Careers for our Future

[durrrty libby]

With all the outsourcing, downsizing, and closings going on, what should a person study to try and secure their future? Is it all doom and gloom?

I’m curious, because I have a son in a local college, finishing his second year in a heavy math and science curriculum. (Engineering Tech) He plans to transfer to a university next year, and is open to advice. As a single parent, I must spend his educational dollars frugally.

Any personal thoughts and links are appreciated. I’m sure others will benefit from your thoughts.

[justabob]

1. Good question

I just atarted a new program at my community college in Geospatial Technology aka Geographic Information Systems, which includes GPS and Remote Sensing...

Geographic Information Systems

GIS is a technology that is used to view and analyze data from a geographic perspective. The technology is a piece of an organization's overall information system framework.

GIS links location to information (such as people to addresses, buildings to parcels, or streets within a network) and layers that information to give you a better understanding of how it all interrelates. You choose what layers to combine based on your purpose

http://www.gis.com/whatisgis/index.html

see also: Google Earth

It is an incredibly broad field and can be used for just about anything.... I can't say it is safe from off-shoring, but it is fascinating to me and I am very very happy my local school started this program. :) You can go from simple certification (3 semester program) to A.A.S. (5 semesters) to BS to masters and beyond.

[durrrty libby]

4. Thanks for your input

I’ll show him that.

One of his favorite classes was statistics. I suggested he look into Actuary curriculum, but I’m also curious as to what others are studying, or advising their kids to study.

[Dave Reynolds]

2. Professional Texas Hold-Em player.

It seems to be all the rage.

[SoCalDem]

15. Dealing at casinos pays well.

My friend and her husband are both dealers and between pay & tips, they clear almost 7K a month.. She was managing a restaurant and he was bouncing from one job to another, trying to get ahead, and then they both went to dealers' school and found their way to easy street.. they built a gorgeous new house and paid that sucker off in less than 6 years..

[murray hill farm]

3. Farming!

Small farming will be much needed in your sons future and the future of us all...i know it sounds foolish, but it will be the most needed of profesesions in the future. If not so brave..ha..medicine is and will always be needed, but natural medicine will be the most useful in the future. If you figure that your son's work life will continue until close to 2060, the best advise you can give him is to pursue a lifes work that will serve him in the changing world that we live in now...and the change that will occur in his life.

[hang a left]

5. Transcriber for the NSA.

Neighborhood Watchperson for the DOD.

[FloridaPat]

6. Medical careers won't be outsourced. Landscaping, lawn mowing,

small business. It's always amazed me that foreigners come and set up businesses and most Americans go for jobs.

[durrrty libby]

7. No blood..no grass

“It's always amazed me that foreigners come and set up businesses and most Americans go for jobs.”

There is a lot of truth in that. However, I’m just trying to give him the opportunity of a higher education. What he does with it is up to him. He’s not a people person at all, and doubt if he’ll ever become an extrovert.

[Tesha]

9. Medicine will most certainly be outsourced. (NT)

[Tesha]

8. Plumbing.

Plumbing. Or some other skill that really, really has to be performed
"live and in person".

And no, medicine doesn't cut it. Telemedicine will mean that doctoring
can be outsourced to India or China just as easily as any other skill
(and this will soon include performing operations by robotics).

Plumbing. There'll always be shit.

Tesha

[Hello_Kitty]

12. Yep. Air conditioning and heating too.

Those executives like their climates controlled while they sit on their fat asses outsourcing our jobs.

[Nay]

10. My son is in his 2nd year as an electrician's apprentice. The $$

to be made when he completes his 4 years is very good -- easily $80,000 per year if he heads up a team.

We also talked to heating and air conditioning guys we know, and they are all working permanent overtime because no one wants to "get dirty" any more. They all want office jobs.

Plumbing is in the same category.

[OneBlueSky]

11. guards at FEMA camps . . . mercenaries . . .

members of the new Uniformed Secret Service . . .

or McDonalds . . .

[Greyhound]

13. Yep, as stated above, if I had it to do over I would get into the

trades, electrician, plumber, HVAC, etc, just avoid the areas that many illegal aIiens do (carpentry, drywall, framing, etc) as the wages for those positions are going down quickly.

[SoCalDem]

14. The 'experts" areall saying "healthcare" .. What that really means

is people who will be paid "not so much" to change the diapers and feed aging Boomers and their parents, who might actually outlive THEM:(...

The nursing field is having a lot of Boomers who are retiring and not many young ones who want to work the hours and put up with the hassles, to replace the,. But then unions are being phased out at breakneck speed, so maybe young folks are not going there because they see their investment (education) not paying off in those fields..

In not too many years, the IT sector will be all but outsourced,there are probably more lawyers than we need, doctors are getting tired of the hassles these days, teachers don;t get 1/5th of what they should get to try and teach kids...so what's left?

Service jobs.. clerks who stand on their feet 4-6 hours a day (no fulltime)..Companies love to schedule six 4hr days so they can keep people under the fulltime limit and keep them hungry for more hours..and then they are often made to skip lunches, miss breaks and work off the clock..

As we all fight each other for the menial jobs that most of us wouldn;t have even applied for a few years ago, it can only get uglier..

I guess the salvation will be that a lot of Boomers will die younger than their parents, and once we are "gone", competition might get easier for our kids.. But then we all know how corporations love to play games.. They migth just start importing more cheap labor to hold the wages down..

Who knows.. bird flu may be the only thing that could get jobs back here .. :(

[area51]

16. No easy answers,

except to stop all offshoring/inshoring.

Any job that can't be offshored (plumbing & medical services, to use a couple of examples from this thread), can be inshored, by shipping in legal or illegal immigrants.

If this nation wants to continue having a tax base, it's got to stop offshoring/inshoring.