Bad Times Spur a Flight to Jobs Viewed as Safe

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/business/25safe.html?em

Bad Times Spur a Flight to Jobs Viewed as Safe

After years of struggling to get their wages up, the nation’s workers are trying to find jobs that will simply last, at least through the deep recession.

Fearing layoffs, investment bankers at a Merrill Lynch or a Morgan Stanley are joining small Wall Street firms for less pay but with signed employment guarantees. Academics are migrating to community colleges, which are adding teachers as enrollment rises. And in Eastern Wisconsin, workers furloughed from a paper mill they fear will not reopen are training as truck drivers and welders.

“Looking online and in newspapers and talking to my instructors, I’ve decided that trucking and welding stand out as jobs that are available and will continue to be available, and a lot of my friends agree,” said Dan Geneen, who has picked up a truck-driving certificate and is learning welding since he was let go by the paper mill last fall.

Trucker and welder are hardly glamorous careers to most Americans. But there is a new allure developing around jobs likely to keep a person employed, at reasonable pay, through a prolonged downturn.

[Chulanowa]

1. This is why I have the expertise I have

I cook, I can fix a car, and I can clean a house professionally. These are jobs that will always be around. Well, until we phase out cars for computerized personal anti-gravity gliders!

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. yep. n/t

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. I would think jobs in health care would also be good choices...

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. agree. And taking care of the elderly

[JCMach1]

5. Students will always need to learn rhetoric, so I will always have a job

Thought that through years ago...

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. I too retired to academia. Its nice and safe but without my other income, I could not survive on it

[JCMach1]

8. I currently work here in the UAE and moved-up or out

into Univ. Admin to make ends meet.

I agree academia in the U.S. can pay quite poorly.

I even took a hi-fi High School job for a few years when I had the chance. The pay at that time was about 35% higher than the position I had with the University of Texas.

[Hardrada]

7. They aren't making any more farmland so our income

from renting the land we own won't go away. (Our other source of income).

[notesdev]

9. Yep

That's why I signed onto a longterm contract at a federal government agency recently. The states are going to get hammered, but the feds are definitely not going to stop spending money.

[B o d i]

10. I read Heinlein's "Job - A Comedy Of Justice" when I was in my early teens. It had a lasting impact.

Among my multiple talents are cooking and washing dishes, better than any machine can (for both). Those will always be in demand by someone, if I'm in a pinch.