit board with fewer components (all surface mount). Not only that, everything was dirt cheap. Instead of spending time replacing individual components, I was throwing away an entire circuit board and replacing it with a new one. I was watching my job vanish before my eyes.

I ended up going into a more physical job, doing repairs in the health care field. I get more money now, and the demand for work is increasing due to the aging baby boomers. By the time the baby boomers begin to taper off and less jobs are needed, I'll be retiring.

 

[dasein]

It's something everyone should consider, but the article linked is just more not so cleverly concealed leftist agitprop swill from an utterly biased source. I am skeptical of any socioeconomic argument based on outcome statistics. They are just too easy to massage.

Income/wealth disparities will inevitably follow times of heated innovation. GOOD! Innovation is the stuff that keeps us alive to whine about "the 1%" a few years longer. It's like complaining that the guy who sold us a widget... after we went to the widget store to buy the widget... cause we wanted the widget... cause the widget is pretty damn cool... got to keep our money... we want our damn money back (and to keep the widget too!)

Curiously, though, those statistics -never- factor the increased wealth or income equivalent of say "smaller, more powerful smartphones with bluetooth" or "$600 50" televisions" or "new, cheap solar panels and batteries" or "Email" or "Ebay" or... for everyone, as if the innovators bilk everyone then run off and bury all the money in mason jars never to be seen again (we actually do have a paradigm for that kind of behavior, it's something called "government.") We can be happy that the innovators got rich, which means we all still can if we invent the next silly fruit game app. Hell, we might get rich selling the fruit game people whatever it is we sell. Or we can choose to wallow in faux victimology and dig in our heels with "well if everyone doesn't get rich then no one should."

It's been old news for 150 years that selling low skill labor into a raw labor market is barely a way to subsist, let alone thrive. For those who choose to do that, the consequences and uncertainty are just as dim as they were a century ago. We don't need The Economist to tell us that, but apparently The Economist feels the need to create yet another iteration of the bogus "wealth disparity" argument hoping maybe this version will rope in a few more new weak-minded converts.

 

[Bible_Belt]

There's roughly 100 million jobs left in the US. 1 million of those are at Wal-Mart. After self-driving cars get established and twenty more years of innovation, automation, and outsourcing, I could see that number dropping to 80 million. That will leave one job for about every four people, who won't care enough to fight over it, because the job is probably at Wal-Mart.

 

[Colossus]

I doubt medical providers will become obsolete in my lifetime. Reimbursement and compensation could change dramatically though....but not tomorrow. Our current model is not sustainable. Between the cost of medical education, the ready-to-burst student debt bubble, decreasing insurance reimbursement and the explosive demand for primary healthcare...I'm honestly not sure what will happen. We will be churning out providers (MDs, PAs, NPs, and maybe even something new) at record rates each year, that's for sure, and to incentivize it the compensation will need to be in the upper-middle class realm, or the debt factor mitigated.