Despite the recent campaign talk the biggest force impacting jobs has been and will continue to be automation.
This is a trend that can't be stopped simply because it is a way to improve profits.
Why would we want to stop it, the work the robots can do is generally drudge work.
Unfortunately many people have those jobs and while they generally don't like them very much they provide some income source.
Of curse the first jobs to go were actually the clerical jobs that used to be so prevalent but which were lost to the personal computers and printers.
I remember a time of steno pools, typing pools, filing rooms and so on, most of which are long gone and the jobs with them.
Then as mechanization progressed we saw the impact on manufacturing as industrial robots took far more jobs than trade agreements.
These were the high paying jobs that were the result of unions and labor shortages as industry expanded.
The jobs are gone and not coming back in any sizable numbers.
We have seen the start of the loss of retail jobs as we now can do our own banking, shop on-line and check ourselves out at many places as well as pump our own gas.
Everything mentioned here used to be jobs.
If you don't have valuable skills you will have trouble finding a job and even more trouble finding a job that pays a living wage.
The jobs that will pay well require the one human asset that machines haven't duplicated yet, our ability to think and solve problems.
Skills hat seem to be in short supply.
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