Middle class jobs are disappearing the fastest

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by Plazma Inferno!, Aug 8, 2016.

  1. Plazma Inferno! Ding Ding Ding Ding Administrator

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    Economists have debated the reasons why the American middle class is shrinking for years now, and a new study highlights one key reason: The jobs that pay enough to support a middle-class lifestyle are disappearing.
    Although the total number of American jobs is projected to increase by around 7.2 million over the next five years, this growth largely leaves behind the middle of the income spectrum.
    More than 60 percent of 173 occupations projected to decline through 2021 are middle-class jobs, according to a new analysis by CareerBuilder's Economic Modeling Specialists International. Between now and 2021, the number of low-wage jobs will increase by 5 percent, but middle-income jobs will only grow by 3 percent.
    The good news is that high-income jobs are also projected to grow by 5 percent over this time period, but most if not all of these positions require skills and training that, practically speaking, are out of reach for the middle-class employees whose jobs are vanishing.
    The fastest-growing high-paying jobs require technological, research or management skills. The middle-income jobs on track to grow the most within the next five years are ones that can't be outsourced or automated: medical assistants, customer service representatives, maintenance and repair workers, tractor-trailer drivers and office clerical workers.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/business/eco...-income-jobs-are-disappearing-fastest-n623886
     
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  3. kmguru Staff Member

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    Middle class jobs are disappearing the fastest

    That is because, After my Architecture of Industrial Ecosystems in China for the benefit of the Planet, long ago, no one jumped in....It is like a great city of empty buildings and no one can afford to move in there like set up...What can I do? People do not listen...(there is more to the story, but this would do)
     
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  5. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The reason that so many middle-class jobs (as well as the better-paying lower-class jobs) are disappearing is automation! Who needs to hire five people to run a hamburger kitchen when one guy with a computer can run it all by himself?
     
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  7. kmguru Staff Member

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    That is so correct....The catch is...we had Automation since 1920...so, by now, all would be Poor in the USA...

    And China too...it may be a lie that China moved 400 Million Chinese to middle class...but if true, they will be poor soon...due to Automation, Right?

    Just a thought in the Logic...
     
  8. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Well, no, for two reasons.

    One is that automation has gotten steadily better. Only recently have we been able to replace train operators, telemarketers and surgeons with automation.

    Second is that with each increase in automation have come increases in productivity. So a machinist who used to be able to turn out 10 widgets a day with his drill press and lathe can now turn out 150 a day with his NC milling machine. So he has the potential to make MORE money, not less.

    The problem is that there may not be a market for 15 times the number of widgets. If there is only a market for 7 times as many, then one additional person is now out of work.
     
  9. kmguru Staff Member

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    Are you supporting Fraggle Rockers position? OR Not?
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Automation has many effects. One of them is a reduction in employment due to less labor required. Another is an increase in employment due to higher productivity.
     
  11. kmguru Staff Member

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    So, why we are talking about it...since that is not germane to our middle class situation...I wonder....
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    I think it is very germane. The middle class used to be defined mostly as "people who worked with their hands." Nowadays it's largely "people who deal with computers." Automation both makes it possible to employ far more non-traditional labor than before, but also means that there is less room in the middle class for unskilled labor. (i.e. you can't just show up at a Ford factory with a high school diploma and be building cars two weeks later.) That factor, I think, is a large reason why the middle class is shrinking.
     
  13. kmguru Staff Member

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    ...and what about our serious trade deficit? Some one is building (Humans and Robots) somewhere else?

    Does that mean, we are not educated? and they are?
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2016
  14. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    No, a great deal of research and development in automation is happening here.
     
  15. kmguru Staff Member

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    ...and what causes the middle class issues? Lack of Education or just Automation that works for us and not China,? etc...where we have serious trade deficit? And our Automation is filling up items at WalMart etc?

    It is confusing...go for it...
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The potential, maybe, but not necessarily the reality - the productivity increases from automation have not been raising the wages of the production workers involved, at least not proportionately.

    That return has been to capital. Returns to capital go to the rich, not the middle class.
     
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Right - but they have been raising them. In real dollars, every quintile is making more today compared to 50 years ago.
    They have been going to everyone. Since 1967, average adjusted incomes have gone up between 13% and 75%. Everyone's income is improving. The issue that many people have is that the top 20% have been going up faster than the bottom 20%. And that is an issue, but of all the problems to have, "the poor aren't getting richer quickly enough" is not on the top of the list.
     
  18. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    The list of "middle class issues" could fill pages.

    The reason we are where we are with our economy (from a middle class perspective) is that we have a free market. People want cheap goods, and they want to be paid handsomely. That means they cannot work in manufacturing; the math simply doesn't work.
     
  19. kmguru Staff Member

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    It is one of those issues...blind men and the elephant...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

    I think...American imports amounted to US$2.309 trillion during 2015, up 4.7% since 2011....So, may be something here...I will get back to it later...Thank you...
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Fifty years ago was 1966. In 1966, the median job bought the median new house. Now the median job does not rent the median two bedroom apartment. So you know there's a problem with your overview.
    1) Depends on how you calculate the "real", as well as the quintile. Quintile of what?
    2) If you mark from thirty hears ago, instead of fifty, it's not even nominally true of household income. So the decline in return has lasted through a full generation of rising productivity - in the last few years, sharply rising productivity.
    3) Your statistics appear to be from measuring yearly household income. That misleads.
    4) You fail to attend to the effects of inequality in income.
    No, they haven't. Since about 1985 or so the entire growth in the US economy attributable to productivity gains has gone to the upper 20%.
    It should be. It is wrecking the economy. Above a minimum income - which the US passed decades ago - inequality has greater effects than absolute income, all of them bad.

    And when the absolute incomes are not growing in real terms as well, the effects can be startlingly rapid as well as bad.
    The math works just fine if significant productivity gains are distributed proportionately. Notice that cheap goods and increasingly handsome pay are not thought to be contradictory in the executive suite of the manufacturing operation, an area in which productivity gains have been more - - modest, to put it kindly.
     
  21. kmguru Staff Member

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    Automation

    Apparently it caused great depression...

    Google this "automation and first economic depression" and find stuff.

    In the mean time, I am one of the best automation engineers, worked for Honeywell and ABB and used every PLC, computers, and DCS in the last 40 years of heavy industrial practice., all over the world.

    I also worked with China in their Economic Development and this item was the first that was brought up, such that China should not have this depression while using advanced Automation. So, I worked on it. So, far, they are doing very well....

    But future will tell, if they input all the design parameters or Lawyers and Politicians mess it up....
     
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Quintile of household income.
    Yes, you can choose whatever period you like if you have a thesis you want to prove. (Witness all the climate change deniers who pick the period from 1998-2004 and say "the planet is cooling!") However, the TREND for every group other than the lowest 20% is upwards.
    Why? Surely it would be more misleading to consider the financial stability of a single man and a single-earner family of 5 to be identical, given the same income.
    Median middle-quintile income, 1985 - $23,615 (Tax Policy Center)
    Adjusted income - $51,950 (BLS inflation calculator based on CPI)
    Medial middle-quintile income, 2014 - $68,212
    Increase since 1985 for the center of the middle income bracket - 31%
    If the current growth of the economy is "wrecking" it - then I am all for that. We should aim for steady and moderate economic growth rather than the irrational exuberance that got us the last two bubbles (with consequent crashes.)
    No, they don't. People will still want cheap goods. People will still want to make lots of money. Those two things are driving jobs out of the US - and that won't change via wealth redistribution.
    They are not contradictory ANYWHERE - which is why the fix you propose will not work.
     
  23. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    What effects, specifically, are those?

    FYI, the income data billvon is referring to comes from here: http://www2.census.gov/programs-sur...series/historical-income-households/h03ar.xls
    If you work at it, you may be able to cherry-pick/manipulate the timeframes to make something approaching one of your claims true, but it won't be easy.
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2016

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