More buggy whips, please, sir.

Thanks to Monster, we now know what jobs died  during 2012.

I suspect that rumors of their demise have been if not greatly, then at least moderately, exaggerated. Old jobs really don’t tend to die, they just fade away.  (Actually, although the article’s titled mentioned job death and dying, it focuses on those jobs that are on their way to obsolescence.)

At any rate – or at least at the minimum wage rate - it was interesting to glance through the Monster list to see what jobs, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast of substantial negative growth over this decade, are going to be the buggy whip makers of the near future.

If you’ve been dreaming your entire life of becoming a sewing machine operator, you’re pretty much out of luck.

Forget about ‘looking for the union label.’ It’s not even worth bothering to look for the ‘Made in the USA’ label.

While this is not good news if being a garment worker is one of the few job options open to you, it is not something that I ever would have been good at. I do, vaguely, know how to operate a sewing machine. But even under a complete lack of piece-work pressure, the one and only item I ever sewed – a hideous shift-dress/nightgown, cream background, with green and purple calico cats on it – ended up with a crooked yoke. It only looked even if I dipped one shoulder. I was in 6th or 7th grade, but my hopes of becoming a seamstress were dashed. I never went back to it. (Interesting, one of my fears was always that I would end up with my thumb impaled on the needle. Which was precisely what happened, many years later, to my sister Trish, when she was making a very nice blue plaid wool jacket for me. Sorry, Trish. Once you got back from the hospital and made your recovery, the jacket really turned out nicely.)

You’re also out of luck if you wanted to be Ernestine the Operator. No more one-ringy-dingy for you, my dear. The telephone operator profession is going down. Good-bye, Central.

I was actually a bit surprised to find desktop publishing on the soon-to-be-defunct list. No, it’s not a job I’ve heard mentioned in, oh, ten or fifteen years. And I know there are all sorts of templates out there that even the most amateur of designers can tap into. Still, I would have thought there was some demand for folks who can pull together a decent looking PowerPoint preso or a pdf. Which I guess is the case. While the end of print is translating into the end of desktop publishing, there is demand for graphic designers and Web designers. (I could, in fact, use one for my blog. And, beyond my modest needs, if you can learn how to do infographics, you’ve got a rosy future.) But there aren’t too many businesses any more who wants a nifty print newsletter.

Correspondence clerk is on the decline, but I would have thought it was dead already. Correspondence clerk? This sounds like a job held for the likes of Bob Cratchit or Bartleby the Scrivener. In any case, we’re all our own correspondence clerks these days, aren’t we? Better to spend your time learning to be a digital archivist than making sure you’ve got the alphabet straight, which you should have pretty much down by the time you’re in kindergarten. (Other than dithering about whether  “Mc” comes at the beginning of the “M’s” or not.)

Typist/word processor is also getting buggy whipped. The argument is that, these days, everyone learns how to type. But there’s typing and then there’s typing. And if you’re not touch-typing, you’re not typing-typing. You’re hunting and pecking. I may never have become a complete w.p.m. maven, but I’m a reasonably accurate touch typist, and I am ever so happy that I took a typing course between my freshman and sophomore years in high school. (My only foray into the Worcester Public Schools, beyond my kindergarten year at Gates Lane, where I mastered the alphabet and learned how to shake cream into butter.)

The final item on the about-to-be-lost job list is motion picture projectionist. Another job that has been digitized out of existence. I suppose there are some vintage film houses that still go reel to reel, but mostly…

Anyway, if you’re about to start a job search, and you think it might be cool to be a correspondence clerk or motion picture projectionist, better find yourself a way-back machine. You might as well be looking for job on the buggy-whip assembly line.

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Source: Monster, via a tip from my sister Kath who, along with my mother and sister Trish, was a good seamstress.