My former boss, who's 37, is going to college for the first time to get a degree in a totally different field. Is this becoming common?
I thnik it will take more time than the national average for the Ptd ecomony to turn around. I predict we will start seeing changes in the economic situation here in early 2011 . . . by that I mean more job opening and people can stop looking to other feilds to find a job.
This is our third jobless recovery in a row. Each time our natural unemployment rate increases. Unless some kind of revolutionary (as opposed to evolutionary) private sector innovation occurs, don't expect the recovery to offer much help in terms of employment.
Renewable energy? High Speed Rail System? 3D TVs? 323 Terabit Routers? What is it? What is the next revolutionary innovation? I want to get in on the ground floor!!
My wife works in the energy industry - my gut feeling is that this is where it will be. They seem to be experiencing explosive growth. Might not even be renewable energy - just good old efficiency improvements - this country uses energy in a very inefficient way - there is so much more that can be done there - much like the way we have seen our manufacturing and services industries go through efficiency revolution in the 90s.
I agree that the potential for some real growth fields are there. But taxes, unions, and other governmantal policies really prevent growth.
I am far from an expert on this subject - but it is clear that this area is super-regulated - so a lot of the efficiency can come from deregulation or smarter regulation/laws/taxes. Is it going to happen? I do not know - but it seems that if there is one sector where the Obama administration seems to actually act upon - is this. It is still a big effing mess - but the impression I get hearing from the peripheral position I am in - is that it is better than it was before - so, maybe it will happen. Again, I am no expert - what I have seen, however, is that there seems to be amazing growth in this area in the last 3 or 4 years my wife has been involved in it. Reminds me a lot of the early days of the internet boom in the mid-90s - where you join a company with 25 people and 4 years later they have 300 employees and are poised to grow more. Of course, there is a good chance some of it will go bust after a while - often happens - but it seems to me that this country is still so inefficient in it's energy use - that there is at least 5 more years of unhindered growth unless some stupid laws come into action to stop it - I would also argue that the tight regulation might help avoid a dot-com like crash - where people were pouring stupid money into goldfish.com (*) - because it was a wild wild west with no rules and regulations... (*) - I do not actually talk about goldfish.com which apparently takes you to a banking site in the UK (WTF?) - but stupid things like that where people poured money into questionable business because they had a nice domain name (webvan, pets.com).
Enron is a great example of how deregulation works! Just kidding but the big picture of our energy policy should be set and enforced by the federal government. Most utility companies would rather raise rates to cover losses through inefficiency of energy production and transmission vs improving the energy grid.
Dot com/tech? I know a lot of people doing 180s...going back to school...grad school, dentistry, etc.
Renewable and Natural Energy is a big scam. Sure its great to be able to do it, but in industrialized nations its just expensive, inefficient and putting a bunch of money won't do shit. Money is in oil and nuclear energy still. Not wind and solar garbage...all the tree huggers want you to believe otherwise, but its ALWAYS going to be "alternative" energy.
Absolutely you need to keep educating yourself and change with the times. If I was looking at changing careers I would probably look at something in health care. I know after 9/11 a lot of people dropped jobs and switch to doing stuff with real estate to make money... and that worked for awhile but I bet they are looking for jobs again now. =) I not trying to make a joke... but I also think social work would be a good bet... my wife is a social worker and she gets mail from government all the time trying to pry her away... I assume to help handle issues with vets returning from war. I am still employed thank God... but I was thinking last night at I might get Masters in teaching just as a fallback... or maybe even to add a little extra income with night classes.
Enron is the product of reregulation in their favor. http://reason.com/archives/2001/01/04/california-scheming
If you want to guess where the next big boom is, look to demand. People wanted to buy stuff online, thus the internet boom. People wanted to own their own houses (and rentals, and vacation homes), thus the housing boom. Most of the wealth in this country is held by people over 50. Those old fucks want to live longer, lose weight and get more erections. A lot of stuff is coming down the pipeline to do that, but it takes people to make it happen. My guess is the next big boom is in health care. Anyway, it seems like everyone I know is going back to school or starting a small business. Makes sense. If you can't get a job and you want to do something so your resume doesn't have massive craters in it, those are your choices.
correct. At work we're looking at starting home health care facilities now out of foreclosed housing. we'll see how that goes. interesting thought though to take advantage of things.
Also a lot of businesses are looking to cut labor costs. How does that happen? Outsourcing. True it kind of kills jobs but if you're the one outsourcing, then you make the money.
other growth industries: 1. Entertainment field will be good. 2. User generated content competing with major corporations (news, television, blogs, etc) 3. scamming the growing government out of money.
Again, think of industries that will grow the economy in new ways. Computers and the internet drove growth since the 80s. Those two developments disintermediated the value chain, allowing companies to free up back office duties and making the link between manufacturer and consumer more direct. The growth in the 2000's was a shell game. Financial innovation will only get you so far. Real estate--while creating weath and some temporary jobs--wasn't a real growth driver. It was a wealth transfer and a temporary job creator. Eventually, you run out of population that needs homes and businesses that need space. What I'm talking about is something revolutionary. We need to produce something in this country again. We can't just be a service society. "Green jobs" are a scam. So, what's next? Crap like wind, solar, blah, blah, blah may make our environment cleaner, but do we need more energy? Not so much that it can't be satisfied with coal and natural gas--which we have in abundance. We need "the next thing" the way computers transitioned us from heavy industry. I don't know what that "next thing" is.
