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Labor reports show future increased job availability, decreased workforce
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics, an integral part of the U.S. Department of Labor, has recently published several reports on job availability and potential workforce through the years 2008 and 2025. The reports paint a picture of the future looking quite different from current industrial America. The baby-boomer workforce will retire, manufacturing and production jobs will decrease as automation furthers, and the service industry will grow exponentially.
The baby boomer generation, those people born between 1946 and 1964, make up the bulk of the workforce today and will continue to do so for several years to come. Labor force growth between now and 2008 is expected to be highest in the ages 45-64. There will be a growth of 47.9 percent availability in this age group. Whereas the workforce between ages of 25 and 34 is going to decline by 2.7 million, reflecting the decrease of births in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Simply put, people are growing older.
However, these numbers will change significantly after 2008, the reports show. Members of the older workforce are starting to work later into life, but retirement age will still average in the early 60s. This means the bulk of the older workforce will be retiring. There will be many new jobs on the market but a much smaller workforce to staff them. Economists predict that will add increased stress on the workforce, leading to more hours and a longer work week.
The reports claim that more technological innovation and office automation might help compensate for the lack of workers, but it should also be noted that this will further displace people in certain economic brackets. Jobs in the manufacturing industry are predicted to decline, with a loss of 89,000 jobs projected by 2008 (this is not taking into account the current trend of capital flight and moving manufacturing jobs to areas of the world with cheaper labor).
This is only a 1 percent decline in the total number of jobs held by this industry, but many economists predict this as an ongoing trend as automation continues. Office and clerical jobs are not going to decline, but their growth is expected to be minimal as they too are automated. This means availability of some select lower middle class jobs will not grow with the availability of the workforce.
Service industries are going to account for virtually all of the job growth. Professional and specialty occupations are projected to grow the fastest adding 5.3 million jobs. Service workers, the second highest growing occupation, are expected to add 3.9 million jobs. These jobs are essentially at opposite ends of the education and earnings spectrums, the first requiring a great deal of education and the second requiring little or none.
These service jobs are expected to take up displaced workers from other industries, however, there are generally vast wage differences between most skilled manufacturing positions and most unskilled service positions. Howard Fullerton of the BLS says the service industry average wages are rather high, but the average is based on all service industries and not specifically on the less skilled ones. Less skilled being qualified as servers, wait staff, cooks, cashiers, nurses and similar occupations.
Employment disbursement based on skill will not change significantly. The most noticeable change again deals with simple service occupations. Short-term on-the-job training now accounts for 39 percent of all jobs, but by 2008 will account for 44 percent of all jobs. Jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree will fall as the second most abundant, with 14.2 percent (almost no change).
The workplace of the future may have many jobs available, with significant growth in the areas of management and technology based employment, providing jobs for those people with the skills to fill them. However, it can also be inferred from the data of the BLS that many skilled workers, and the bulk of the younger work force, are going to be forced into positions that require little and offer little in return.