Job Market for Civil Engineers in 2021

 Featured on Zippia's Future of the Job Market Report

Scarcity of Engineers in Hawaii

Interviewed by Sara Mattison for the KHON2 story on Pearl Harbor Shipyard competing for qualified candidates.

..."Retirements have disrupted the workforce, but UH Department of Civil Engineering Chair Panos Prevedouros tells us there's a shortage of engineers because of an increase in construction projects. Plus, recruitments from the mainland are not staying.

"Engineers hired from the mainland, they are sort of a revolving door type of problem. They come, they work, but within two three years they feel like mainland is where they belong and that's not very good for local agencies and companies," said Prevedouros.

"We need to compete with cities, counties, and transportation departments on the mainland, and there the pay is much higher in some respects," said Prevedouros."

It Depends What You Study, Not Where

The Economist: What you study matters far more than where you study it: Engineers and computer scientists do best, earning an impressive 20-year annualized return of 12% on their college fees.

More Intelligent Technology. Fewer Jobs.

The MIT Review article How Technology Is Destroying Jobs summarizes the potential on-set of the Human Labor-free Economy. Others call it the Autonomous Economy; an economy that runs without people!

This is of course an exaggeration but the fact is that since people invented tools many laborious tasks became simpler. Then the industrial revolution accelerated the pace of machine substitution of the labor. However, the big and varied tools and machines wound up increasing the demand of human labor because they changed the scale of what is achievable in agriculture, infrastructure, war equipment, etc.

Then came IT, computers and robotics. The MIT Review graph below illustrates the decoupling between Economic Productivity and Employed Labor. Automated vehicle manufacturing plants, automated warehouses, automated luggage handlers, etc. are already present. Currently at some health providers the first level diagnosis of patient ailment is conducted by registered nurses who also have some prescription authority. A large number of patients do not see an MD.

The short term outcome was angrily revealed by the Occupy Wall Street movement nearly two years ago: The MIT Review a notes that big progress in technology grows the economy and creates wealth, “but there is no economic law that says everyone will benefit. In other words, in the race against the machine, some are likely to win while many others lose.” Income inequality is a well researched topic.

However, this analysis on the effects of technology on labor is only the beginning. The hundreds of thoughtful comments below the article are enlightening and perhaps frightening.

• In the future, people may be “chipped” like animals. As a result there will be no need for laborious ID inspections at airports and elsewhere. There will be much less need for credit cards or buying tickets for transit, theater and museum admission, etc. The individual’s presence is enough to trigger a charge which minimizes the need for conductors, inspectors and clerks.

• Autonomous cars are here and they drive in actual traffic. They will take several more years to perfect but eventually there may be no need for taxi drivers, bus drivers and trash collectors.

• Mail, if there is paper mail 50 years from now, can be fully robotized. The central processing at major handlers such as USPS, FedEx and UPS is already automated.

• Distance learning is quickly becoming ubiquitous. The number of college courses is finite.  A few thousand of the "best professors” in each subject may tape the lecture and offer real time updates thus reducing the need for tens of thousands of in-class lecturers and professors.

A very large part of the population on Earth is still developing, so substitution of labor will take a long time because it takes an advanced and rich economy with the knowledge and capital base to develop the substitution, and eventually result in gross social instability as unemployment departs the tolerable 10% and moves to 30% or more.

If the means are found to control social instability, accelerating substitution is not sustainable unless regional Uber Governments are formed that control all the machines and humans on a continental scale. The central authority will regulate human birth rate, goods consumption and life duration, to keep a balance. Not surprisingly national and local policies for such control of human activity already exist.


One of the long term effects of unemployment (and draconian controls) is lower birth rate. This puts the Earth on a more sustainable path because the current path of population growth and consumption is clearly unsustainable.

There is also some likelihood that an electromagnetic pulse or an IT superbug will render this interconnected IT and automation useless. At that point, the remaining third world populations will have a distinct advantage.


The most likely short term outcome is that the recently observed trend of accelerating income disparity and unemployment will continue. The regulation of automation may follow to control unemployment and social instability.

The long term outcome has been postulated by MIT researchers since the early 1970s: For many reasons such as technological substitution, energy availability and cost, climate change combined with food production for an ever increasing population will produce a vast global imbalance. As a result, around 2030 they predicted, there will be a global reduction of the standard of living and population.

HART's Job Estimates Are Wrong

Back in 2009, UHERO provided some rail jobs estimates that said employment will start with 300 jobs, and at the peak of construction, there may be 2,000 jobs, but at that time UHERO did not know that a $1.4 billion contract to build the rail cars would go to Ansaldo Breda in Italy.*

However HART testified at City Council that the rail will create 4,000 to 17,000 jobs. These estimates are flat out wrong if people believe that these are Hawaii-based jobs. Here is why:

• Material costs are not jobs and most materials like steel, concrete and glass will be imported, thus those jobs are not local.
• Finance charges are not jobs.
• Equipment and outside purchases are not jobs in Hawaii. These will be a huge portion from trains, escalators and elevators to ticket machines, tickets, bolts and nails.
• Also many large and "linear" infrastructure projects like the rail are of a "copy-paste" nature, that is, the people who build the first mile will also build the second mile, etc. There are no 10 groups of workers building 10 separate miles.
  

In sum, a very large portion of the $5.3 Billion pie is not labor related. The part that is labor is not very large for Hawaii because (1) a portion of the labor is outside Hawaii or imported expertise, and (2) Linear infrastructure does not need a large number of workers. Therefore UHERO's estimate that the maximum likely number of jobs is around 2,000 is the best answer. This makes Rail smaller in terms of jobs than Hilton Hawaiian Village. Of course the Village is a sustainable job supplier, whereas Rail is not.

It is also a fact that tax-based infrastructure development causes major job losses because the taxes taken from people to build the rail were not spent elsewhere in the economy.

If infrastructure projects can be made with all-local materials and labor, then the projects simply circulate monies in the same market (Oahu in this case) but they do not create real growth. This circulation also has "parasitic losses" due to the bureaucracies involved and, on occasion, lawsuits and other penalties.

Rail, unfortunately, uses so many imported components and expertise that local taxes will be exported in the billions of dollars, so its net effect will be strongly recessionary.

Two years ago based on UHERO's 2009 estimates of rail jobs I wrote the article
Proposed Rail Creates 1,000 Local Jobs and Destroys 4,000 Jobs (the bold part is UHERO assessments):

UHERO estimates that first year rail construction job count will be about 360 jobs and only in peak years the construction job estimate will reach about 2,000 jobs. But most of them will be unsuitable for carpenters that are suffering the brunt of construction sector unemployment now. Also almost all of the rail construction materials and technology comes from off-island sources, so at best 1,000 of these jobs are local. The City estimates for rail jobs are false. They are advocacy estimates.

More on this in Malia Zimmerman's article Honolulu Rail Sold to City Council, Public, on Jobs Boost, But Will the Promise Hold Up? in the Hawaii Reporter.

Hawaii's 2nd Energy Update... or Waste Update?

DBEDT has just issued the 2nd edition of Hawaii's Energy Update. See it here:
http://energy.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/DBEDT-Energy-Update-Edition-2-March-2012.pdf

When a government glossy brochure is 99% about benefits and 1% about costs, and when the (suspect) jobs created, may of them part-time, cost the taxpayer $92,000 per year each, then it's easy to realize what kind of green they are really talking about...

Spending taxpayer money to apply expensive, inferior solutions for "creating jobs" is ineffective and unsustainable. The ARRA taught us this lesson recently. Fewer than expected jobs were created, the nation now co-owns car manufacturers and collectively we owe $6 Trillion of added debt.

Take a look at this "Hawaii Energy" brochure. It's all about jobs and expenditures. How much of the electricity used daily in Hawaii did we get for all this? About 1% if there's stiff wind and no clouds. How does this agree with the opening sentence of the brochure? Clean energy is a matter of energy security... Not!

Hawaii Jobs: Outlook for Jobs in Education, Government, Military and Tourism

There are basically four main industries in Hawaii: Education, Government, Military and Tourism. And a fifth large one serving these four is Services. In round numbers, education (DOE, UH system and private) employed 63,000 people in 2010, civilian federal, state and county government employed 77,000 people, the hospitality industry including entertainment, restaurants and bars employed 90,000 people, the armed forces employed 50,000 people, and professional, business and other services employed 100,000 people. These five types of industries employ 60% of Hawaii's people.

While we have been inundated about a need for "construction jobs," the construction industry typically employs less than 5% of the workforce as the detailed breakdown below indicates.(1)


This article presents a brief analysis of Hawaii’s four main industries and assesses their growth potential.

Education
At roughly $15,000 per pupil, the annual expenditure Hawaii’s state based education system is among the highest in the nation. This level of expenditure all by itself indicates that this is certainly not an area of future growth.

Part of the Education industry but separate from the state DOE is the UH system which has become administratively bloated in the last two decades and its diversity of campuses has added more to its costs as a system. UH-Manoa is one of the top pork-barrel research funding recipient universities in the nation which is unsustainable past the retirement of Senator Daniel Inouye. Several units will continue to excel, but the UH as a whole is not a promising locus for job growth in Hawaii.

Private education will continue to hold its own but escalating tuition costs place a ceiling on the potential for large expansion unless citizens receive the choice of having education vouchers. Given the poor outcomes of Hawaii’s public education system, this opportunity may arrive sooner than it is currently thought to be possible.

Civilian Government
The table above suggests that Government provides 21% of the jobs in Hawaii but the table below suggests that if public education and US DOD are taken aside, then the share of the rest of the government’s shrinks to 10%. (The percentage shown is out of the total civilian employment in 2010.)


Over several decades Government has been a “growth industry.” Hawaii had 125,200 civilian government workers in 2010 of which 57% in state government, 28% in federal government and 15% in local government. This is an area that will experience reductions in the next few decades as city and state budgets come under heavy stress from necessary infrastructure investments, consent decrees, and pension and health fund liabilities vis-à-vis the actuarial reality of long-living baby boomers. Even larger pressure will be on federal employment.

In 1960 the ratio of government employment to the population in Hawaii was 7.8%, that is, there were 8 government workers for every 100 Hawaii residents. This ratio reached a high of 9.5% in 2000 and dropped to 9.2% in 2010. In 1960, the federal civilian employment was large at 4.3% but it reduced to 2.6% in 2010. State employment went the opposite way: From 2.3% in 1960 to 5.3% in 2010. State employment doubled from 1960 to 1970, and it doubled again between 1970 and 1990. County employment was 1.2% in 1960 and 1.4% in 2010.

It is clear that there has been no bloating in county employment and a reduction has occurred in federal employment. So the bulk of anticipated future government employment cuts will be from state ranks and from the education portion of it in particular.

Military
The explosive economic and military growth in Asia is a strong force behind stability and expansion of military in Hawaii. This is one area that the retirement of Senator Inouye may have relatively little negative effect. The geopolitical placement of Hawaii is highly advantageous. However, shifts may occur that may be less desirable for Hawaii resident employment: Military personnel numbers may increase but local civilian jobs may be reduced as Hawaii becomes more of an action-ready base rather than a storage and maintenance base. The existing Navy shipyard may be too costly and too limited to maintain at its current size.

In the past three decades the ratio of armed force personnel to Hawaii’s population has dropped from 5.3% in 1960, to 4.5% in 2000, and all the way down to 2.9% in 2010 in part because of deployments to wars. Defense cuts and vastly improved automation in military operations may result in keeping armed force employment in Hawaii below the 4% mark.

Tourism
Tourism is long regarded as the economic engine of Hawaii by capitalizing on the trifecta of natural beauty, warm climate and Hawaiian culture supported by the political and economic might of the US.

Although 2012 is expected to be a “banner year” for Hawaii tourism more dark rather than rosy clouds are in the horizon. The fundamental problems are neither market size nor marketing. It is cost.

Hawaii cannot be moved 200 miles off of the US mainland or 200 miles off of Asia. As a result, 8 million tourists have to fly to it. Fuel is roughly 25% of an airline’s cost when oil is just under $100 per barrel. If oil price grows to $200 per barrel, fuel cost will be roughly 50% of an airline’s cost and airfares will be adjusted upward accordingly. Necessarily, the market will shrink. So here is a summary of positive (+) and negative (-) forces on Hawaii tourism which, in turn will affect its job count in the hospitality industry and its supporters such as the food, culture, entertainment and transportation industries.

(-) While in the next decade there will be large changes in energy innovation and a reduction in electric power production from oil, there are no foreseeable fixes for transportation fuels, particularly when it comes to air and marine transportation, both of which are Hawaii’s only lifelines. Hawaii’s sensitivity to oil prices will only worsen.

(+) Vast improvements in personal wealth in China, Russia and other developing Asian nations combined with possible relaxation of visa requirement bodes well for tourist arrivals from Asia.

(-) There will be a long-term reduction of arrivals from Japan not only because it is a mature market but also because it’s becoming an aging, less populous and heavily indebted country with somewhat slowed ability to innovate and outsourced production of most of its consumer and industrial products.

(+) Korea has almost 40% as many people as Japan and it’s a growth market for Hawaii.

(+) Hawaii has the ability to follow the American tradition of innovation by continuously developing niche tourist markets (adventure, ecotourism, fishing, LGBT, wedding, etc.)

(+) The large national debt is forcing a progressive devaluation of the dollar which makes foreign visitation to Hawaii more attractive. This may also boost arrivals from the mainland because foreign destinations become more expensive for Americans.

(-) Development of the proposed Honolulu rail with its debilitating multi-year construction, and the resultant non-improvement of traffic congestion and eyesore guideway will cause a prolonged tourism loss on Oahu, some of it made up by the other islands.

(-) Unless city and state budgets are re-aligned with emphasis on infrastructure improvement and maintenance, the resultant traffic congestion, potholed roads, sewer spills, water main breaks, poor park condition and homeless camps will cause a prolonged loss of tourism for Oahu. Eventually the disproportionally large budget allocations to outer islands will shrink to avert the collapse of Oahu.

While tourism and related occupations account for one fifth of the jobs in Hawaii, this is actually a fairly fragile industry that is heavily dependent on strong forces beyond its control. This is apparently lost on Hawaii legislators who on every downturn turn up the taxation scale for the tourism industry. Mismanagement in Hawaii and Washington, D.C. can easily affect Hawaii’s tourism and its related job count. So far Washington has no path to managing the national debt and Hawaii has no path to managing its looming infrastructure and energy crisis. So the dark clouds clearly overtake the rosy ones.

Summary
Oahu already had a net 50,000 out-migration from Honolulu County to other US or Hawaii counties. This will expand to all of Hawaii in the next two decades. State and federal government jobs, and DOE and UH jobs will be cut back. If local government improves its priorities there will be thousands of private local jobs for needed infrastructure replacement and maintenance, as well as productive energy projects. In the next couple decades, the job count in Hawaii will remain stable but several sectors in the economy will experience large changes.

(1) Source: State of Hawaii employment data is 2010 State of Hawaii Data Book.

Jobs: Fundamental Trends – 2000 to 2050. How Did We Get Here and What’s in Store?

There are three fundamental trends at play in this half century:

• Aging of both population and infrastructure;
• Advanced economies cannot absorb unskilled and low skilled laborers; and,
• Too many crises in one decade took our eye off the ball.

The first trend affects the US more than other nations. Baby-boomers have started reaching the age of retirement and the age when health maintenance expenses increase. As a result many state pension and health funds are under substantial stress and their situation is likely to rapidly worsen as more workers age and fewer workers find high paying jobs that pay high enough taxes to sustain pension and health expenses. One of the proposals toward retirement fund solvency is to raise the age of retirement from the typical of 65 year of age to 70.

Along with the baby boom in the US also came the second infrastructure boom (the first one was during the Great Depression.) The second boom focused mostly on transportation and the road and air modes in particular, along with a misguided urban rail renaissance* of the late 1970s till the 1990s. For example, BART in San Francisco and Metro in Washington. DC are facing work backlogs in the order of tens of billions of dollars for required refurbishment and rehabilitation to bring those systems to a top operational condition. The bills are in the billions for bridges and elevated highway sections, and for the strengthening and restoration of millions of lane-miles of roadways.

While infrastructure presents a great opportunity for boosting the job count, a lot of the work is both highly technical and very expensive. The former implies that unskilled labor is unsuitable, and the latter implies that a lot of infrastructure projects may be unaffordable. The existing gasoline taxes which have been constant for almost 20 years at the federal level have lost value and are insufficient to cover highway maintenance. In addition about 20% of these funds is re-purposed to pay for loss-making transit systems.

Electric and other non-fossil fuel powered vehicles are not visiting the gas pump regularly (or ever), thus no tax for their road usage is collected. The highway tax system needs both a tax rate update and modernization. This will create new jobs, but again, the expertise will vary from technician to engineer; no need for unskilled labor.

This segways us to the second trend which is the progressive evolution of advanced technologies out of labor intensive jobs. Agriculture, construction and manufacturing are increasingly automated. They require fewer and more skilled staff. A good example is driverless trains in France. They replace approximately 100 motormen with two dozen rail engineers and train management technicians in a control room. This cuts the job count by 75% and costs by 50%. Fewer, more comfortable and better paid jobs is what advanced economies provide.

Retailing absorbs low skill labor. But there are many changes that reduce the unskilled job count in retailing such as Internet retailing, big box store retailing and upscale retailing, all of which require fewer and better skilled workers.

The transportation sector employees roughly 5% to 15% of a region’s workers (the count is higher in highly urbanized areas). This sector is dominated by federal and state regulations as well as unions. Both regulations and unions make the absorption of low skill labor more difficult.

The third trend is actually a series of calamities that caused stress to the economy and inattention to its drifting into deep losses. I list eight major ones:

1. Global Warming related regulations leading to various stresses on energy production and pricing.
2. The September 11, 2001 attacks in the US and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
3. Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans which, among other things, caused a fuel price escalation.
4. Drought in Texas with major impacts on jobs and food prices.
5. Huge losses in wind and solar projects, and erratic US energy policy.
6. Rapid increase in commodity and energy prices due in part to rising demand in Asia.
7. The sub-prime lending melt down.
8. Euro crisis, weakening US dollar, and Chinese RMB strengthening are causing various currency instabilities.

How did we get here? The discussion above suggests that large losses in the count of jobs in 2009 and 2010 can be explained by natural trends (aging), structural trends (modernization) and calamities (man and nature-made losses).

What’s in store? Prognostication is both fun and faulty. One thing that is certain is that the BAU model, that is, Business As Usual will bring more of the same.

If Congress remains dysfunctional, if state and federal administrations focus on government expansion and business regulation, if unions stress demands for perks instead of modernization and productivity improvements, if US energy policy continues to be an assortment of mostly special-interest ideas and incentives, then job count and quality of life will certainly deteriorate.

It does not have to be this way. Upcoming articles look into ways for more sustainable jobs.

------------------
(*) Rail Transit: Are we creating new life or resuscitating a dinosaur? This was the title of an 1980s article by Northwestern University’s Joseph Schofer, a distinguished professor of transportation at the McCormick School of Engineering and its Associate Dean.

Chrysler's Super Bowl Ad with Clint Eastwood

Half Time in America: Chrysler's 2-minute long TV commercial with Clint Eastwood during the 46th Super Bowl was a strong political statement. It was likely washed down too quickly with beer, pizza and nachos, but it did generate a lot of media coverage.

What did Clint's message say to people in Hawaii? My small sample survey reveals the following:

78% of the respondents agree that Clint is talking about American patriotism, Detroit rebounding, union jobs or all of these.

The majority opinion is that this commercial has nothing to do with Chrysler cars or cars in general, but 43% think that Clint is also talking about the importance of the car industry for America. See details below.


75% of the respondents feel that Clint is raising an alarm about the condition of our country, the upcoming elections and the future of America or all of these.

Clint himself stated that he is not in agreement with the president's policies but he did not think that this commercial was about Obama. 43% of Hawaii respondents agree, but 49% responded that the ad support Obama policies. Only 8% responded that the ad goes against Obama policies. See details below.



Kudos to Chrysler for developing a thought provoking ad which some have labelled as a payback to Obama administration for arranging the auto industry bailouts.

Jobs. Jobs. Jobs.

Seth Godin, marketing guru, ex-VP at Yahoo! and author of 13 books, believes that “the current recession is a forever recession” because the industrial age has ended and this means that the days when people were able to get above average pay for average work are over. Self-improvement, continuous learning and investment on oneself are key to employment otherwise “never mind the race to the top, you'll be racing to the bottom.”

While this is useful advice for those currently employed, the pressing problem is unemployment and under-employment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculates the official unemployment rate by looking at those who are employed or who have actively looked for work within the last four weeks. As a result, the official rate excludes workers who have decided to drop out of the labor market altogether. The official rate also ignores those who settle for part-time work since they are unable to find a full-time job.

Recognizing this shortcoming, the BLS also reports the U-6 rate, which includes those who have sought a job sometime in the last 12 months and those who have accepted part-time jobs but would prefer full time. The U-6 rate is a better representation of the ability of the economy to provide jobs. Let's take a look at the numbers as summarized in NCPA's Tracking the Unreported Unemployed:

• The 1948-2007 unemployment average is 5.6%.
• The unemployment rate moved from 5% in January 2008 to a high of 10.1% in October 2009, and a current rate of 8.6%.
• The U-6 rate moved from 8.8% in December 2007 to 17.4% in October 2009 and 15.6% in November 2011.
• U-6 rate is almost twice as high as the official unemployment rate. It explains the increasing pressure for economic improvement and jobs.
  
• By the end of 2011, 43% of all unemployed have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks. Besides being jobless, their skills deteriorate, which worsens their employment prospects.
  

Without doubt the unemployment challenge is serious. What causes a high unemployment rate? There are several causes. Here is a big one: The disconnect between supply and demand for jobs. There is a glut of low skill laborer supply. There is demand for high skill, specialized jobs. Unemployed carpenters. Engineers wanted.

The problem of turning 500 unemployed carpenters to 500 engineers is impossible to legislate. In general, turning thousands of low skilled workers to thousands of high skilled workers is very difficult to solve. We need to understand and address the root causes of the problem some of which have deep cultural roots such as over-emphasis in sports instead of scholarly achievement, under-performing public education systems, and stereotypes based on race and gender. Another part of the problem is government regulations and union rules. I’ll cover most of these in a series of articles.

Instead of addressing the root causes of unemployment, politicians in the recent past responded to the cries for “jobs, jobs, jobs!” in two wrong ways: (1) They approved “make work” projects for low skill and construction labor, and (2) they “incentivized” new high tech industries.

“Make work” projects is the use of taxpayer funds to develop unnecessary or low effectiveness infrastructure projects, typically show-off projects or transit projects. These provide some jobs for low skill labor but in reality the unemployment problem is postponed for a few years while the tax hole becomes bigger. “Make work” policies are unsustainable. They develop dangerous dependencies for thousands of low skill laborers instead of providing opportunities for advancement and job diversification.

The current genre of “high tech incentives” is the green industry. Incentives are typically taxpayer handouts to targeted groups, e.g., relating to solar panels and electric cars. People and industry respond to incentives. While accounting in Hawaii is poor, it is much better in the UK where the conclusion in Worth The Candle? The Economic Impact of Renewable Energy Policy the UK was that “for every job created in the UK in renewable energy, 3.7 jobs are lost.” In Hawaii, misguided policies will likely result in more solar guys than nurses per 1,000 people; and a deeper tax hole. Such outcomes are unsustainable and undesirable.

Politically expedient solutions to unemployment are both costly and ineffective. We can’t talk about solutions until we are able to wrap our brain around the issue of “jobs.” What are some of the many facets of employment and unemployment?

Unemployment varies widely by level of education. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports this: The overall unemployment rate for recent Bachelors degree recipients is 8.9%, compared with 22.9% for recent high-school graduates and 31.5% for recent high-school dropouts. It also varies by fields: Unemployment is higher among recent graduates with nontechnical fields of study, such as the arts (11.1%) and humanities and liberal arts (9.4%), but it is only 5.4% for graduates who studied health or education.

College pays off: The Los Angeles Times reports that the average take-home pay of college graduates is $38,950, compared with $21,500 for high school graduates. A college graduate's earnings would exceed a high school graduate's by more than $1 million over 40 years.

Gender makes a difference. The Economist published detailed analysis which I’ll summarize elsewhere but the bottom line of "The Cashier and The Carpenter" is that men and women do different work for different pay. For example, by working shorter paid hours, women are managing to achieve a reasonable balance in their lives. The Economist cites results that show that work-life balance dissatisfaction is about 18% for women and 27% for men in Europe.

The New York Times reports that in the two and a half years since the recovery officially began, men age 16 to 24 have gained 178,000 jobs, and women have lost 255,000 positions. “Apparently discouraged by scant openings, 412,000 young women have dropped out of the labor force entirely in the last two and a half years, meaning they are not looking for work. Young women in their late teens and early 20’s view today’s economic lull as an opportunity to upgrade their skills, their male counterparts are more likely to take whatever job they can find.” As a result, the next generation of women may have a significant advantage over their male counterparts in the near future.

The NYT article continues to say that many of the occupations expected to have the most growth, like nurses, home health aides and dental hygienists, have traditionally been filled by women. Jobs in male-dominated industries such as manufacturing and construction have been in decline. Manual labor careers can also be hard to maintain indefinitely because youthful strength eventually fades. The pension coverage of construction and manufacturing workers is also lagging which presents a challenge for males as they age.

Knowledge and understanding of the true causes of a problem are the right foundation for crafting solutions. My series of summary articles on “jobs” throws light onto the employment and unemployment challenges. Stay tuned!



1. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. This article.

2. Jobs: Fundamental Trends – 2000 to 2050. How Did We Get Here and What’s in Store?

3. Jobs Hawaii: Outlook for Jobs in Education, Government, Military and Tourism

4. Jobs: The Young and Unskilled

5. Jobs: What Women Want

6. Top Jobs: 10 Hot Careers for 2012

7. The Right Job: Sustainable, Desirable Employment

JOBS: 10 Hot Careers for 2012

At the end of 2011 CNN-Money posted 10 hot careers for 2012 - and beyond.

Of course nobody should be surprised that IT experts, engineers and health professionals dominate the list. They have been in top-10 spots for two decades and despite the relatively high unemployment in the U.S., college enrollment in demanding technical and professional fields has been relatively stable when adjusted for population growth and GDP fluctuations. The U.S. Congress is considering expedited immigration procedures for retaining foreigners who obtain advanced degrees in the U.S., many of which are lured back to China, India and to developing members of the EU.

This list contains one big surprise for me. No mention at all of "green jobs" or "renewable energy." This is because this list is sane, as opposed to less-than-sane proposals, incentives and "renewable portfolios" setup by legislatures attentive to zealous environmentalists. The result of these as manifest by Spain and other "green energy pioneers" is the substantial squandering of public funds with minimal impact on oil dependence or advancement of the state-of-the-art (e.g., Solyndra, Spopogy, etc.)

Large Unions and Massive Labor Laws Lead to Fewer Jobs

France is a prime example of having large and powerful unions, a 3,300-page Labor Law and employee payroll taxation at 39%. The result of all this is more automation and fewer jobs.

In the late 1990s Paris totally retrofitted metro line 14 which today carries 725,000 passengers a day. It is totally automated and the computerized trains run much closer to each other.

Self checkout has proliferated and continues to gain ground in countries where labor is expensive. Other examples from France include:

• Orders at many McDonald's are taken via touchscreen devices.
• Transit services operate with smart cards
  
• Self-serve car washing Elephant Bleu has grown to 472 stations

One result is that France is a leader in the creation and adoption of automation. Another is that unemployment rarely drops below 10%. More details in The Economist's Driverless, Workless article.