Your Well-Paid, Middle-Class Job Is in Danger

[Newsjock]

Source: MarketWatch

The job market is changing, and it's not just manufacturing jobs that are disappearing. Even some highly-paid workers may find themselves needing to re-tool their skills in the years ahead.

The ongoing movement of jobs to countries where labor is cheaper, plus the development of new technologies, may mean fewer opportunities for some well-paid positions in the U.S. over the next decade, said Larry Katz, an economist at Harvard University.

... Workers making about $40,000 to $80,000 a year constitute the bulk of labor costs for many companies, and these workers may be on the chopping block, said Jeffrey Joerres, chief executive of ManpowerGroup, a Milwaukee-based staffing services firm.

"That's your middle class," Joerres said. "Companies are finding ways to reduce the number of people in those areas, and change the jobs to make them more simple, to reduce the skill that is required."

Read more: http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/112950/middle-class-jobs-danger-marketwatch

[robinlynne]

1. My well paying middle class job left a few years ago. exactly as the article suggests.

It became a low paying job.

[Dawson Leery]

2. See this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1324942

[RKP5637]

3. R&D can kiss their jobs bye eventually, labor is cheaper in other countries, I watched

this starting in hi-tech some years ago. Retraining means learning the cash register, stocking shelves and fast food. Those are all these jobs promised for America. BS Nation.

[Bigmack]

4. I feel like Marie Antoinette...

"Apres moi... le shitte hittez la fanne"..

The job that gave me a middle-class life, a certain amount of job security, a decent retirement, and not a small amount of pride in my work.... teaching... has turned to shit since I retired in 1998.

They were only too glad to get rid of us old farts... we were expensive - they could hire two youngsters for the price of one old fart. We knew where the bodies were buried, too..... we knew which administrators had literally fucked each other, or figuratively fucked the troops. We had heard all the "new & improved" teaching methods that had been tried years before and were gimmicky failures.

Were were used to bargaining, and had struck several times. We had community backing, too. Our parents and kids were getting a good product.

We worked hard and earned every penny.

Now...? ... the young teachers tell me there is no curriculum... or if there is, it's a fucking script that the (new guy) teacher is expected to teach verbatum. Teachers with no or little background in the subject they have to teach are expected to work miracles. The kids know it's all bullshit and give the young teachers hell. The young teachers are afraid to speak up, let alone strike. They've been told that they are OUT if they don't produce kids who succeed.. no matter who the kids are or what kind of support the teachers get. The turnover... even in this job market... is huge. Retirement...?... they got rid of the defined-benefit pension that I have and now have something we call the "Teach 'Til You Die" program.

Add to all that shit the idea that the teacher is the enemy.. the cause of our school failures, and are the much-hated "public sector" workers, and you have a perfect shit-storm landing on teachers.

I came from a working-class family, and teaching moved me to a (nearly) white collar, middle class life. Teaching isn't that any more.

This country's priorities are totally bass-ackwards.

[RKP5637]

5. The future America will need no teaches because all intelligent life is vaporizing. n/t

[LiberalEsto]

8. This is why my daughter gave up on becoming a teacher

My younger daughter, now 24, wanted to become a middle school math teacher. She's good at math and great with kids, having taught swimming to kids of all agers for years. She was planning to graduate from community college and transfer to a state university as an education major.

But there is no way that we can afford to take on $30,000 or more in student loan debt, when her chances of finding a decent job in education will be slim. Her boyfriend works for our very large and excellent county public school system, and his aunt is fairly high up in the school system's administration. They saw the layoffs and the cutbacks coming a year ago, and warned her. She decided that she couldn't afford the risk of being burdened with unpayable loans, and switched her major to general studies at the community college. She is very depressed, can't find a part time job, and worries that there isn't much hope of a future for her. Young people are really struggling with these issues.

I've been unemployed nearly three years myself, and unable to find freelance work for a year and a half, so I'm not much of a role model. My husband has to work 10 and 12 hour days at his database administrator job in order to keep from being replaced by someone on a H1-B visa. We're trying to pay off more than $40,000 in student loans for our older daughter (who works as a nanny)and the younger one from the years that she was floundering in college, trying to settle on a major.

My daughters both tell me they were lucky to go through the public schools when they did, because of the beating that's been taken by teachers and education in the past 10 years.

Thank you for your service as an educator.

[Bigmack]

12. Two things...

First... thank you for that last sentence. When someone tells me "Thank you for your service" about my time in the Marine Corps, I cringe. I did NOTHING to protect America or keep it free or make it a better place. All I did was kill and hurt darker people. Now... my 30 years of teaching... that's different. I'm damn proud of what I did.

Second... my son has been out of work for over two years, so I hear your pain. He's a database administrator, too. Small world.

Best of luck in finding jobs....I hope things work out.

[LiberalEsto]

17. And you should be proud

Real teaching is damned hard. When I was majoring in English in the late 60s-early 70s, my options were teaching, journalism or academia. (or getting an Mrs. and being a housewife) I was terrified of speaking in front of an audience, so I opted for journalism. I actually thought in those days that I could do good and help people through the power of the press. Teaching was totally beyond me, and I admire those who can and do educate our young people. I had the good fortune to go to public school in a NJ town where there were many truly excellent teachers, and some of them influenced me greatly. Because of the encouragement from one of them, I went into journalism.

One of my close friends is a 5th grade teacher and union local member in New Jersey, where the disgusting governor calls the teachers union members thugs and does everything he can to destroy them. She has taught for many years but fears that a good part of her pension is gone, diverted to other things by a former GOP governor, Whitman. She has always had to have one or two side jobs such as teaching Jazzercise and selling cosmetics in order to keep a roof over her head and educate her daughter, also a teacher, as a single parent with no child support. Her daughter works as a sub because she can't find a full time teaching job.

Another close friend of mine taught in the Miami-Dade juvenile correctional system until a teenager brained her with a brick and ended up in the hospital with a concussion. Her pension isn't enough to live on; she sells cosmetics in a department store to make ends meet.

These are the people who the Repukes say are earning too much, getting too many benefits and squandering the taxpayers' money. They call the educators "greedy" and "thugs". But if you ask me, the Repukes and the corporations are the real greedy thugs.

[DCBob]

6. nothing new... well paid IT jobs have been outsourced for many years.

to make matters worse the H1B program has allowed many foreigners to come to this country and take IT jobs from Americans. The good and bad of globalization.

[LiberalEsto]

11. Exactly

My husband is hanging on as the last non-foreign DBA in his group, but it means doing the work of 2 or 3 people, routinely working 10 and 12 hour days, and many weekends and holidays, with not a penny of pay or comp time for the extra hours.

I am afraid the overwork and stress will make him sick if not worse. And he's one of the lucky ones. His brother, a programmer, has been out of work for more than three years, and works temp jobs for places like UPS from time to time.

Curse the corporate bastards who are screwing every possible American out of decent jobs they could live on.

[DCBob]

15. Im in IT as well and so far my job is not being outsourced but who knows...

No one is safe these days.

[elocs]

7. I never had a well paid, middle class job and I never will.

I just need to hang on for 3 years until I retire.

[Exilednight]

9. It's been a myth for quite some time that America has high paying jobs in the

science field. Companies like Motorola, IBM, Apple, Microsoft and almost any other high-tech company you can think of has either fully moved, or at least begun to move their R&D jobs overseas.

We keep talking of the green economy, yet I just found out that every solar panel that is made today is made overseas - usually China.

[XanaDUer]

10. I'm considered middle-class?

Who'da thunk it?

[slackmaster]

13. It's so nice to know that I'm not a member of the middle class now

:eyes:

[Flubadubya]

14. Where I work management is actively and openly working to eliminate my job...

This is actually happening to me and my job right now. I work as a medical transcriptionist at the leading doctors' clinic in town.

They have made it no secret that they plan to eventually eliminate medical transcription at the facility. They are just about ready to launch a new electronic medical records program that I'm sure they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for which is intended to make it possible for the doctors to enter data on patient visit reports directly themselves. After having undergone training on this program, however, right now about 90% of the docs don't plan to use it but, rather, to continue with their transcriptionists. (Truth is, the new system will be quite "limiting" for the doctors in very many ways.) However, it is ultimately the decision of the doctors... for now, anyway.

Nonetheless, the plan is for complete conversion to be accomplished over time through attrition. Supposedly, any new provider coming onboard at the clinic will not be given the option of using either a transcriptionist or the new system. They apparently will not be hired unless they are prepared to use the automated system exclusively. Of course, the current docs who have chosen to keep their transcriptionists for now will eventually retire (or leave) and ultimately management will have accomplished its goal. :(

[rbnyc]

16. $40K...

...is not well paid. At least not in New York City or the surrounding area. For that matter, $80K could also never possibly cut it as a single income.