(no subject)
Two centuries ago, farmers made up the majority of workers.
A century ago, factory jobs were all the rage. Now, service workers are it. Farmers are a tiny minority of workers and manufacturing jobs have been in decline for decades.
A century ago, telephone operators attended school to learn how to work on a switchboard. Now it's all electronic and a single circuitboard does the work of dozens of workers. If a board isn't working, someone's sent out to replace it.
Two decades ago, medical transcriptionists typed up notes from voice recordings doctors made. They could make as much as $30,000 a year or more. Now newly-minted medical doctors in India pay out of pocket to attend a six-month course so they can learn to be medical transcriptionists for American doctors. Their pay? $600 per month each. Two decades from now, doctors may not need medical transcriptionists at all. Accent-recognition software may very well be doing all this work if doctors don't type it themselves like my doctor does.
A decade ago, computer technicians worked on computers to repair them and provide HelpDesk service. Now it's often cheaper to replace a computer or a printer than it is to repair it, and technicians remotely connecting from India or the Philippines can diagnose and perform HelpDesk functions. Their pay? $300 to $400 per month.
What survives is high tech, high touch. That's the trend. So plumbers and nurses, for example. And legally protected jobs: pharmacists and lawyers, for example. But there are not enough such jobs.
Now I'm not knocking progress. Certainly the quality of life for the majority of Amerians has been better than it was 200 years ago.
But while there will be new jobs that we don't know of yet, they will be for fewer people even as our population grows. Example: If a town of 20,000 needs one librarian, does a town of 100,000 need 5? No.