The other day, The Boston Globe online published the list of the jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts will experience the greatest rate of decline over the next decade.
Percentage-wise, the biggest loser profession will be wood model makers and pattern makers, which will dip by about 40%. This doesn't actually represent a major loss of jobs - unless, I suppose, you're a model maker or a pattern maker - as there are only 4,000 of them to begin with. Not surprisingly, models and patterns that used to be hewn out of wood are now being done online.
If you have your heart set on being a photographic process worker, laughing and gasping over someone else's family snapshots, you're out of luck. Digital cameras are buggy-whipping this occupation, big time.
Surprisingly, there are still over 120,000 textile machine operators in the US, but there'll be a lot fewer of them in another 10 years. For the most part, these jobs exited New England a long while ago, heading to South Carolina and other places with warmer and less union-friendly climes. There used to be a lot of them around here, and my grandfather, Matthew Trainor, worked in a textile mill when he came over from Ireland. My father's first job, when he was 12 and his father had just died, was in a textile mill, where he worked variously as a candy butcher - an occupation that I'm sure has long passed into history - selling candy and sang-wiches to the factory workers who couldn't leave their looms. He also worked as a bobbin boy, bringing large bobbins of yarn to the ladies who worked the looms. (The ones who tipped him a nickel got bobbins with smooth yarn; the ones who didn't got yarn with obvious knots in the thread.) This was in the 1920's, when it was considered a perfectly appropriate after-school activity for a 12 year old to go work in a factory.
Shoe factory workers are also declining in number - another traditional New England job, and one which I held myself one summer, when I worked at the H. H. Brown Shoe Factory, polishing the seams and cleaning gunk off of paratroop boots for the Vietnamese Air Force, bright green boots with red top-stitching worn at nuclear plants, and various other work boots and shoes. (H. H. Brown is now condos.)
Along with shoe factory workers go cobbler's, since imported shoes will be so cheap people will just get new ones rather than repair the old ones.
Of all the declining jobs on the list, I found this one the most depressing for what it says about our disposable, why-bother-to-fix-anything way of life. I'm always running to the shoe repair guy on Charles Street to have shoes re-heeled and re-soled.
The cobbler is an old geezer.
Where am I going to go when he passes on?
File clerks, computer operators, bookbinders, radio station workers, machine tool operators, meter readers.
Going, going, gone, I'm afraid.
Most of the jobs disappearing are, not surprisingly, blue and pink collar positions with few formal education requirements, and a lot of on the job training.
I was surprised to see wallpaper hangers on the list.
Personally, I'm not a huge wallpaper fan - a group whose ranks are apparently thinning, thus the decline in paperhangers. But if I gave any thought to it, I would have figured that wallpapering was something you did yourself, or found a moonlighting fireman to do for you. (When I was a kid, firemen did painting, wallpapering, landscaping, carpentry, and a lot of other stuff on their days off.)
The one and only time I tried my hand at wallpapering, I got some very cool Marrimeko paper - white with little red tulip-y flowers on it - to re-do the 4 ' x 6' kitchen in my apartment, which the occupant before me had papered with this hideous day-glo pink-orange-chartreuse hibiscus floral stuff. (And painted the cabinets a nice chartreuse to match.)
Typically, I didn't bother to read the instructions, and didn't treat the paper before I hung it. Within days, it had shrunk up. Rather than pull it down, I bought some red contact tape and covered the separating seams with it.
I did a better job on the cabinets, which I painted white.
If you're a floor layer, you'd better specialize in carpet, wood, and hard tiles, because vinyl/linoleum is heading out of style.
My grandmother Rogers would have made a really bad floor layer.
Her kitchen had a linoleum floor and, when parts of it got worn, she wouldn't replace the entire thing, she'd just by a non-matching linoleum remnant and tack it on over the worn spot. So, she might have a bit of red by the soapstone sink, some yellow speckle by the fridge, and a section of green under the table. Very nice, as you can imagine, and absolutely complementary to the grayish-yellow walls, the cracked window that she'd fixed with tape, etc.
But it was great place for an eight year old to hang out if she wanted a strong cup of tea and a conversation about the afterlife. ("Will we be clothed, I wonder. And what age will we be?")
In the future, there will be fewer and fewer switchboard operators, weighers and checkers, data entry clerks.
Railroad brake, signal, and switch operators will give way to "remote control locomotive technology", which is coming about 50 years too late for my husband's father, who was crushed by a train while working as a switchman for the Boston and Maine Railroad.
Blessedly, there will be 10% fewer telemarketers.
The number of farmers and ranchers will decline by 8.5%, thanks to agribusiness - although "as a generation of farmers retire in the next decade, there will be opportunities for new farmers, especially those who produce corn used for ethanol."
But not a word on opportunities for ranchers.
So, mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
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