Blog 13

Blog 13

The charts in chapter 17 are what shocked me the most. The table on page 364 which outlined jobs that are declining due to technology (2012) was disconcerting to me for one important reason: my own inconvenience. There is nothing more frustrating than walking into the post office and having no idea which line to stand in or how exactly to stamp an envelope (this is not sarcastic—I really stress out about stuff like this) and, on top of that confusion, having only a machine there to tell you what to do. I crave that human interaction to ease my mind and assure me that my package will arrive in New Hampshire in x number of days, and a machine cannot give that to me. Other jobs, like door-to-door sales and telemarketers, are annoying the way they are, but I feel like getting an email inbox and phone voicemail filled with details about cool vacuum cleaners and enhancement pills will be so much more annoying than a person coming to your door and showing you how cool the vacuum cleaner really is. I mean, I suppose in general I feel like technology is beneficial to our society (as I take a break from typing on my computer to check my iPhone), but as far as replacing service- and salespeople, I am not a fan.

                In our group in class, we discussed the reasons behind some of the growth in chart 17.2 (2012). It was very interesting that Home health aides and Home care aides were on the rise so steeply, but that makes sense because of the aging baby boomer population. It will be interesting to see how those numbers decline in future decades when that generation has, well, died off. The 111.9% increase of supervisors was also extremely interesting yet unexpected; especially when there is a projected decline in general managers. This one was tough to figure out, but from experience in retail and food service industry jobs that, at least where I worked, the turnover rate for supervisors was quite large. I also feel like some companies hire supervisors to act as Jack/Jill-of-all-trades so that fewer employees beneath them need to be hired (which would entail wasting money on training and salary). I am wondering if this could factor into the growing number of job openings for that position. Either way, these two tables really opened my eyes to the way the economy is being affected in areas I wouldn't normally have assumed were important.

Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development (10th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc.