Capella PhD on welfare

Here's a list of occupations projected to have the most job openings through 2022:
Most Job Openings by Occupation - America's Career InfoNet

As you can see, with the exception of accounting, none of the top 25 require a college degree. Actually, look through the top 50 and things don't improve much.

 

And almost all being low to lower wage category …

 

Yep, amen...

 

Nursing, elementary school teacher, and operations manager require a college degree. A college degree for an operations manager is not a hard requirement, but that is usually what employers want. Most of the job openings being in occupations that don't require a degree is normal. It's like a pyramid, and the educational attainment in this country mostly follows that pyramid. Naturally, you're going to need more grocery store employees than judges. If you look at the fastest growing occupations, many of those do require an associate's degree or higher.
Fastest growing occupations

 

Sanantone, I'm presently frustrated trying to find a path for my future that I might enjoy (i.e., kind of grumpy). But, yes, the majority of all jobs are low pay and don't require a college education. When looking at the fastest growing occupations, you need to keep in mind it may be a small field to start with, like I/O psychologists, so the growth is overstated.

 

Over-educated people continue to apply for those lower-paying, dead end, service-oriented jobs in lieu of being unemployed; and that trend will accelerate and may eventually become the norm over the next decade and beyond.

The 21st Century is seeing an odd and new convergence of:

- Automation replacing high paying jobs.

- Computers replacing jobs where pay was acceptable.

- An increase in service-oriented, dead end, low paying jobs that do not provide pensions, 401k plans or job security. These jobs are not coveted, but conversely, they may become coveted in another decade (as high-paid job opportunities continue to decrease).

- The internet is increasing educational opportunities, along with increasing the aggregate number of professionally degreed people who suddenly find themselves over-qualified for the increasing number of service-oriented, dead end, low paying jobs that do not provide pensions, 401k plans or job security.

The above circumstances are currently forcing former middle class Americans into a lower socioeconomic status. Many people remain in denial of the above -- until it happens to them.

 

Many people remain in denial of the above because much of it isn't actually true.

Automation has eliminated a number of jobs. But we haven't automated judgeships away. Computers have not taken the place of doctors.

But a few key changes did take place that drastically changed the job market:

1. Globalization - While a computer didn't replace my doctor, high speed internet makes it possible for my hospital to outsource most of its radiology services to India. I'm not talking about X-Ray techs. I'm talking about Radiologists (M.D.s). A tech still needs to take my X-Ray, but it can be digitally loaded to a server which can be accessed by a doctor overseas (who has a NY license) who can return his/her findings at a fraction of the cost of paying a local M.D.

You'll notice that, in this example, it is the higher paying jobs that is impacted while the lower paying job remains untouched.

2. Outsourcing - Most people don't understand what outsourcing is and how, implemented incorrectly, it can be a really bad thing for the economy. If I start Neuhaus Enterprises which, for the sake of this discussion, is a software company, I might not want to be bothered hiring cleaning staff, security and a cafeteria crew. So, I can outsource those functions to save myself the headache. The problem is that people figured out that Neuhaus Industries can also outsource its software development (its key business). So now, all of my developers lose their jobs. I rely on a third-party to develop the product my company sells. My developers are no longer under my control. They, on paper, do the same work and cost me less money. The staffing company is able to offer them at a lower rate because they pay them less, give them fewer (and likely zero) benefits and force one employee to do the work of 1.5 - 3 employees.

Outsourcing is a pretty old concept. And it never undermined the economy before the way it did in the early 2000s. The problem is that many companies, as mentioned earlier, outsourced parts of their business that they never should have outsourced. Adding to the problem is that staffing companies need to get those bids lower. They won't cut into their profits so they hire less qualified people for less and less money. The good news is that this trend is beginning to turn around. In the early 2000s it seemed like everyone outsourced and it was a race to the bottom. Nowadays I am seeing quite a few jobs for developers (even at my own company) and very few (relative to a few years ago) for staffing companies.

3. Greater availability of education - Years ago only the rich went to college. A few made it by earning a coveted scholarship. The WW2 era GI Bill put a whole bunch of people, who without the war would have been working in coal mines and factories, into medical and law school. In the years following there was a boom. College became an expectation rather than one of many potential career paths. Believe it or not, DeVry Institute used to be a place where you would get a largely technical education and had a decent chance of getting a job after graduation. It didn't really resemble DeVry University (and its many, many subsidiaries including Ross University) where you were likely to leave with nearly Ivy league debt for a not-nearly Ivy league education.

Greater availability of education means more graduates. More graduates means more people with bachelors and masters degrees applying for jobs. As they get desperate, they are willing to move further down the work chain. When I got out of the Navy there was a warehouse in Wilkes-Barre, PA that required a B.S. to be a warehouse worker. The manager was incredibly proud of his "educated staff." He said it showed that they had the "dedication to finish something." In Wilkes-Barre, there are more college graduates than jobs (11 colleges in a relatively small area will do that).

It isn't that the professional jobs dried up in Wilkes-Barre. There were certainly fewer as those working wage mid-level "clerk" jobs began to disappear, but the bigger issue is that a working class town filled with working class people, within 1-2 generations, was suddenly filled with the college graduate children of those working class people. This happened on a macro level throughout the country.

This happened because economies are cyclical in nature and changes occur over a longer period of time. The impact of WW2 on higher education came in stages over many decades. WW2, essentially, created a generation of workers who recognized that the GI Bill (and subsequently a college education) saved their parents from the coal mines and made them into doctors, lawyers and accountants. Those individuals then turned around and became educated. And they fully expected their children to become educated expecting the pattern to hold.

But it isn't a sustainable pattern. We can't all be professionals. We need cashiers, sanitation workers, truck drivers and construction workers. Those roles are all vital to our society. This upcoming generation, on the other hand, doesn't feel the same way about education because it is seeing the impact of an over-educated under-skilled population. The full impact of this will likely not be truly evident for another few generations when we may, once again, see throngs of students simply not choose to pursue higher education in favor of vocational and technical training.

We're seeing signs of that now.

But with the realization that not everyone is meant to be a computer programmer or a judge comes the realization that you don't need a bachelors degree to be a photographer.

In your version of the world, the jobs are what changed. I disagree to an extent. I believe the changes to the workforce are the greater cause of the present debacle.

 

It's always been that way. There has always been more jobs in occupations that require a high school diploma (or less before the HS diploma became the standard). Actually, the number of jobs that require a college degree has gone up. Whether or not the growth of earning college degrees is outpacing the number of jobs that require college degrees is a separate issue. Many occupations in the healthcare fields that only required a certificate or undergraduate degree now require a master's or doctorate. The educational requirements for CPAs has increased. Most lawyers used to be trained through apprenticeships. I've seen an increased number of administrative assistant positions that want at least an associate's degree. Secretaries were almost never required to have a college degree in the past. Credential inflation is a real thing.

The jobs that are hardest hit by automation are often good-paying jobs that require little education such as manufacturing. The U.S. and many other countries in the West have post-industrialized, knowledge economies. You either need to get educated to find a good-paying job or settle for low-paying, service jobs. The in-between jobs are the ones that have been mostly disappearing because of off-shoring and automation or bumped up to the professional realm through credential inflation.
Knowledge economy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The people with college degrees who are underemployed are mostly concentrated in a few fields. The humanities (and some of the social sciences to a lesser extent) have, historically, been studied by the upper-class. They did not use their degrees for jobs. Outside of academia, most humanities majors were never meant to lead to a profession. If you want to become a psychologist or counselor, you need a graduate degree. This is not new. The many people with bachelor's degrees in psychology are going to have a hard time finding related work. This has long been the case. It's not denial; it's the truth. The most underemployed major is criminal justice. Most of the jobs in this field don't require a degree and have never required a degree. If people don't do their research before choosing a major, then all of the blame falls on them.

 

When I was laid off back in 2008 I left all of my college degrees off of my resume and was hired by Walmart within a week of applying (it was close to the holiday season not that I was so eminently qualified for Walmart work). I'm leary of all of these types of articels, seriously all of them. You really have to dig into them and find out what the author wants to be true. Not the words in the article, but what does the author want you to beleive? What direction do they want you to go?

Sounds like the lives of many people in America.

 

03310151, that's a good point! Plus, you can find a subject that fits the bill, no matter what bill of goods you're trying to sell.

 

My company once had a full month shut down for the month of December. We still got paid, but honestly, it was a scary sort of time. I've seen temporary shutdowns never end.

I applied for a seasonal job at Macy's. Put my degrees right on the application. Still got offered the job.

Granted, I don't have a Ph.D. And maybe Macy's is just so much classier than Wal-Mart that they like to have college educated folks selling watches.

My point is that leaving your degrees off of a resume might be necessary. But there might be other reasons why you're not getting a call.

Part of the problem, I believe, is that if you take a person with no marketable skills and give them a degree, what do you have?

A person with no marketable skills and a college degree. Great.

I think these articles try to paint a certain picture. I have no doubt that at least a few people read that article and said "Well, if she had a Ph.D. from a real school, she would have a job." I believe we all know that would not, necessarily, be the case.

I sense an agenda in articles like this, just like you. And whenever I see someone who is chronically unemployed because of "the economy" while others around them seem to be completed unaffected, it makes me all the more suspicious.