What Will Happen to Jobs and the Jobs Problem by 2030?

By 2016, most observers will at least strongly suspect that the jobs crisis is permanent. Many Republicans will think that the few measures advocated by Mitt Romney in 2012 and not supported by Democrats, such as lower tax rates for those in the highest brackets, might help the crisis, but fewer will honestly expect any small or moderate change to clearly solve the problem. One issue becoming plain, if hard to accept for many, will be that the United States is not unique for either business climate or standard of living. Before the Winning by Default years ended in 1973, it was, but since, though the strongest militarily and still the most influential, the United States has become just one of a growing set of 30, 40, or more prosperous, free, generally Western countries. Many Americans will still consider their country the best, but ever fewer with overseas experience will consider it superior by a wide margin. The economy, meanwhile, will continue on the same pace, not in recession but, due to the realities of Work’s New Age, seeming that way. The competitive sector, called “Economy I” by author and New York Times columnist David Brooks, will continue responding to competition and improving productivity while cutting jobs, while noncompetitive fields such as health care and government functions, Brooks’s “Economy II,” will provide a growing share of work.

Politically, the country will be ready for a change. A charismatic Republican, possibly Marco Rubio, rates to be elected in 2016, and will be more able than Barack Obama was to push through legislation designed to help the nation’s largest problems, namely still-rising health care costs, a deficit well over $20 trillion, and, whatever the official employment rate, vast numbers of Americans without jobs who would work if it were readily available, as measured by an AJSN of 25 to 30 million. The new laws and policies will help, but not enough to solve the job problem, which even more commentators will now realize is stable. A national discussion will pick up speed and get serious in the late 2010’s, with debate on options such as guaranteed income and officially reduced work hours. With health care costs continuing to rise, compounded by the massive increase of new enrollees from Obamacare, there may be serious calls for increased personal responsibility about health, a factor in, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2011 study, as much as 75% of health care expenditures.

One set of issues that may see some resolution in the late 2010s and early 2020s is the status of women in the workplace. Despite laws guaranteeing equal rights for both sexes, results have not been equal, especially in average pay. Though authors such as Warren Farrell have documented that occupational choices explain most of the disparity, and others have noted that it disappears or is even reversed when factors such as education and presence or absence of small children are controlled for, it remains a political issue, and one where almost all commentary is in one direction, that of alleged anti-female discrimination. That may change. A landmark 2012 Anne-Marie Slaughter article in The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” put forth the idea that women are inherently more involved in child-raising and therefore, as long as high-level jobs have family-unfriendly requirements such as extensive travel and very long hours, will not reach the same average workplace success as men. Slaughter called for industry-wide changes in these obligations, which may happen. There may also be calls for affirmative action of sorts, mandating higher pay for women until their average income is the same – that is not likely to be passed into law, but will influence public policy to the point where related things may occur.

Also more discussed will be the status of the Singularity, a possible upcoming event which author and futurist Ray Kurzweil summarized as “extending our intelligence by reverse engineering it, modeling it, simulating it, reinstantiating it on more capable substrates, and modifying and extending it,” and managing to “transcend all of the limitations of our biology” by merging our minds and bodies with computers. Kurzweil projected that by the late 2020s products would be so cheap to produce that their value would be contained almost exclusively in their information, and with the economic power of genetic, nanotechnological, and robotic technologies, the American underclasses would “largely disappear” between 2024 and 2034. By the early 2030s, per Kurzweil, there will be little difference between “human and machines, between real and virtual reality, or between work and play.” By the late 2010s, this possibility and the status of its progress will be better understood, and the richness of its philosophical issues will provide a colossal area for national discourse.

When could possible inventions be in use? A New York Times 2011 reader survey started with predictions from a team of futurists and asked the readers to move their expected implementation times forward or backward. Events and dates projected included a universal medical database by 2019, personalized genetic-based cures for cancer by 2023, practical driverless cars by 2024, designed and manufactured life-forms by 2026, and recording devices to routinely capture both video and audio of people’s entire lives by 2031.

Another trend that will continue is aging. By 2030, the average age of Americans projects to be as high as 2004’s average age of Floridians, and there will be 35.5 Americans aged 65 or older for each 100 20 to 64, an increase of 67% from 2010. With people living ever longer, aging will have huge effects on jobs, on both the supply and demand sides.

In all, there will be many differences in the work world over the next 18 years.  How can we fashion knowledge about the trends we have now and will have soon into influences affecting jobs? That is the challenge.

Small Businesses – Not a Widespread Jobs Solution

Throughout American history, there have been many opportunities for people to work for themselves.  As business writer and educator Peter Drucker put it, “whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”  The highest incomes belong to business owners, instead of employees.  So what does it really take to work for yourself?

Working at a serious small business is a challenge.  Radio talk-show host and long-time entrepreneur Bruce Williams described it as “more difficult than it looks,” and pointed out that small business owners are “not really free” in acting with customers.  Those working for themselves will also often find that their new boss is tougher than other people could be.

Not many people, especially those who have specialized in few areas before, can succeed. Small businesses typically require the owners to take on many roles, such as dealing with difficult customers, sales, accounting, buying, marketing, management, and even janitorial work, along with hiring, firing, training and motivating employees, payroll, budgeting, and dealing with lawyers and bankers.  Small-company owners must be greatly self-motivated, and should expect to work long hours.  In Small Business for Dummies, authors Eric Tyson and Jim Schell presented a fitness quiz for running one’s own venture.  It indicates their valued qualities were interest in the business, persistence under adversity, high energy, ability to research and implement problematic decisions, positivity, preference for action over inactivity, related work experience, creativity, recovering from failure, natural leadership, and discipline—a list on which many or most prospective full-time business owners would score poorly. They also refer to confidence, intuition, drive, and passion.  Williams said that if people wanted a lot of time with their families, wanted the security of working for others, needed others to tell them to be at work on time, would stop working if they won the lottery,  or had a low tolerance for risk,  they would not be well suited for entrepreneurship.  A further consideration is whether a businessperson is more compatible with running an existing venture or starting a new one, which often require very different skill and disposition sets.  As well, if a business has no reasonable chance of becoming profitable, it should be discontinued without regard for the owner’s vanity or sunk costs, a decision hard for many to make. 

Some advantages of owning a company are personal satisfaction, independence, more scheduling control, and potential income.  However, the drawbacks are also extensive and include great responsibility, dealing with competition and change, managing many random factors, conforming to government requirements, and the chance of losing one’s entire, possibly large, investment in a failure.  It is almost mandatory for potential business owners to pay off all of their consumer-related debt before starting and then minimize their personal expenses.  Proprietors must also obtain any benefits they want themselves, which can be expensive without an employer providing them.

For these and other reasons, remarkably few Americans run their own businesses full time. Although Robert J. Samuelson stated that “the entrepreneurial instinct seems deeply ingrained in the nation’s economic culture,” and numerous others have agreed, much data supports the opposite.  A 2007 study showed that only 7.2% of Americans were self-employed, trailing Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and 16 countries in Western Europe, ahead of only Luxembourg. Most differences were large, with most other developed countries coming in at between 10.6% and 14.4%, and some were enormous—Ireland, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal, and Italy had 16.8% to 26.4%, while Greece, with 35.9% self-employed, reported almost five times America’s rate. 

In all, regardless of the independence in American national character, the great majority want, and are better suited, to work for others. That is not so bad, as in the Great Recession, small company sales fell way off, and around half of all new businesses fail.  Therefore, while self-employment possibilities are still around, and may be the best choices for those with the drive and the skills, they are as they always have been in the United States–a proposition for only a minority. 

Five Things Obama and Congress Can and Should Do on Jobs

Now the long campaign is over, and we're back to where we started - Obama as President, the House primarily Republican, and a Democratic Senate.  As a Chicago Tribune editorial sternly said, Obama needs to zero in on the issues and Republicans need to "work... with... him." 

So what would be the best?

1.     Start a wide-scale American infrastructure repair, modernization, and maintenance program.  Highways, roads, bridges, wi-fi, microwave towers, airports, sewer lines, and more.  The American Society of Civil Engineers in 2009 gave our national infrastructure a D, and the World Economic Forum dropped it from first worldwide in 2005 to 14^th this year.  The deterioration must end, and both conservatives, who don’t want America to fall further by world standards, or liberals, who are most willing to spend the money, should pass bills to let it happen.

2.     Extend Obamacare to address both costs and the responsibility of employers.  Now that it’s not going to be repealed, we should work out ways to do what both sides have said American health policy needs to accomplish.  Cutting the connection between jobs and health care, which will need to happen within the next decade or so, needs attention soon, as do rising costs, which Obamacare really doesn’t address.  Is it true that better health practices can cut expenses in half, as Jim Clifton in The Coming Jobs War has maintained?  If not, why not?

3.     Lengthen unemployment benefits.  Those 55 and over and officially jobless have been looking for an average of over one year.  Give them and those younger more money and they will spend it, not save it.  Unemployment payments should run for a national term of 78 weeks, if not 104.  The stimulus effect will put a remarkable number of them back to work as well.

4.     Phase out farm subsidies.  Can’t we get a bipartisan coalition to do this, which Newsweek called “an easy one,” and many conservatives and liberals have called things you wouldn’t want to print?  There are now fewer full-time American farmers than full-time Big Ten undergraduate college students.  For whom are these bonanzas, which cost all of us $173.5 billion from 2002 to 2012?

5.     Remove any and all tax benefits for creating jobs overseas, and create them for companies that not only start but maintain positions in the United States.  Should also be a no-brainer.  Negotiate how much, and with what forms of taxes (payroll or corporate income), but put something on the track.  Soon.

Implement all five of these, and we will add several million jobs.  That won’t be enough to reverse the historical trend we are living through, but it will help millions of American families. 

It will also help all of our Washington politicians’ re-election chances.  It’s not too soon for them to think about those – is it?

October AJSN Shows Latent Demand for 20.6 Million American Jobs, Slightly Down from September

The October American Job Shortage Number, or AJSN, is here, and, unlike the official unemployment rate which increased from 7.8% to 7.9%, improved.  The October AJSN shows latent demand for 20.6 million American jobs, down from 20.7 million in September.  Without rounding, the actual drop was almost 165,000 positions that could be quickly filled if available.  Here is the breakdown:
 

AJSN - OCTOBER 2012	Total	Latent Demand %	Latent Demand Total
Unemployed	11,741,000	90	10,566,900
Discouraged	813,000	90	731,700
Family Responsibilities	206,000	30	61,800
In School or Training	366,000	50	183,000
Ill Health or Disability	206,000	10	20,600
Other	842,000	30	252,600
Did Not Search for Work In  Previous Year	3,234,000	80	2,587,200
Not Available to Work Now	475,000	30	142,500
Do Not Want a Job	82,061,000	5	4,103,050
Non-Civilian and Institutionalized, 15+	6,480,544	10	648,054
American Expatriates	6,320,000	20	1,264,000
TOTAL			20,561,404

Unlike the standard unemployment rate, the AJSN is not seasonally adjusted.  In October, since more people are typically working than in September, the official rate has a built-in expectation of increased employment, and when it does not meet that, as was the case last month, it worsens.  The AJSN improved since the absolute numbers of people not working decreased.  The number of people technically unemployed was almost unchanged, but the count of people working increased 706,000 and those out of the labor force fell almost 500,000. 

It is noteworthy how many people who have the above reasons for not working take jobs when they can get them.  That is a main purpose of the AJSN, that many Americans, even those who say they "do not want a job," will work if given the chance.  People rejoined the labor force in October, and will happen more if employment opportunities, even seasonal ones as was the case this time, become more plentiful. 

To summarize, nothing special happened with jobs in October.  We will see more in November, when Hurricane Sandy may have an effect and the presidential election is over.  In the meantime, realize that we still have over 20 million countrymen and women not working, who would end up in jobs if they were readily available, and that shows no real sign of improving further.

Soaring College Debt Means One Thing: Education Levels Will Fall

In June of 2012, President Obama told a college group that “making college affordable” was “one of the best things we can do for the economy.”  So what has been happening financially with college?

Student borrowing started to rise along with large tuition increases in the 1980s.  The mean student loan debt among college seniors in 2008 was over $23,000, along with an average of $4,138 owed on credit cards.  The share of students with loans increased from 47% of those starting college in 1995 to 53% beginning in 2003, with the portion of bachelor’s degree recipients owing money on student loans up from 45% in 1992 and 1993 to 66% in 2008 and 2010.  Average amounts increased from $24,000 in 2009 to $25,250 the next year and an estimated $27,200 in 2011.  Loans from private sources have become more common since 2002, as borrowers responded more to direct marketing efforts.  Defaults on student loans, though still far behind the 1990 historical high of over 20%, have become much more common since the Great Recession, increasing from 7% in the 2009 fiscal year to 8.8% the next.

Now, for the first time, total national student loan debt exceeds that owed on credit cards.  As of the middle of 2012, Americans had a total of over $1 trillion in student debt, of which over $850 billion was borrowed from federal government sources.  For-profit universities, not included in the 2010 numbers, have much higher rates.   More loans have been cosigned, the rate increasing from 67% in 2008 to over 90% just three years later.  Defaults were close to 10% for those starting payments in 2009, a four-year doubling.  Approximately twice as many borrowers who have defaulted outright are in arrears, and only 37% of those who started making payments in 2005 have paid them in full and on time.  Additionally, of course, many students have debt they will repay to parents, which according to one estimate were $6,800 per student.  Federal student loan debt cannot easily be erased in bankruptcy, with laws allowing garnishment of Social Security checks or tax refunds.  As Mark Kantrowitz, proprietor of two college-payment websites put it, “student debt goes up and it doesn’t ever go down.”

As before, loan repayment rates are not the same for all groups of students.  Those who fail to complete college are, as of 2012, over four times as statistically likely to default on student loans as those who obtain their degrees, with a rate of 16.8% compared with 3.7% of graduates.  More borrowers have been dropping out as well, from 23% of those starting college in 1995 to almost 30% eight years later.  However, students taking on debt see it as positive, with one study showing the self-esteem of those aged 18 to 27 correlating positively with amount owed on student loans and credit cards.  Many just older, though, became less optimistic about the debt.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has reduced the requirement for minimum federal Stafford student loan payments to 10% of the borrowers’ disposable income, reduced from 15%, effective 2014, along with forgiveness of all balances owed, if sufficient payments have been made, after 20 years instead of the 25 it has previously been.  The interest rate on current loans, though, increased from the temporary 3.4% figure to their previous 6.8% on July 1, 2012.  The rise was not as significant as it may seem, as it only affects money borrowed for school years starting in 2012, and will amount to an average of only $6 per month per loan year, yet it will still make a difference.

What does the growth of student debt, often unpayable, mean for the choice to go to college?  While higher education still correlates with higher income, there are severe problems with it.  Non-federal governmental loan sources decreased 24% from 2001 to 2011, while tuition at state colleges increased an average of 72%.  Typical annual costs for tuition, other fees, room, board, and other living expenses at Ohio State are about $25,000, with the University of Dayton, which advertised itself as affordable costing about $48,000, and Oberlin $60,000.  Already, lower-income students, according to Kantrowitz, are more often choosing community colleges over more expensive four-year schools.

What will happen with all of this student debt?  Without a vast increase in the number of jobs, it is hard to imagine it being paid off.  The chances are good that an Obama administration, or one later, will forgive it.  That will mean more money lost, and more hardship stretched across the nation.  As with mortgages and housing loans, it will be harder to get money for college.  Private lenders will drop out.  Admission rates for four-year schools will do what they have not done since before World War II – they will fall, maybe substantially.  Private, four-year schools will face the issue of how much of their often ample endowments to spend supporting students who would otherwise not have a chance of attending.  That will put the problem where it truly belongs, in the hands of these private organizations which have much more disposable income, in effect, than any government agencies.  Yet the result will be lower education levels, in general, for Americans. 

Romney and Obama Similar on Jobs - And Both are Lacking

We're less than three weeks from Election Day, and the end of this hard-fought effort by Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama to get the next presidential term.  We are to believe that there are profound differences between the two in all significant ways, that Obama is somewhere on the left side and Romney there on the right somewhere, and that we are choosing between vastly different outcomes, especially in an area as important as how to improve the 20.7 million jobs Americans could absorb right away.  Yet in truth that is not the case.

During the campaign, neither candidate has voiced much of substance about how to create more jobs than recent levels, which have increased monthly but not enough to cover population increases.  Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention proposed no significant action on jobs, and Romney has said little than expecting a stronger-economy-fueled gain of 12 million of them over four years.  

What difference is there between Obama and Romney on jobs and related issues?  On tax rates, the most significant differences between the candidates were on people with the highest incomes.  On corporate rates, the sitting president supports a 28% top rate, with a challenger who wants 25%.  We can bring in someone who thinks capital-gains taxes for those with the highest incomes should be 15%, or retain one who prefers 20%.  We can choose as president one of two who advocate similar welfare payments, similar Social Security benefits, and more free trade.  We can have a candidate who has “energy independence” listed first among his five-point plan for American jobs, or a president who publicly wished, in the fourth paragraph of his 2012 State of the Union Address, for “a future where we’re in control of our own energy,” and later on, said he was ordering his “administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.”  We can either pick a self-avowed conservative, or re-elect someone who said earlier in the year that he believed, as did  Republican Abraham Lincoln, “that government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.”

Many people have questioned Romney’s conservatism, but how liberal is Obama, actually, on jobs?  Consider the following statements he has made this year:

- “We should start with our tax code.  Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas.  Meanwhile, companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world.  It makes no sense, and everyone knows it.”

- “We can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America.”

- “I will go anywhere in the world to open new markets for American products.”

- “Michelle [Obama] and Jill Biden have worked with American businesses to secure a pledge of 135,000 jobs for veterans and their families.”

- “I’ve approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his.  I’ve ordered every federal agency to eliminate rules that don’t make sense.  We’ve already announced over 500 reforms, and just a fraction of them will save business and citizens more than $10 billion over the next five years.”

- “Right now, our immediate priority is stopping a tax hike on 160 million working Americans while the recovery is still fragile.  People cannot afford losing $40 out of each paycheck this year.” 

 Those are the sorts of things as likely to come to pass under a President Romney as under a second Obama term.  They will help - but will they be enough?  The drop in official unemployment may have fooled some into thinking the jobs crisis is ending, but it is not.  If times are relatively good, we will likely postpone the time of reckoning on Work’s New Age, but before the next election most will know we have something more here than a slow recession recovery.  We need help.  Perhaps in 2016 the jobs crisis will be drawing specific, maybe hard, solutions from the presidential challengers.  For now, though, we’re looking at four more years of same old-same old – no matter who wins. 

What Career Fields Best Resist Automation and Globalization?

In Work's New Age, the largest reasons for jobs to be lost are automation and globalization.  Automation generally comes down to two questions - how resistant a job is to robotics, and how resistant it is to computer algorithms and connectivity.  Globalization is a factor when a job does not need to be done locally.

Which career fields, in general, are most locally bound?  This table presents the average ratings within each of the 25 U.S. Department of Labor occupation groups, weighting each job equally, using ratings of 1 for low local boundness, 2 for medium, and 3 for high, in order from most to least locally bound:

Occupation Group	1 to 3 Scale	Average Result
Building and Grounds Cleaning	3.00	Very Locally Bound
Construction and Extraction	3.00	Very Locally Bound
Food Preparation and Serving	3.00	Very Locally Bound
Personal Care and Service	2.88	Very Locally Bound
Farming, Fishing, and Forestry	2.86	Very Locally Bound
Installation, Maintenance, and Repair	2.78	Very Locally Bound
Community and Social Service	2.70	Very Locally Bound
Healthcare	2.69	Very Locally Bound
Protective Service	2.57	Very Locally Bound
Transportation and Material Moving	2.31	Somewhat Locally Bound
Education, Training, and Library	2.29	Somewhat Locally Bound
Entertainment and Sports	2.25	Somewhat Locally Bound
Management	2.07	Somewhat Locally Bound
Sales	2.06	Somewhat Locally Bound
Production	1.90	Somewhat Locally Bound
Office and Administrative Support	1.89	Somewhat Locally Bound
Legal	1.67	Somewhat Locally Bound
Life, Physical, and Social Science	1.65	Somewhat Locally Bound
Media and Communications	1.60	Somewhat Locally Bound
Architecture and Engineering	1.30	Not Locally Bound
Arts and Design	1.30	Not Locally Bound
Business and Financial	1.28	Not Locally Bound
Math	1.00	Not Locally Bound
Computer and Information Technology	1.00	Not Locally Bound
Military	1.00	Not Locally Bound
Overall Average	2.18	Somewhat Locally Bound

How about resistance to robotic technology?  When we use the same 1-2-3 system, also averaged among each job within each occupational group, we get this comparison:

Occupation Group	1 to 3 Scale	Average Result
Business and Financial	3.00	Very Resistant to Robotics
Community and Social Service	3.00	Very Resistant to Robotics
Computer and Information Technology	3.00	Very Resistant to Robotics
Education, Training, and Library	3.00	Very Resistant to Robotics
Entertainment and Sports	3.00	Very Resistant to Robotics
Legal	3.00	Very Resistant to Robotics
Life, Physical, and Social Science	3.00	Very Resistant to Robotics
Management	3.00	Very Resistant to Robotics
Math	3.00	Very Resistant to Robotics
Architecture and Engineering	2.93	Very Resistant to Robotics
Healthcare	2.81	Generally Resistant to Robotics
Arts and Design	2.80	Generally Resistant to Robotics
Farming, Fishing, and Forestry	2.71	Generally Resistant to Robotics
Personal Care and Service	2.68	Generally Resistant to Robotics
Media and Communications	2.60	Generally Resistant to Robotics
Sales	2.59	Generally Resistant to Robotics
Food Preparation and Serving	2.50	Generally Resistant to Robotics
Protective Service	2.50	Generally Resistant to Robotics
Installation, Maintenance, and Repair	2.49	Generally Resistant to Robotics
Building and Grounds Cleaning	2.17	Somewhat Resistant to Robotics
Office and Administrative Support	2.11	Somewhat Resistant to Robotics
Transportation and Material Moving	2.03	Somewhat Resistant to Robotics
Military	2.00	Somewhat Resistant to Robotics
Construction and Extraction	1.80	Somewhat Resistant to Robotics
Production	1.19	Not Resistant to Robotics
Overall Average	2.45	Generally Resistant to Robotics

The third table shows susceptibility of a job to being automated through computing algorithms and computing connectivity.  Applying the same 1-2-3 scale job-by-job produces the following:

Occupation Group	1 to 3 Scale	Average Result
Building and Grounds Cleaning	3.00	Very Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Farming, Fishing, and Forestry	3.00	Very Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Food Preparation and Serving	3.00	Very Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Installation, Maintenance, and Repair	3.00	Very Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Military	3.00	Very Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Personal Care and Service	3.00	Very Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Protective Service	3.00	Very Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Construction and Extraction	2.98	Very Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Management	2.93	Very Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Life, Physical, and Social Science	2.74	Generally Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Community and Social Service	2.70	Generally Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Transportation and Material Moving	2.69	Generally Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Healthcare	2.69	Generally Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Production	2.68	Generally Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Math	2.60	Generally Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Entertainment and Sports	2.50	Generally Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Education, Training, and Library	2.35	Somewhat Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Sales	2.35	Somewhat Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Media and Communications	2.30	Somewhat Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Arts and Design	2.20	Somewhat Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Architecture and Engineering	2.07	Somewhat Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Legal	1.83	Somewhat Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Business and Financial	1.80	Somewhat Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Office and Administrative Support	1.74	Somewhat Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Computer and Information Technology	1.38	Not Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity
Overall Average	2.58	Generally Resistant to Computing Algorithms and Connectivity

As you can see, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, some of the careers that have been first will later be last.  You will see a number of rather modest occupations close to the top, and some with excellent reputations and even consensus high future expectations near the bottom.  The