Here's US employment by category: [1] Only 14.1% of the workforce makes "stuff" - that's agriculture, mining, construction, and manufacturing combined. Those are shrinking slowly. Most of that is already automated. A century ago, that was 90% of the workforce. That's the "hollowing out of America" people talk about. The US manufactures more stuff than ever, but with far fewer people.
The big sectors remaining are retail, professional/business services, health care, and state and local government. (The Federal government is tiny - 1.8%.) Health care is growing. State and local government (which is mostly teachers and cops) is down a bit. Retail is declining slightly. There's a little growth in professional/business services.
Retail is struggling. America is littered with dead malls. (See "deadmalls.com") Online ordering hasn't crushed brick-and-mortar retail yet; it's still only 7.4% of total retail sales.[2] It's gaining another 1% or so each year. There's still a future in retail, but the jobs are low end.
"Professional/business services" is the category IT automates. It's where most of the good middle class jobs are. 12.7% of the workforce now. (This doesn't include finance, at 5.3%, down a bit, and also highly automatable.) This is the sector likely to clobbered next, as machine learning gets going.
That's what's going on. Take a good look at those numbers and evaluate your future.
The big sectors remaining are retail, professional/business services, health care, and state and local government. (The Federal government is tiny - 1.8%.) Health care is growing. State and local government (which is mostly teachers and cops) is down a bit. Retail is declining slightly. There's a little growth in professional/business services.
Retail is struggling. America is littered with dead malls. (See "deadmalls.com") Online ordering hasn't crushed brick-and-mortar retail yet; it's still only 7.4% of total retail sales.[2] It's gaining another 1% or so each year. There's still a future in retail, but the jobs are low end.
"Professional/business services" is the category IT automates. It's where most of the good middle class jobs are. 12.7% of the workforce now. (This doesn't include finance, at 5.3%, down a bit, and also highly automatable.) This is the sector likely to clobbered next, as machine learning gets going.
That's what's going on. Take a good look at those numbers and evaluate your future.
[1] http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm [2] https://ycharts.com/indicators/ecommerce_sales_as_percent_re...