An article on five dying industries in the US, manufacturing number one.

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An incredibly spun article on the current trends in US employment. It goes over the five industries that are most in decline and gives alternatives to some of them. Here is the spin I see in each one based on what i have observed in my own employment and those around me.

1. Manufacturing - They claim new jobs will come from the auto industry, but without sustained growth in sales is not a given.

2. Sales - The article claims that making $7-$12/hr is "good news" for people looking for jobs. Apparently the author has never tried to make it on minimum wage.

3. Office support - The article claims that those that are no longer employed in a traditional "gopher" job can move over to the medical field. This is true as everyone is saying the medical field will grow due to government subsidies, however theres already a ton of people going to school forthings like medical secretary, they can't hire them all.

4. Computer Technology - This is one that is near to me since I used to own my own repair business. The article claims all you need is an associates degree to jump from a data processor to a software engineer, this is not the case. Working in a declining IT field where alot of jobs are being outsourced will take more skills than that.

5. Management - With more business closing shop and downsizing, middle management is usually the first to go.

How does your experience in these fields relate to my observations as well as those in the article?

Wow that is a pretty uninformed article where IT is concerned, an Associates might get you a job at a break-fix shop, but it wont get you within a country mile of a software developer position or anything else where you can make serious money; experience alone is worth at least 2x what a piece of paper is.

As far as management goes, this is right on the money. In the Hospitality ie. Food & Beverage Industry, there are fewer and fewer assistant and shift management positions available. Most companies both small and large are shifting away from middle management and hiring less people to do more work for the same money.

reply to post by wiandiii


In the technology space, the job sector has been declining for years, with the only growth components in the hard technologies being very specialized and in areas you would not wish to outsource such as information security.

Basic engineering has become completely commoditized, with technology increasingly becoming plug and play and the engineering being done off-shore. While there has been some movement in some of the softer IT roles out of the off-shore model, mostly due to language and cultural issues, the hard technology makes no sense to do in house from an economic perspective.

Those IT jobs that are in good shape are people and business related. Project management, business analysis, business intelligence, contract and vendor management - those jobs that, while in the technology arena have much more to do with solving business problems and human interaction than engineering.

This trend in the decline of hard technical roles will further decline as cloud computing becomes a more mainstream technology and the security and risks associated with are mitigated and that mitigation strategy made commonly known to purchasers of technical solutions.

Why do people think that returning manufacturing to the US will do wonders?

1) No idiotic business owner will do that unless American labor costs become lower than Bangladesh's.

2) Even if it does return, it will benefit few workers because of automation.

3) What is wrong with having a service economy, really? At least you still can't automize those.

4) It was the financial industry that caused the collapse, not the lack of manufacturing.

reply to post by wiandiii


Healthcare is a bubble.. it's the one "advice" I've heard countless times since the depression began. Go into healthcare.

Eventually the bubble will burst.. because healthcare does not create wealth, it's a consumption of wealth. If our largest industry becomes an industry that relies on government expenses, state expenses and insurance premiums then eventually the economy will collapse. It's absolutely stupid for our government to continuously try and push health care the way they are. People need coverage.. but the inflation of premiums and care cost will expand the industry till it implodes.