Future Hiring Will Mainly Benefit Highly-Skilled (599 hits)
Job seekers, including Lindsey Wright of Detroit (center), attend a job fair in Southfield, Michigan Friday. (AP)
Whenever companies start hiring freely again, job-seekers with specialized skills and education will have plenty of good opportunities. Others will face a choice: Take a job with low pay — or none at all.
Job creation will likely remain weak for months or even years. But once employers do step up hiring, some economists expect job openings to fall mainly into two categories of roughly equal numbers:
— Professional fields with higher pay. Think lawyers, research scientists and software engineers.
— Lower-skill and lower-paying jobs, like home health care aides and store clerks. And those in between? Their outlook is bleaker. Economists foresee fewer moderately paid factory supervisors, postal workers and office administrators.
That's the sobering message American workers face as they celebrate Labor Day at a time of high unemployment, scant hiring and a widespread loss of job security. Not until 2014 or later is the nation expected to have regained all, or nearly all, the 8.4 million jobs lost to the recession. Millions of lost jobs in real estate, for example, aren't likely to be restored this decade, if ever.
On Friday, the government said the August unemployment rate ticked up to 9.6 percent. Not enough jobs were created to absorb the growing number of people seeking work. The unemployment rate has exceeded 9 percent for 16 months, the longest such stretch in nearly 30 years.
The crisis poses a threat to President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress, whose hold on the House and Senate appears to be at increasing risk because of voter discontent.
Even when the job market picks up, many people will be left behind. The threat stems, in part, from the economy's continuing shift from one driven by manufacturing to one fueled by service industries.
Pay for future service-sector jobs will tend to vary from very high to very low. At the same time, the number of middle-income service-sector jobs will shrink, according to government projections. Any job that can be automated or outsourced overseas is likely to continue to decline...
This is a time in our nation's history where people seriously should consider becoming entrepreneurs using talents, skills and abilities they already possess. You know those delicious sweet potato pies you whip up for family and friends? What about those goregous scarfs that you sew or throws that you crochet? Do you always seem to know where the best college scholarships can be found? What about all of those helpful things you've invented that are gathering dust in the garage? All of these examples are a business in the making! Relax so that your creative juices can flow, write down your ideas, develop a strategy and then execute your plan - a little bit everyday if necessary.
Sunday, September 12th 2010 at 2:51AM
Carmin Wharton
@ Brother Clark With the way things are looking you are right businsses will continue look for ways to cut costs and outsource jobs has been a trend for somettime and at the looks of it... it will continue.
@ Sister Wharton Being your own boss is definitely looking good to me right now, but I don't have a real drive for being an entepreneur (spelled). I'm just thinking at what I can do next in the field I'm currently in. I'm working towards my Master's degree, but hopefully things will begin to fall in place for me.
Sunday, September 12th 2010 at 1:10PM
Jen Fad
