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High unemployment levels here to stay as some jobs are never coming back
May 14. 2010
The story below clearly
illustrates that a huge swath of jobs are never coming
back. Jobs in these sectors have been permanently
eradicated and thus it is going to make the task of
finding replacement jobs even harder, especially since
many of these individuals are in their late 40’s to early
60’s. They are basically going to have to learn new skills
and that is not an easy thing to do at such an age,
especially when you have dedicated your whole life to a
specific job.
Worse yet the remaining
jobs in the in the clerical field, secretarial, travel
agency field, auto market sector, etc are going to keep
coming under pressure. As we see it employment numbers
will remain high even when the economy starts to show real
signs of life; so far the so called signs of improvement
are all bogus.
For the last two years, the
weak economy has provided an opportunity for employers to
do what they would have done anyway: dismiss millions
of people — like file clerks, ticket agents and
autoworkers — who were displaced by technological advances
and international trade. The phasing out of these
positions might have been accomplished through less
painful means like attrition, buyouts or more incremental
layoffs. But because of the recession, winter came early.
The tough environment
has been especially disorienting for older and more
experienced workers like Cynthia Norton, 52, an unemployed
administrative assistant in Jacksonville.
“I know I’m good at
this,” says Ms. Norton. “So how the hell did I end up
here?”
Administrative work has
always been Ms. Norton’s “calling,” she says, ever since
she started work as an assistant for her aunt at 16, back
when the uniform was a light blue polyester suit and a
neckerchief. In the ensuing decades she has filed, typed
and answered phones for just about every breed of
business, from a law firm to a strip club. As a secretary
at the RAND Corporation, she once even had the honor of
escorting Henry Kissinger around the building.
But since she was laid
off from an insurance company two years ago, no one seems
to need her well-honed office know-how.
Ms. Norton is one of 1.7
million Americans who were employed in clerical and
administrative positions when the recession began, but
were no longer working in that occupation by the end of
last year. There have also been outsize job losses in
other occupation categories that seem unlikely to be
revived during the economic recovery. The number of
printing machine operators, for example, was nearly halved
from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of
2009. The number of people employed as travel agents fell
by 40 percent.
This “creative
destruction” in the job market can benefit the economy.
Ms. Norton has sent out
hundreds of résumés without luck. Twice, the openings she
interviewed for were eliminated by employers who decided,
upon further reflection, that redistributing
administrative tasks among existing employees made more
sense than replacing the outgoing secretary.
The problem cannot be
that the occupation she has devoted her life to has been
largely computerized, she says.
“You can’t replace the
human thought process,” she says. “I can anticipate
people’s needs. Usually, I give them what they want before
they even know they need it. There will never be a machine
that can do that.”Full
Story
The smart thing to do now
would be to start training ASAP for jobs in the nuclear
industry, oil and gas industry, health sectors, utility
sector (power transmission), etc for this is where the
growth lies. We are leaving out the high tech sectors such
as computer, biotech, chemical engineer, petroleum
engineer, etc because we feel that the average person is
not going to want to put in the time it takes to study
those filed.
The smartest thing to do is
to live 1-2 standards below your level and to put the
money you save into long term investments in the
commodities sectors for this entire sector is in a long
term bull market.
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