View Full Version : Is it a Good Time in any industry?
In just the last week I've heard these comments from people in these professions: "it's not a good time to be an engineer" and "it's not a good time to be in public education" and "it's not a good time to be in oil" and "it's not a good time to be in private practice in any part of health care."
My question is- is it a good time for any professional?
The young people I know are not going to college "because it costs a whole lot of money, and I won't get a high paying job when I'm done. I can have a low paying job without college costs."
It seems like we are going to have a tremendous shortage of professional people when all the boomers retire. But will there actually be professional jobs?
Williamsmith
5-8-16, 2:51am
In Pennsylvania it is a good time to be a politician. They make 85K a year in the state legislature, $159 a day per diem, full medical, dental, vision for life after five years of service and age 50, and fully transferable to a spouse for life after their death.
You wonder why average Joe is angry?
It's a good time to be in health care. We can't find enough people for our open spots.
It's a good time to be in health care. We can't find enough people for our open spots.
That's exactly what I was to say. Not just health care providers with advanced degrees, but there are all kinds of opportunities for technicians, care givers, insurance billers, marketing people--you name it.
Williamsmith
5-8-16, 12:01pm
My dad used to say, "Being a garbage man is a great job. It is always picking up and you get all you can eat."
Here, almost all industries are very healthy save for perhaps energy sector jobs. However, yesterday citizens voted Uber out so I guess their drivers here aren't so fortunate.
Chicken lady
5-8-16, 12:43pm
D starts work in June writing health care software. Great pay, great benefits, and they can't hire fast enough.
dd works for a grocery chain that is expanding like crazy, but she's in a kind of dead end, but secure and good, job. - high floor, low ceiling, no overtime and good benefits.
Teacher Terry
5-8-16, 1:04pm
Engineers can usually find jobs. Sometimes they may have to move but there are plenty of jobs in most places. WE have a shortage of health care workers here.
ApatheticNoMore
5-8-16, 2:59pm
I don't know, I mean I suspect every thing is a really tiny niche, like it's a good time if your in this really tiny niche of something, but if your not in that tiny niche it's rather mediocre. But a good time for much in general ... I don't know. And I don't considering having to move for work having a career that's in good times (in fact if that was the case I'd probably figure the career wasn't good and start thinking about retraining - though I mean already being in a good sized city and having to move, if you are in a town of 100 moving may be hard to avoid). Is college enrollment really down (maybe from peak recession times when people had nothing else to do) but in general? I'd figure a lot of people still go to college.
What those people say sounds reasonable although they are probably thinking about job satisfaction (how radical!) rather than just ability to get a job. Thus education can be hard with all the endless testing to test and other mandates that limit the teachers ability to teach, being a doctor can be hard with having to deal with HMO idiocy and so on. Well the oil person might be thinking of jobs in general, I've heard they way overinvested in that.
ToomuchStuff
5-9-16, 10:14am
Always heard the funeral business, is a dying industry; yet they are not running out of customers.;)
I am not pushing my kids to go to college, I don't see that there is enough of a support to make sure they get a good job and are able to live well and pay loans. I see this encouragement to go to college but too many kids who don't get jobs right away or get low paying ones while they wait for boomers to retire. I don't have the means to support them during that transition of graduating and getting on their feet and their dad would refuse because they are supposed to be independent regardless of the reality. So they all have full time jobs they like, they are surviving in Denver, and unless they get a burst of passion I wouldn't encourage it.
I do NOT recommend going into education. It pretty much sucks right now. The pay is not enough for the large commitment. I spent 5 years trying to get a teaching job and ended up in a related field and took another 5 years to get to a living wage. Just starting to consider how to add on part time work to pay the loans.
I am not pushing my kids to go to college, I don't see that there is enough of a support to make sure they get a good job and are able to live well and pay loans.
I don't think I've ever "pushed" my kids one way or another, but I do think that your choices are severely limited these days if you don't have a college degree. Bernie Sanders is right: college degrees are the new high school diplomas.
Three of my kids went to college (one of them not until his late twenties). One has not. He's my "artist" son who writes music and works in the restaurant industry for his day job. If he's happy, I'm happy. He doesn't need to be a teacher or a doctor or an engineer. But he has recently said that he's tired of working in a restaurant and wants to do something else, and frankly, I don't know what that "something else" is going to be since he doesn't have a degree. Maybe you're right--maybe he'll be just like all the other college kids that don't have jobs at the moment, but don't you think when it comes time to pick those kids for jobs, the college degrees will matter? I feel like my DS is one big step below all of those college kids who will eventually get jobs.
He's talking about going back to school (he's 31) and I think he's going to really have to choose his course of study carefully.
Ultralight
5-9-16, 10:36am
My dad pushed me to become a truck driver. But I persevered and went to college and graduate school. And just look at me now!
My dad pushed me to become a truck driver. But I persevered and went to college and graduate school. And just look at me now!
Do you wish you were a truck driver?
And the other thing about an education: I truly believe in the old-fashioned liberal arts education. Maybe a BA in philosophy (or history, or whatever) doesn't translate into earning a living, but it does teach you how to think, which is a skill that is eminently transferable to almost any endeavor.
I remember the exact time I noticed my kids were thinking differently than they had just months earlier, and it was like seeing the bloom on a rosebush. Amazing! And it doesn't have to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. My kids went to a community college for 2 years, and then transferred to a state college and their brains went through the same magical transformation as any student who went to an expensive private college.
Ultralight
5-9-16, 10:51am
Do you wish you were a truck driver?
And the other thing about an education: I truly believe in the old-fashioned liberal arts education. Maybe a BA in philosophy (or history, or whatever) doesn't translate into earning a living, but it does teach you how to think, which is a skill that is eminently transferable to almost any endeavor.
I remember the exact time I noticed my kids were thinking differently than they had just months earlier, and it was like seeing the bloom on a rosebush. Amazing! And it doesn't have to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. My kids went to a community college for 2 years, and then transferred to a state college and their brains went through the same magical transformation as any student who went to an expensive private college.
I kind of wish I was a mailman. :)
And I would disagree. Thinking, in the liberal arts tradition, tends to make people question authority and ultimately feel discontented.
This society values technicians of various sorts, not thinkers.
ApatheticNoMore
5-9-16, 10:59am
Yea I think it's better to go to college. I'm a drop out. And it was the advise I got to drop out (not from parents really they were just being crazy - I never turned to them for advise at 6 years old why should I at 20?). I guess if you don't go to school when young, you are supposed to work full time and go to school full time and commute to work and school and well .... I've never had the energy. At most if I was working full time I can manage the energy for one course and even that nearly breaks me. So so much for that.
If I wanted someone to think though I'd probably tell them to study something mathematical (though you have to be good at it I suppose). If I wanted someone to get a job I have no idea.
I actually wished I had supported/pushed more. It is important in many ways and yet without being able to offer the basic support my parents did I really couldn't push. Heck I only had one with a real graduation to celebrate, the other 2 barely made it through a diploma of any type in high school. Yeah, maybe they will decide much later they have something they want to study and try it. Meanwhile they all seem mentally stuck in the 'can't do it' mind set.
ApatheticNoMore
5-9-16, 11:02am
I kind of wish I was a mailman.
nah we've had that discussion here on the post office workers these days, you don't. You wish you are mailmen 50 years ago in the age of full time unionized mailmen. Nowdays they are mostly temp staff it seems, they aren't getting government bennies, their hours are tracked constantly and they don't seem to get breaks, they have to deliver more mail than they can possibly do in an 8 hour day so they are all working overtime (I have no idea if it's paid overtime or not - legally youd think so, but everyone breaks the law, but really the post office?) etc.. And dogs still attack them regularly (it was always thus with the dogs though).
We had a post office worker that used to post here. She said in the past she'd recommend working for the post office but nowdays she would not.
here is the thread:
http://www.simplelivingforum.net/showthread.php?10916-Working-at-the-Post-Office-2014&highlight=post+office
This society values technicians of various sorts, not thinkers.
I respectfully disagree.
ApatheticNoMore
5-9-16, 11:12am
Society might value a few thinkers that it needs to get it's work done, but they are only maybe 10-20% of the jobs. For everyone else it values technicians. Now you can say everyone else who isn't employed in such a job is stupid, but I don't think they all are.
Ultralight
5-9-16, 11:23am
I respectfully disagree.
I am cool with that.
Unless the numbers have changed in some dramatic way since the last time I looked, college is the still, dollar for dollar, one of the best lifetime investments you can make. This may change, but it's true now.
Unless the numbers have changed in some dramatic way since the last time I looked, college is the still, dollar for dollar, one of the best lifetime investments you can make. This may change, but it's true now.
My daughter's degree in Classics will cost her about $250k, plus opportunity cost. I'm not sure how she'll make that pay back, dollar-wise....
Teacher Terry
5-9-16, 3:30pm
For whatever reasons your daughter chose that. It could have been done cheaper.
My daughter's degree in Classics will cost her about $250k, plus opportunity cost. I'm not sure how she'll make that pay back, dollar-wise....
If you foot the bill, then she is golden. She got four really interesting years. She is fortunate to have that time to indulge her natural intellectual interests.
My daughter's degree in Classics will cost her about $250k, plus opportunity cost. I'm not sure how she'll make that pay back, dollar-wise....
All I know is what I read in the papers. That price tag is obviously on the high end, but even at that price the cost-benefit is likely on her side (especially if she went to a prestigious school).
The payback in her case is also very much related to what she does with that degree. I work for a tech company, and nobody except the folks who mop the floors gets in the door here without a college degree. And a surprising number of those degrees are in English, philosophy, history...and classics. You may start a bit lower on the totem pole, but moving up is quite doable.
All that said, I'm glad I got my education when I did. My parents paid for my bachelor's and I managed pretty easily through grad school on teaching assistantships and fellowships. I had plenty of friends who made their way through their undergrad studies with scholarships and part-time jobs. I think it's a lot harder now.
It's still possible to do well in this country, but the opportunities are shrinking. My parents both attended the City University of New York. Tuition was basically free. My father had the GI Bill and so was able to go to school summers and finish his degree in three years. My mother got a master's degree in nursing from Yale during the war--also free. Both went on to produce value that, I'm sure, greatly outstripped the cost of their education to society. That kind of opportunity doesn't exist anymore, as far as I can tell. It's short-sighted.
May I suggest the pet care industry? I'm doing a turn-away business as a pet-sitter. You see, my degree in English Lit came in handy...! The critters love it when I recite Emily Dickinson poems to them, though some prefer T.S. Elliott. Actually, I ran an advertising business until I could no longer push products for a living, and after writing an ill-paid novel, I turned my love of animals into pet-sitting. Love it! Good thing because it's not highly profitable. But having a kitty on my lap and a happy dog to walk is...priceless!
The way things have played out, it seems that a college education is now required to even be considered for a job that pays a "living wage." It fascinates me that so many very successful entrepreneurs never even completed their undergrad education. Were I to do it over again, I would probably seek a "fall-back" degree like accounting but give entrepreneurship a real hard go. I had so many business ideas as a young person that had I followed...Being innovative and entrepreneurial seems a lot more interesting to me than playing by the rules and having a boss.
This society values technicians of various sorts, not thinkers.
I respectfully disagree.
Then why is our education system all about teaching people how to memorize stuff and take tests?
For whatever reasons your daughter chose that. It could have been done cheaper.
Nope. There's no "cheap" way to study the particular things she is studying at the places she is studying them (Princeton, Cambridge) - you can't go to community college and get the same access to fieldwork and research programs (she's spending a good chunk of next semester on work in Constantinople).
When all the dust settles, *maybe* she can get the super-high salary of a college professor. After goodness knows how many more years of school/research.
Ultralight
5-10-16, 12:16pm
Then why is our education system all about teaching people how to memorize stuff and take tests?
Schools are about obedience and outsourcing parenting.
Yes. Schools are about socializing our kids to serve as soldiers or factory workers - whichever we need more when they come of age.
Ultralight
5-10-16, 3:04pm
Schools manufacture obedient workers, mindless consumers, and aggressive soldiers.
(she's spending a good chunk of next semester on work in Constantinople).
Well, if they can send her back in time, it's probably worth the money.
Well, if they can send her back in time, it's probably worth the money.
You'd be surprised to see what's in those basement physics labs...
(Oddly, the purpose of their expedition is to investigate some Viking presence in the area. Who knew?)
Well, if they can send her back in time, it's probably worth the money.We're currently planning a motorhome trip this summer. I'm voting on a trip across Pangea.
You'd be surprised to see what's in those basement physics labs...
(Oddly, the purpose of their expedition is to investigate some Viking presence in the area. Who knew?)
The last season of Vikings ended with them discussing a trip to the Med (after having failed to sack Paris). It may not be that historically accurate, but it's a fun show.
We're currently planning a motorhome trip this summer. I'm voting on a trip across Pangea.
Enroll at Princeton. Anything's possible.
We're currently planning a motorhome trip this summer. I'm voting on a trip across Pangea.
I think you should convince the wife to take a motorcycle trip around the world. http://www.amazon.com/Investment-Biker-Around-World-Rogers/dp/0812968719/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462934082&sr=8-1&keywords=jim+rogers+investment+biker Not quite Pangea but still quite an adventure.
I think you should convince the wife to take a motorcycle trip around the world. http://www.amazon.com/Investment-Biker-Around-World-Rogers/dp/0812968719/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462934082&sr=8-1&keywords=jim+rogers+investment+biker Not quite Pangea but still quite an adventure.Now that would be one helluva adventure! So far, I've convinced her that a several month motorcycle trip after retirement across the northern US and S/W Canada, then a southerly route along the west coast and a leisurely trip back through the Southwestern states is a good idea. We'll have to see how that goes before I'd brave suggesting more. :)
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