The New Blue Collar Jobs

"Automation, Robotization, Software-Enhanced Productivity and Permanent Job Loss"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/02/automation-robotization-and-job-loss.html

***

Long read: The new blue collar. "By 2017, an estimated 2.5 million new, middle-skill jobs like Poole's are expected to be added to the workforce, accounting for nearly 40% of all job growth, according to a USA TODAY analysis...Not all pay as much as Poole's, but all pay at least $13 an hour; many pay much more. These jobs require some training but far less school than a bachelor's degree. Technology has given many a makeover, leaving them worlds away from their assembly-line predecessors and challenging the notion that good blue-collar jobs are dead and that the only path to a good career is a four-year degree. 'There's a new middle. It's tougher, and takes more skill,' says Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce." MaryJo Webster in USA Today

Will deBlasio’s big raise for low-wage workers encourage other cities to follow suit? "The prospect of workers at the bottom of the labor heap—non unionized, often transient, and otherwise seemingly powerless—galvanizing a national movement to raise wages amid one of the worst job markets in decades seemed far-fetched. That was certainly the reaction less than two years ago when a couple hundred fast food workers walked off their jobs in New York demanding a raise to $15 an hour. Thee one-day strike, helped along by unions and other grassroots groups, eventually spread to 150 cities. Now, the idea of the nation’s least powerful workers demanding to be paid $15 an hour is not so surprising." Michael A. Fletcher in The Washington Post.