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What are industries and specialties where you see demand for employees?
For example, this article shows demand for aviation mechanics. What are your observations and experiences re demand in hiring?
For example, this article shows demand for aviation mechanics. What are your observations and experiences re demand in hiring?
The Great Electrician Shortage
If we are truly going to switch out our electrical grid, we are going to need electricians bad (and all other skilled labor). My dad was a welder and he made a lot of money that afforded him to retire with a nice pension. If I lose my current job, I will be finding an apprenticeship to become an electrician the next day.
After 15 years in the trades, my $0.02 is this: there isn't a shortage of skilled workers. There's a shortage of employers willing to pay for them.
You can make good money in the trades - if you luck out and find the right niche. The best paying jobs are usually dangerous, unpleasant, and/or require travel. Trade unions are solid jobs, but they depend heavily on construction.
All this goes double for welding jobs.
From the article:
Vocational schools are the number one school reform I would like to see take hold in the US. For way too long we've pushed the "college at all (quite literal) costs" one-size-fits-all focus that almost certainly does more harm than good.
The big problem with rolling out vocational schools is that they're expensive and even harder to staff than regular schools, so for them to actually be what they need to be, we'd have to do some serious retooling of what education looks like and how it's prioritized. I unfortunately don't see that happening any time soon, but I can dream. Good vocational programs would do wonders for our society.
I mean, they PAY you to apprentice for trade skills. It's not for me, but damn, if anyone wants a clearly defined career requiring pretty much just learn-on-the-job-and-get-paid skills, electricians is it.
I would recommend contacting your local International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. 32 is not too old. When my dad was a welder, he brought in guys in their 40s to work with the union. Based on what I see, my local IBEW pays $32 an hour and up to $50 an hour for their apprenticeship. You get pay increases every year.
An alternative if you want to go non-union is to find a business that has an apprenticeship near you. The pay will likely be worse, but they have other perks such as providing you tools during work.
Not sure about the niches but I am sure they are there. For example underwater welding was the highest paying field for welders and next was nuclear powerplant.
Location is going to determine a lot, States all have different regulations, but areas within the state all have different markets and demands. An example, Wisconson doesn't have much for state regulation on electrical apprenticeship, journeywork and mastery and someone can apply for a license there quite easily. But, that has in turn made their market over supplied and under demanded so jobs in the field pay a lot less than in it's neighboring states that are regulated. Think average electrician pay in WI as $30+, where in MN metro average journeyman is closer to $50+ and MN rural $25-35. The real kicker though is that the employers in the metro are charging $150-200/hour rate for that worker and the rural ones are charging $80-120/hour so at the end of the day it's the masters in the regulated state that are making bank as long as they are keeping their employees busy on jobs. And that doesn't even account for the extras made from up-charging on all of the equipment sold and extras from over the top bidding.
In comparison apprenticing doesn't pay for shit, plenty of other entry level positions at any place in the relative areas are going to offer the same wages, I'd imagine $18/hr rural, $25/hr metro. So if you are thinking of the career change you need to be aspiring to at minimum be getting a journeyman license asap and master license soon after, and hopefully launch your own business soon after that.
Again, state regulations are going to dictate how fast that can go for you. You can usually go to a 2 year college program, learn the basics and have that time count for 1 year on the job toward your journeyman license. Or you can go directly into the field and try to learn on the job. The main difficulty here is the license testing is going to cover basically every applicable thing an electrician CAN do, but most jobs you take are only going to cover 20-30% of that.
Example 1: You work for a company that does residential and commercial work. It doesn't cover the knowledge for motors, industrial, marina, airports, gas stations, hospitals, hazardous locations or any associated wiring methods.
Example 2: You work for a factory as electrical maintenance. It doesn't cover residential, marina, air ports, gas stations, hospital, LV communication wiring and associated wiring methods.
Example 3: You work for a specialized crew that does gas stations, marina, airports or large commercial projects like schools and hospitals. And it leaves a lot of things you would never touch.
Unless you intend to do a lot of studying in your personal time while working school is almost a necessity to gaining a journeyman or master license. And I would expect a minimum of 4-6 years as an apprentice in any regulated state before they license you. You also have to be aware of state reciprocity rules, if you move some states count your time as equivalent and some count it as half so you get stuck in certain areas for a period of time to maintain your career.
32 is not too old, I went to trade school with some people in their 50s. It's just important to know that you are going to have to invest so many years in learning before it actually pays off. I believe the same is fairly true from plumbing in regulated states, but idk that their codes are nearly as complex as electrical.
Data Engineering.
Holy shit, we cannot find the damn staff fast enough...
I'm curious; can you say more?
I have a lot of other questions but I don't want to be annoying...
E: Thank you for all the answers; this seems like a very promising field for people with the right experience. I’m a math PhD, but I don’t have data science/management work experience. It sounds very interesting though.
For my company we typically look for someone with a Bachelor’s or Master’s in an engineering or science degree and proven competency through previous work or projects.
They gather machine data (inputs, outputs, temp, pressure, speed, etc.), create graphics and/or dashboards to visualize the data (typically other engineers or leaders will view), and they will look for trends or correlations to specific events or phenomena.
Entry level start around $80k/yr but senior ones can earn over $200k/yr.
If you're able to make nice looking and usable displays, you may be able to talk your way into collaborative work with other data engineers. There are a lot of folks with science degrees who don't have the skills or time to learn how to do any kind of ux research.
I don't have a background in this area specifically, but it's not uncommon in tech to create a niche for yourself and grow from there.
It's all good man, ask away.
The vast majorty of Data Engineers who work for me are experienced guys and gals who've done time in Data for a while (Usually DBA's, Cloud Engineers, Data Modellers, etc...). But you can look up places like datacamp.com and give you a good idea on what it is we do. There's very few traditional pathways through university that look at Data Engineering. We're an offshoot of Software Engineering & Computer Science so those are generally the avenues to look at.
We take data from places around the business, wedge it together so that it's sensible and can be read easily. We also sustain machine learning, LLM's, statistical analysis and do a lot of cloud engineering.
Pay is ridiculous... depending on your industry. Finance firms in the UK are offering up to £180K for Leadership in Data Engineering with obscene bonuses to boot. But retail, ecommerce, startups? You're looking £60-£90K as an engineer. Leadership £80-£110, Snr. Leadership £100K+ comfortably.
That's sans-bonus negotiation as well.
Just hammer out an AWS or Azure data management cert and you should be good to go, like, we would hire you based on that. And like a year in we generally ship folks out to get the Oracle certs on our dime.
I don't know about the switch, I got all my certs while in job (because they didn't exist when I got my initial job), I'm also large business Oracle (MySQL)focused, but I busted out the Azure Data Admin (MsSQL)cert in like a month, so if you are technically minded it's not rough at all. I will say, in the beginning find a flavor of SQL and stick with it (MySQL is the better SQL but MsSQL is more feature rich and supports T-SQL).
It's also, a really fun job if you like figuring stuff out, and we are like 100k people short over the next 5 years to fill in general Data Engineering roles (I have monthly meetings about this . . . my response is always "Just offer more money") so there are a lot of jobs out there (learn COBOL too, work for a bank, they will throw money at you, these people literally don't exist in the job field because we are highly compensated and kept happy). I was 27 when I wandered into the field (from Fluid Dynamic Physics if you can believe that . . . 100k+ datapoints are rough unless you know how to use robust databases).
I literally cannot encourage you enough, this is like being a Network Admin in 1997, now is the time.
I have a master's in Business Analytics. What would that do for me? I applied to several jobs in related fields last year and never heard back from any of them. I'm in the military now so it's hard to figure out how switching to industry jobs would work.
Same thing I put in my post, I'm not involved in hiring (that's HR) but I am database lead, so what I pass on is just someone with a degree (don't really care what it is, I have sociology degreed folks working for me), a couple of certs, some kind of coding, and the ability to at least read SQL.
A lot of these jobs are for large companies, and government, so you generally need to check those specific sites rather than the standard job sites.
My advice, get some focused certs while in the military (I bet you they have deals with some of the exam vendors), do your time (I did mine before I even went to college, but same deal), and then leverage your vetran status inside the government (Treasury for Feds, Comptroller or State College for State). If you don't know Java that would be something else I would try to get a basic grasp on.
Jesus. I have a graduate degree in math, got tenure as a professor, and make a fraction of this... Struggling to pay bills and feed my family while craving a more exciting position...
It might be time to switch. The azure data management cert, what kind of background is necessary? Where would one do that?
Math degree is an easy switch, I came from a Math Heavy physics degree (Fluid Dynamics . . . though are there any non math heavy physics degrees???)
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/certifications/azure-data-engineer/
That is where you start, then take the learning path thingie they have (sorry I had to bug a friend to get the details, I just signed up and took the test). And I feel ya, while I was waiting on my job going through at the state (where I still work) I was teaching math (Pre-calc, calc, and vector calc) at the local community college.
Honestly get the first cert, with your degree you are hireable, then take as much "extra" training as you can get. As of the last check indeed has listing for 5000+ jobs starting in the field of which are like 80% remote.
It's not all that hard to break into if you aim for the entry levels. Get some python under your belt with knowledge of unstructured data structures, understand how relational databases work and leverage SQL... And that's a solid baseline.
It's a decent enough career if you avoid the big financial corps (they'll work you to the bone). I work in ecomm and do 35-40 hours a week and do extremely well on the salary as I've got 15 years in data.
There's the other side. I have at least two software engineers in my teams who believe they're gods gift to the universe because they've got 15-years under their belt already. But their skills are questionable and their approaches are hard to work with because they refuse to adapt... instead they try and tell others "It's got to be done like this!" when that approach costs more, isn't sustainable and isn't scalable.
I get the problem with it. But I wouldn't expect that a Surgeon could join a GP practice just because they're a Medical Doctorate.
No worries man. It's Friday and I've come off a busy day, so apologies if it came across more glib than I'd wanted to.
I know exactly what you mean, I'm in London, UK and for a lot of folk that drop in salary can be a killer. My wife dropped her teaching role to something else last year and it was 50%. She could only do that because of my salary in turn.
We definitely CAN do career sideways moves. But very often the only really reliable places to come from into Data Engineering are pre-existing data roles, Analytics, DBAs, Software Engineers and other adjecents to it. Otherwise it is a graft from the bottom type of thing. Nice thing about the industry? Growth can be insane very quickly. I've seen kids come out of uni and go on to be seniors/solutions architects in two years if they put the time and effort in.
See, from this I'd say you're Junior-Intermediate of an Engineer if you threw yourself into the role. You can do the do, what you need is the experience to productionise that inside Cloud Architecture. You'd be right for a Data Engineer role if you could walk that way (Good work by the way, do you know how amazing Product / Project guys and gals are who can code are!?) For London salaries? You'd be looking at say £65-£95K depending on where you were / industry and the such.
Do you have a Data Engineering department where you are right now? Might be worth having a chat with a Head of or Principle to see what they might say to get you moving that way?
I can't answer directly for GP, but possibly what they're talking about/closely related, look in to Data Analytics degrees, such as the GA Tech MS in Analytics. There's a couple of big tracks in that field. One is knowing how to do the analysis side of things, which is a very math based area focused on large data set statistics and management - how do you structure your data, process it, present it.
The other side, and possibly more what GP is referring to, is building out the technology basis to support this. How do you build out a computing infrastructure to reliably and expeditiously offer up extremely large data sets for the consumption of business analyst types (for example crunching financial data) or Machine Learning teaching datasets. This would include things like computer and network architecture, distributed computing models, and some of the big learning model systems like Tensor Flow.
Is this something that AI will likely take over?
For the near future, AI is not likely to be very good at making things easier to understand.
Really? I would think data crunching and summarizing would be the realm of AI, given how it's purportedly already poised to replace coders and can make convincing if nonsensical arguments.
The crunching part, yes. Deciding what's useful and what will actually help users? Not so much yet. It's likely to make a dashboard with 500 graphs and dials on it.
It's one of the jobs that controls the AI data, I can (and have) automated 94% of my job at this point, but that last 6%, I really don't see current gen AI's (or even near future stuff) being able to do (this is someone training a LLM for fun, mainly just to see how it runs "under the hood").
There are significant chunks that could be, but data is so ham-fisted across orgs that you're looking at 10-15 years before said orgs can get sorted to leverage AI.
Here in the EU so many graduates are listing Data Engineering/science/AI/ML in their role requirements after Uni/College. I'm having trouble finding people who don't want to work in data analytics - it's a very strange period in the timeline for my GenX brain 🙂.
Doesn't surprise me at all to be honest. Realistically, there's a tonne of these kids who are just seeing £££ and don't have actually have the problem solving 'want' that data brings.
Friend of mine has just taken his latest batch of grads who can throw down Python like it's no-ones business. But answer business questions using SQL? "Man, that's boring old stuff."
That's the job. Believe it or not.
Teaching
This is specific to the US (though I know some other countries are in similar situations). We’ve always been short teachers (state-level data here), but COVID really accelerated the problem.
For this past 2023-2023 school year:
Teaching has always been a bit of a slowly-boiling-frog career, and the pandemic was the disruption that made people realize they should finally jump out of the pot. Not a lot of people are willing to jump into it anymore. Low pay, high demands, low respect, low autonomy — it’s a recipe for burnout. It’s telling that people aren’t scrambling to get into a career that that offers INCREDIBLE time off (though, admittedly, not elective).
Also, schools are short substitute teachers for similar reasons, which just drives teacher burnout even more as we then have to cover what would normally be taken care of by subs, which is another pretty sizable increment to the heat for us slowly boiling frogs.
While I was in the midst of school to become an engineer I came to the conclusion that I would be much happier as a math teacher, namely Calculus. And then I had to look at my inflating student debt, and career pay rates, and abandon the shit out of that dream.
I know the importance of a capable passionate teacher in the right place. It can be life changing on every level. And respect anyone willing to do it. Between my health issues and cost of school, financially I had to stick with engineering.
I really don't care for it at all. If that student debt suddenly disappeared on a Monday I'd be working on becoming a teacher by Friday.
Maybe creative writing too. I was really good at that as well.
I have a good friend who is looking to become a teacher and the hurdle of getting a California teaching credential has pretty much stopped him in his tracks. He keeps leaving to Taiwan, China, or Japan to teach abroad - we're on year 7 now - because he doesn't want to take on the debt of a teaching credential. He is hoping to squirrel money away while abroad but the pay is so low that it's become a hamster wheel for him.
Do you know of any federal support programs that would subsidize getting a teaching credential? Or any advice I could pass along about the process? Thanks so much!
I feel for your friend. Getting credentialed is a bureaucratic nightmare. I didn't mention it in my original post, but that's also one of the reasons we've got a shortage. In my career I attempted to do a mere subject change (already with a full credential and years of teaching experience), and even that was difficult enough that I wanted to outright give up. Entering the field is hard enough if you go through a specific teacher prep program, and it's downright awful if you're attempting to enter in any non-traditional manner.
It won't avoid the debt in the first place, but if he teaches for five consecutive years in a qualifying school, he's eligible for Teacher Loan Forgiveness. It can forgive up to $17,500 dollars in student loans, but only for specific subject areas (secondary math/science and special education). It's unfortunately only $5,000 for other subject areas, which is a drop in the bucket (and that's $5,000 flat, not $5,000 annually). The full $17,500 wouldn't have paid off either my undergraduate or graduate degree loans, so it's a nice help (and one I was happy to take advantage of) but not a full solution.
Additionally, the loan forgiveness only works if he's a "highly qualified" teacher which means he has to be fully credentialed in his subject area. In many states, this means having to complete a teacher prep program, which, if not done concurrently with a Bachelor's or Master's degree, usually means two years of school. He's also screwed if he doesn't keep up teaching for those five years. You can change schools during that time and maintain eligibility, but only if the school you change to is another qualifying one. The schools that qualify tend to be the highest-need schools which, correspondingly, are also the most difficult to work in. In the district I started out in, we had a 70% churn rate within the first five years. I lasted only three.
Given that there has been a longstanding shortage of teachers, most states have "emergency" or "provisional" credential pathways. These are often less intensive (in many states it just means passing the subject area test) and would allow him to get into a teaching position easier. The problem with these is that he would still have to eventually jump through all of the official credentialing hoops required in order to remain in that position.
This is how I entered teaching, and the way I joke about it is that I had to spend years and tens of thousands of dollars to officially prove that I was qualified for the job I already had. I had to do a full-time master's teaching program while working full-time, and that included a semester of student teaching. In any other program this would have been an apprentice model of me observing in schools and assisting in classrooms and slowly building myself up to fully teaching full classes. The absurdity of doing this is that I was a full decade into my career at that point. The teacher I "observed" for my required hours was myself, because there was no way they would have been able to have someone substitute for me for half a year to stand around in other teachers' classrooms -- not to mention that it would have been insulting to both them and me. Also, I was not the only one in this position. The entire program I did was meant for teachers who were already teaching, having to deal with credentialing requirements that weren't at all in line with the modern landscape of teaching.
There's also the TEACH Grant. This one is an annual $4,000 grant for completing a teaching program. It has academic requirements, and, similar to the loan forgiveness, he has to teach in qualifying schools and in a qualifying subject area. If he doesn't teach for four years to meet those requirements, the grant money becomes a loan that he has to pay back. Assuming he already has a degree and just needs to complete a teacher-prep program, that would be $8,000 for a two-year program (which again, is unlikely to cover the full thing).
One thing for him to look into is that there are a lot of teacher prep programs that are aimed at people in his situation. Some of them, especially post-COVID, are fully online and flexible. As I mentioned earlier, the program I did for my Master's was designed for people who were already teaching full time, so we had classes only one night a week after school hours (from 4:00 to 9:00 -- those were some LONG days). He could potentially start a distance learning one abroad so that his credential is ready once he returns to the US.
Ultimately, I don't have a silver bullet solution for him, and I don't think that any exist. I will say that a lot of areas have local organizations that might be able to help him with specifics. Despite our birds' eye view of things, education tends to be very local and not highly organized at higher levels. If he has a particular area that he wants to work in, see if there are local educational organizations that can help him with the credentialing process. A lot of times principals have the power to expedite credentials for needed positions, so if he gets a foot in the door either with a district itself or a local organization, he might be able to have an easier time with the requirements.
Also, if he's credentialed and experienced in teaching in other countries, it's possible that he could have that transferred into a California credential and skip a lot of the headache. Even if they won't do a direct one-to-one transfer, he might be able to waive some requirements on account of it. This is very much a YMMV situation though. I attempted to transfer a credential from one state to another, and the receiving state very much gave me a hard and unconditional "no". If I had moved to a different state though, they might have accepted it, no questions asked. It really depends on the state and how their requirements are set up.
I hope this helps him, even if it is mostly just me being really negative and venting. As much as I want to paint a bright picture for him though, I don't want to sugar coat anything either. This also helped me better answer the topic question in detail. Why is there a teacher shortage? In part because of shit like this.
I've looked into teaching or even subbing, and I too came up against the credentials hurdle. I get that we need standards, but it's always boggled my mind that university professors need know nothing about how to actually educate people and ruin students' impressions of a field/industry, while aspiring teachers need many years of training and learning just to teach the damned test with a proscribed curriculum to the k-12 group.
Add to that the extensive unpaid overtime and the underfunding of many schools causing teachers to shell out their own money for classroom supplies, and becoming a teacher seems like the sort of thing only wealthy people who love 'inspiring young minds' can afford to do.
Unfortunately, it's the kids who suffer, and the future winds up suffering with them as our academics drop in the global rankings.
Wow, what an amazing, in-depth reply! Thank you so much kfwyre!!! I honestly don't know how he could have possibly gotten all of this information and insight any other way. It's amazing.
I had no idea that the process was so bureaucratic and from your response, and what so many of the other replies echoed, it seems like a real nightmare. I will definitely be passing along the information. While quite a few of us were hoping to lure him back stateside, this may reinforce my friends plans to stay abroad. Though perhaps some of the assistance programs might be enough to entice him!
Teaching has also always appealed to me. Out of personal curiosity, how difficult is it to get credentialed if you have a masters in a specific subject matter? I've done a good amount of workshop-esque teaching in k-12 and adjuncted a few college courses and really, really enjoyed it. I wouldn't make the transition now, but I am looking at education as a potential career in 5-10 years.
You’re welcome! I hope it helps him.
Also, as a temper to my previous ranting: even though credentialing sucks, it is something that is still doable. Thousands of teachers in every state get through the process every year, and I’m probably an outlier in that the states and subject areas I’ve tried to get credentialed in have been some of the more difficult ones. It honestly might not be more difficult for some than a trip to the DMV.
As for you, it’s hard to speak with any definitive mess about credentialing because it is heavily state- and subject-dependent. In general though, having a master’s degree is a good thing. Some states require them (not necessarily up front, but often as a “in order to maintain your credential down the road” step). You’ve already cleared that hurdle.
The one I’m guessing you haven’t cleared is a teacher prep program? That would most likely be required, but it’s also possible to do this after the fact rather than upfront (this is what I did).
You could likely do this before pivoting to a classroom if that works for you. I have to imagine there are some good online programs now that you can work around a current job.
On the other hand, it might be possible to get an entry-level credential (probably by passing subject-matter credentialing tests that your state requires) and then completing a teacher prep program concurrently with teaching.
It’s also worth mentioning that some of what I’m saying might not be fully accurate in this immediate moment. My information and experiences might be considered legacy at this point. A lot of states are relaxing credentialing requirements due to shortages. I expect that pattern to continue in coming years.
I will say that if you have a master’s and have previous teaching experience and you enjoyed it, then you won’t have to worry about finding a position should you want one. Clear the credentialing hurdle and you’re eminently hireable. The difficulty is finding a school where you don’t feel like a slowly boiling frog (or, worst case, a rapidly boiling one).
I’ll also add that, for all my negativity on the state of education in general, I genuinely love teaching. I hate a lot of the bullshit that runs alongside teaching, but teaching itself is wonderful. I love working with kids. I love helping them grow. I love developing my own skillset and getting better at helping kids learn. I love that I can look at my life and know that I’ve had a tangible positive impact on many lives.
Your friend is probably better off staying abroad. I taught in China for a couple of years until the pandemic hit then eventually got my credential in California. I love my job and my students, but everything is worse out here. I make less money, have higher cost of living, and the conditions at work are maddening. The credential process was just the amuse-bouche for the nine course meal of shit that you have to eat as a teacher in the US. Forgive me for running with the crude metaphor, but it's a lot harder to eat shit when you know the taste of decent food. Sometimes I wish I could show my colleagues what my old school was like so they could see how messed up our situation is.
China pays quite well for STEM subject teachers. Especially now after they forced a lot of foreigners out after trying to place the blame for covid on them. A level or AP courses are in demand. There are inexpensive online M.Ed. programs that allow for "easy" certification in certain states (Arizona, Massachusetts for example).
Once you get the M.Ed. you can work your way into the international school circuit which pays really well (like 75k tax free, all living/travel expenses paid).
If he's stuck in the low pay loop sounds like he's doing the English language or kindergarten teaching hamster wheel, which, yeah, is definitely not the place to be.
Related more to your title than to the article - elder care. Nursing homes are chronically understaffed, presenting a huge problem in terms of neglect and poor care. It's one of many industries where hands are desperately needed, but anyone willing to do the work can absolutely not expect to be paid a living wage, which means it only attracts the very young or the very desperate. As our population ages this issue is only going to become more pronounced.
On the issue of chronically understaffed nursing homes, it’s definitely an ‘I’m not getting paid enough for this’ thing. In fact even with increased pay, many wouldn’t take the job without mandated nurse:patient ratios.
Imagine 20-30 patients by yourself. Even worse, on nights or if somebody doesn’t show, you might have upwards of 50-60 patients by yourself. Definitely “I’m risking my license working here” type of situations. For reference, these are all horror stories to me, working in acute care in California where the max ratio is 1:6.
Not to mention the physical demand of lifting patients, average to lower than average pay, burnout, turnover rate, feeling like management doesn’t care. The work itself is also boring, less cognitively challenging, just… Depressing. A very unsafe environment for all, patient and staff alike. Major kudos to those who do it.
As an aside, I think it’s crazy how lawmakers aren’t pushing hard for better ratios. They’re part of the aging population soon to be looking at a nursing home. 🤷🏻♀️
Lawmakers have probably the means to avoid needing a nursing home in the first place.
At the federal level yes but State level representatives aren't usually as well off and can find themselves in health crisis that requires a skilled facility such as vent care.
I wish this were true, but in my state at least, the only people who have access to work as state legislators are already sufficiently well off to not be concerned with their own palliative care. The rich rule.
Editing with receipts: https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/local/volusia/2019/09/09/millionaire-lawmakers-average-florida-state-senators-net-worth-is-59m/3201397007/
Wow, that's surprising now I wonder what it's like here, maybe I was naive to reality.
This is a scary one for anyone who doesn't have children to help take care of them once they turn old. I fear being abused in my later years, I won't know what to do or how to plan for this. Do I just go for it and end up in a home, or do I self terminate once I can no longer perform basic bodily functions?
As a childfree couple, my wife and I have discussed this. Her mother remains extremely active in her "twilight years" and is in no danger of being put into a home. As for the two of us, we do the same and take care of ourselves as much as possible, but strongly believe in living and dying with dignity. It's not an easy topic to discuss, but we have discussed that we won't allow ourselves or each other to deteriorate like that and will take matters into our own hands should the ravages of age or disease make life unreasonably difficult on ourselves or each other.
There is a very moving award winning film about this called Amour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amour_(2012_film)
Synopsis reads right, although we've discussed that unless completely unable (as in the movie after the second stroke), we don't intend to burden the other with the task and will take care of it ourselves.
Those smiling seniors are in early/functional old age. Mental or physical disability lurks in the future for most of us eventually.
I don’t think it’s quite as urgent as some of the other professional shortages from this thread, but the CPA profession (US) is experiencing a massive wave of retirements as boomers age out while simultaneously seeing an overall decline in enrollment in undergraduate accounting programs. There’s a lot of talk in the profession about reducing the required credit hours to sit for the CPA exam from 150 hours to 128 hours, basically taking it from a 5-year degree to 4-year. Some states have already done this. We also had large numbers of existing accountants quit the profession during the pandemic.
Accounting is known for being a high stress, long hours profession (particularly public accounting), but there are so many jobs out there where you can find work life balance. It’s also pretty recession-proof with good earnings potential over a career, and every organization needs an accountant (which means you aren’t pigeon holed into a specific industry). Both my dad and granddad were CPAs. So is my sister. It has brought a lot of stability to our family across multiple generations.
I could go on and on all day about it. Used to spend a lot of time mentoring people trying to figure out their path in /r/accounting.
Body shops are in dire need of body techs. Many shops are even offering sign on bonuses.
Everyone wants to be a painter or estimator, but body techs are in high demand.
My brother-in-law is self-employed doing paintless dent repair (AKA "hail-chasing") and he makes killer money through the warm seasons, and kinda goofs off during the cold seasons.
He doesn't do too much "chasing" any more, as he just moved to Texas and has all the work he needs, but back when he was younger and traveled, he'd make all the money he could spend.
I'm up in the Midwest. Any time we get one of those massive hail storms there's always like 2-4 dudes that roll up to the shop in an RV and they just live there for a few weeks until the jobs are done, then it's onto the next area.
Can confirm on the bank making
My good friend’s partner does this. They live in CO, but he spends most of the year in Texas. It seems to work for them, and he makes great money doing it. I don’t think I could handle that much time away from my partner though personally.
To be more serious - aircraft mechanics fits a particular mold of "requires hard labor but also has technical complexity" that I think will always (bar something like wide scale societal/economic collapse) have good demand. There's a limited subset of people who can meet both the physical and mental characteristics necessary to fit in to the roles. More so than something like a car mechanic (which is still complicated enough that you can't just grab someone off the street and expect them to perform well), there are complexities of environment and strict standards to meet that limit the people suitable for it.
I'd say healthcare is another example of a field that fits into that mold - in particular, nursing. Much lower bar of entry than a full MD, but it's still a technically complex task with major consequences and that frequently requires significant physical exertion. I've got a family member who is now retired from nursing and between lifting patients and the miles of walking from room to room every day, she got a LOT of exercise in when she was on floor rotations.
The nature of the combination of these makes it relatively difficult to automate them. Pure physical/no thinking is easy to make a machine to handle - think very basic repetitive mechanical motions in bulk manufacture. Physical that requires logic but in a fairly constrained manner is harder but possible - think something like an assembly line where you have to assess the item, locate components, etc, but it's always the same task. There are tasks that are physical and not necessarily extremely complex thinking but novel thinking that become much harder to automate - the first thought that comes to mind here would be landscape workers where the concept of planting a bush isn't that complex, but each example thereof is relatively bespoke. Then you get to the physical and very complex/bespoke that is quite hard to automate - that would be these sorts of jobs described above. So you got rapid job loss in manufacturing in the areas that are more repetitive, but then it leveled off.
On the other side of things in the mental but little physical job sphere - uniqueness once again becomes a big factor when it comes to how well thinking tasks get automated. At one time (on the edge of living memory), "calculator" was a job title where you'd have a room full of people hand crunching numbers. Defining what to calculate however is much more complex. We're seeing AI trying to push in to this area with increasing regularity. On one hand, this is a more difficult problem to solve than a lot of mechanical problems from a conceptual standpoint. However, progress is aided by the fact that the implementations can use much more general purpose equipment. An AI ML training cluster can be moved from software to software and model to model as they are refined, where industrial equipment is much less flexible (and the flexible equipment is much less capable). So the progress is coming quickly... but unless we hit general purpose AI, I still see limits. The more novel the thing, the harder it will be to automate. We have ChatGPT writing summaries of news articles and summarizing existing things, but it's not necessarily deriving new things. So novel research, or writing news about new information, those sorts of things are harder for it to do. You're even starting to see it poke in to computer programming. I don't see it entirely getting rid of programmers for a while (that would likely require at the level of singularity level general purpose AI since an AI that could do genuine working programming would by definition be able to use that on itself to upgrade its own capabilities), but perhaps reducing the number of less skilled boilerplate programmers in some industries, allowing a smaller number of programmers to do more work by leveraging the automation tools to more quickly take the higher level concepts that are difficult for the AI to produce and turn them in to working software.
... OK, I guess that went off the rails a bit on the conceptual realm if you were looking at concrete examples :) Still, that's the general framework I use when assessing career paths. Uniqueness is strength, and degree of uniqueness is degree of strength. Being able to do physical work combined with uniqueness is a massive bonus.
Ok, thanks for your insight. The automation of more rote jobs raises the question of how to train the next generation of employees. If apprentice level jobs are automated in IT, what can be done to solve it?
I think the obvious counterpoint is there isn't a need to solve those entry level jobs that way. IT/software especially has been an endless train of automation since it's inception.
Entry level IT employees in the 1970s needed an aptitude for soldering. Entry level IT in the 2010s could never touch a physical system in a larger company/IT team because everything was virtualized. Is it "bad" that the current crop of IT people don't have a firm grasp on how to replace a blown capacitor on a motherboard or have the job requirements just shifted? Likewise for having to write your own printer drivers or touch assembly code. DevOps is definitely a thing, but it's also (usually) not nearly as low level anymore.
Job requirements change. To borrow an idiom, you shouldn't train to fight the last war. (the problem always being, who's guess of what the next one will be prove out)
Nuclear. Primarily nuclear energy, but (really) everything nuclear. We've had a massive decades-long brain drain, and are desperate to train/bring more people in.
I'm a little late to the thread, but is there much demand for someone with a computer science background in the nuclear world?
It really depends what your skillset is. Generally, yes, but, if you have security or research specialties, oh my God yes.
The term now is “High-Touch” jobs. https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-it-would-take-to-bring-the-job-market-into-balance-28da606a
These are jobs located in “…the leisure and hospitality sector, the private education and health sector, and the "other services" sector that includes business such as auto mechanics and dry cleaners”.
Link to full article (no paywall)
Where I live, there are tons of jobs available in human services. I work part time (in addition to my regular gig) in a housing program for people with severe mental illness, and the mid-size agency I work for has around forty open positions right now. Entry level positions are especially hard to fill since pay is relatively low, but there’s a clear path upward for anyone who puts in the time. My agency even pays an annual bonus, which I’ve never gotten anywhere else. The work can be challenging, and it’s certainly not a good fit for everyone, but it’s rewarding to build trusting relationships with people and see them change over time.
What strikes me in this discussion is the amount of areas that are struggling with demand. I work in IT in the EU and I had no idea that the problem was so widespread. I really thought it was quite an 'IT' specific problem.
We have real issues filling positions and I'm finding myself wondering what it's going to take to attract people to fill the open roles. Money isn't everything to everyone (even though we're competitive on salary) and we try and promote our committment to home/work life balance, hybrid working (home/office), flexibility when life bites you (as it has all of us at some point). Yet, some of our roles are open for 1.5 years before being filled.
We're in a 'buyers' market' at the moment, so people can more or less pick and choose. But, the company I work for is very good and we have a great team. I honestly don't know how to attract people to apply. I'm not a recruiting expert and I really need to fill some positions to take the pressure and workload off our team - I'm very concerned.
Speaking as someone who has trouble managing precise punctuation in a way that might or might not be related to dyslexia, not everyone can learn to code. My early attempts were utter failures as were my attempts at o-chem and art history. There is a pattern there and I found non-visual oriented places I could excel instead.
But the training pipeline needs to be better for sure here in the US and I would guess in the EU as well.